| 1. |
- Bockgård, Niclas, 1974-
(författare)
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Groundwater Recharge in Crystalline Bedrock : Processes, Estimation, and Modelling
- 2004
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Kunskap om grundvattenbildningen är nödvändig för att man ska kunna förutsäga konsekvenserna av grundvattenuttag och underjordsbyggande. Grundvattenbildningen i berggrunden är dock svår att uppskatta. Syftet med avhandlingen var att öka förståelsen av grundvattenbildningen i kristallin berggrund, att undersöka hur grundvattenbildningen ska uppskattas samt att utveckla nya modeller för att beskriva grundvattenbildningen. Studien grundades på tre angreppssätt: grundvattendatering med freoner (CFC), geohydrauliska observationer och matematisk modellering.Koncentrationerna av CFC-11 och CFC-113 befanns vara låga i det undersökta berggrundvattnet, vilket i kombination med låga syrgashalter tyder på anaerob nedbrytning. Koncentrationerna av CFC-12 och tritium överensstämde ganska väl, vilket betyder att den skenbara åldern kan vara den sanna åldern. Resultaten tyder på att CFC-datering inte är pålitlig i skogsmiljöer med finkornigt jordtäcke.Vid nederbörd observerades ett snabbt gensvar i den hydrauliska potentialen i den studerade bergakviferen, trots det 10 m mäktiga moräntäcket. En avsevärd del av de observerade potentialvariationerna befanns vara belastningseffekter, som inte innebar någon magasinsförändring eller något vattenflöde. Berggrundens belastningseffektivitet uppskattades, ur potentialens svar på lufttrycksförändringar, till 0,95. Ytbelastningen beräknades från mätningar av lufttryck, vatten i jordtäcket och snö. Omkring 20 % av årstidsvariationen hos den hydrauliska potentialen uppskattades bero på enbart belastningsförändringar. En enkel begreppsmässig modell kunde användas för att simulera den observerade hydrauliska potentialen. För att beskriva enskilda grundvattenbildningstillfällen på bästa sätt var det nödvändigt att ta hänsyn till effekten av ytbelastningen.Numeriska experiment gjordes med en modell av en jord–bergprofil. När berget modellerades som ett heterogent kontinuum bildades omättade zoner i berget vid stora hydrauliska gradienter. Fenomenet uppträdde i områden där låggenomsläppliga zoner låg uppströms höggenomsläppliga zoner, och ledde till minskad hydraulisk konduktivitet i berget.
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| 2. |
- Fuentes-Andino, Diana, 1984-
(författare)
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Flood Hazard Assessment in Data-Scarce Basins : Use of alternative data and modelling techniques
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Flooding is of great concern world-wide, causing damage to infrastructure, property and loss of life. Low-income countries, in particular, can be negatively affected by flood events due to their inherent vulnerabilities. Moreover, data to perform studies for flood risk management in low-income regions are often scarce or lacking sufficient quality.This thesis proposes new methodologies and explores the use of unconventional sources of information in flood hazard assessment in areas where the quantity or sufficient quality of traditional hydrometrical data are lacking. One method was developed to account for errors in spatially averaged rainfall, from a sparse rain-gauge network, used as input to a rainfall-runoff model. A spatially-averaged and event-dependent rainfall depth multiplier led to improvements of the hydrographs at calibration. And by using a distribution of the multiplier, identified from previous events in the catchment, improvement in predictions could also be obtained.A second method explored the possibility of reproducing an unmeasured extreme flood event using a combination of models, post-event data, precipitation and an uncertainty-analysis framework. This combination allowed the identification of likelihood-associated parameter sets from which the flood hazard map for the extreme event could be obtained.A third and fourth study made at the regional scale explored the value of catchment similarities, and the effects of climate on the hydrological response of catchments.Flood frequency curves were estimated for 36 basins, assumed ungauged, using regional information of short flow records, and local information about the frequency of the storm. In the second regional study, hydro-climatic information provided great value to constrain predictions of series of daily flow from a hydrological model.Previously described methods, used in combination with unconventional information within an uncertainty analysis, proven to be useful for flood hazard assessment at basins with data limitations. The explored data included: post-event measurements of an extreme flood event, hydro-climate regional information and local precipitation data. The methods presented in this thesis are expected to support development of hydrological studies underpinning flood-risk reduction in data-poor areas.
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| 3. |
- Girons Lopez, Marc, 1986-
(författare)
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Information Needs for Water Resource and Risk Management : Hydro-Meteorological Data Value and Non-Traditional Information
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Data availability is extremely important for water management. Without data it would not be possible to know how much water is available or how often extreme events are likely to occur. The usually available hydro-meteorological data often have a limited representativeness and are affected by errors and uncertainties. Additionally, their collection is resource-intensive and, thus, many areas of the world are severely under-monitored. Other areas are seeing an unprecedented – yet local – wealth of data in the last decades. Additionally, the spread of new technologies together with the integration of different approaches to water management science and practice have uncovered a large amount of soft information that can potentially complement and expand the possibilities of water management.This thesis presents a series of studies that address data opportunities for water management. Firstly, the hydro-meteorological data needs for correctly estimating key processes for water resource management such as precipitation and discharge were evaluated. Secondly, the use of non-traditional sources of information such as social media and human behaviour to improve the efficiency of flood mitigation actions were explored. The results obtained provide guidelines for determining basic hydro-meteorological data needs. For instance, an upper density of 24 rain gauges per 1000 km2 for spatial precipitation estimation beyond which improvements are negligible was found. Additionally, a larger relative value of discharge data respect to precipitation data for calibrating hydrological models was observed. Regarding non-traditional sources of information, social memory of past flooding events was found to be a relevant factor determining the efficiency of flood early warning systems and therefore their damage mitigation potential. Finally, a new methodology to use social media data for probabilistic estimates of flood extent was put forward and shown to achieve results comparable to traditional approaches.This thesis significantly contributes to integrated water management by improving the understanding of data needs and opportunities of new sources of information thus making water management more efficient and useful for society.
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| 4. |
- Gong, Lebing
(författare)
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Large-scale Runoff Generation and Routing : Efficient Parameterisation using High-resolution Topography and Hydrography
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Water has always had a controlling influence on the earth’s evolution. Understanding and modelling the large-scale hydrological cycle is important for climate prediction and water-resources studies. In recent years large-scale hydrological models, including the WASMOD-M evaluated in the thesis, have increasingly become a main assessment tool for global water resources.The monthly version of WASMOD-M, the starting point of the thesis, revealed restraints imposed by limited hydrological and climate data quality and the need to reduce model-structure uncertainties. The model simulated the global water balance with a small volume error but was less successful in capturing the dynamics. In the last years, global high-quality, high-resolution topographies and hydrographies have become available. The main thrust of the thesis was the development of a daily WASMOD-M making use of these data to better capture the global water dynamics and to parameterise local non-linear processes into the large-scale model. Scale independency, parsimonious model structure, and computational efficiency were main concerns throughout the model development.A new scale-independent routing algorithm, named NRF for network-response function, using two aggregated high-resolution hydrographies, HYDRO1k and HydroSHEDS, was developed and tested in three river basins with different climates in China and North America. The algorithm preserves the spatially distributed time-delay information in the form of simple network-response functions for any low-resolution grid cell in a large-scale hydrological model.A distributed runoff-generation algorithm, named TRG for topography-derived runoff generation, was developed to represent the highly non-linear process at large scales. The algorithm, when inserted into the daily WASMOD-M and tested in same three basins, led to the same or a slightly improved performance compared to a one-layer VIC model, with one parameter less to be calibrated. The TRG algorithm also offered a more realistic spatial pattern for runoff generation.The thesis identified significant improvements in model performance when 1) local instead of global climate data were used, and 2) when the scale-independent NRF routing algorithm was used instead of a traditional storage-based routing algorithm. In the same time, spatial resolution of climate input and choice of high-resolution hydrography have secondary effects on model performance.Two high-resolution topographies and hydrographies were used and compared, and new techniques were developed to aggregate their information for use at large scales. The advantages and numerical efficiency of feeding high-resolution information into low-resolution global models were highlighted.
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| 5. |
- Guerrero, José-Luis
(författare)
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Robust Water Balance Modeling with Uncertain Discharge and Precipitation Data : Computational Geometry as a New Tool
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Models are important tools for understanding the hydrological processes that govern water transport in the landscape and for prediction at times and places where no observations are available. The degree of trust placed on models, however, should not exceed the quality of the data they are fed with. The overall aim of this thesis was to tune the modeling process to account for the uncertainty in the data, by identifying robust parameter values using methods from computational geometry. The methods were developed and tested on data from the Choluteca River basin in Honduras.Quality control of precipitation and discharge data resulted in a rejection of 22% percent of daily raingage data and the complete removal of one out of the seven discharge stations analyzed. The raingage network was not found sufficient to capture the spatial and temporal variability of precipitation in the Choluteca River basin. The temporal variability of discharge was evaluated through a Monte Carlo assessment of the rating-equation parameter values over a moving time window of stage-discharge measurements. Al hydrometric stations showed considerable temporal variability in the stage-discharge relationship, which was largest for low flows, albeit with no common trend. The problem with limited data quality was addressed by identifying robust model parameter values within the set of well-performing (behavioral) parameter-value vectors with computational-geometry methods. The hypothesis that geometrically deep parameter-value vectors within the behavioral set were hydrologically robust was tested, and verified, using two depth functions. Deep parameter-value vectors tended to perform better than shallow ones, were less sensitive to small changes in their values, and were better suited to temporal transfer. Depth functions rank multidimensional data. Methods to visualize the multivariate distribution of behavioral parameters based on the ranked values were developed. It was shown that, by projecting along a common dimension, the multivariate distribution of behavioral parameters for models of varying complexity could be compared using the proposed visualization tools. This has a potential to aid in the selection of an adequate model structure considering the uncertainty in the data.These methods allowed to quantify observational uncertainties. Geometric methods have only recently begun to be used in hydrology. It was shown that they can be used to identify robust parameter values, and some of their potential uses were highlighted.
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| 7. |
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| 8. |
- Kauffeldt, Anna, 1981-
(författare)
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Disinformative and Uncertain Data in Global Hydrology : Challenges for Modelling and Regionalisation
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Water is essential for human well-being and healthy ecosystems, but population growth and changes in climate and land-use are putting increased stress on water resources in many regions. To ensure water security, knowledge about the spatiotemporal distribution of these resources is of great importance. However, estimates of global water resources are constrained by limitations in availability and quality of data. This thesis explores the quality of both observational and modelled data, gives an overview of models used for large-scale hydrological modelling, and explores the possibilities to deal with the scarcity of data by prediction of flow-duration curves.The evaluation of the quality of observational data for large-scale hydrological modelling was based on both hydrographic data, and model forcing and evaluation data for basins worldwide. The results showed that a GIS polygon dataset outperformed all gridded hydrographic products analysed in terms of representation of basin areas. Through a screening methodology based on the long-term water-balance equation it was shown that as many as 8–43% of the basins analysed displayed inconsistencies between forcing (precipitation and potential evaporation) and evaluation (discharge) data depending on how datasets were combined. These data could prove disinformative in hydrological model inference and analysis.The quality of key hydrological variables from a numerical weather prediction model was assessed by benchmarking against observational datasets and by analysis of the internal land-surface water budgets of several different model setups. Long-term imbalances were found between precipitation and evaporation on the global scale and between precipitation, evaporation and runoff on both cell and basin scales. These imbalances were mainly attributed to the data assimilation system in which soil moisture is used as a nudge factor to improve weather forecasts.Regionalisation, i.e. transfer of information from data-rich areas to data-sparse areas, is a necessity in hydrology because of a lack of observed data in many areas. In this thesis, the possibility to predict flow-duration curves in ungauged basins was explored by testing several different methodologies including machine learning. The results were mixed, with some well predicted curves, but many predicted curves exhibited large biases and several methods resulted in unrealistic curves.
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| 9. |
- Mayotte, Jean-Marc
(författare)
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Virus Fate and Transport in Groundwater : Organic matter, uncertainty, and cold climate
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Water managers must balance the need for clean and safe drinking water with ever-increasing amounts of waste-water. A technique for treating and storing surface water called “managed aquifer recharge” (MAR) is frequently used to help maintain this balance. When MAR is used to produce drinking water, water managers must ensure that disease-causing microbial contaminants are removed from the water prior to its distribution. This thesis examined the processes responsible for removing a specific class of microbial contaminants called “enteric viruses” during MAR. Viruses are naturally removed in groundwater through adsorption and inactivation mechanisms. This thesis investigated how these virus removal mechanisms were affected by ionic strength (IS), dissolved organic carbon (DOC), and the age of the sand used in a MAR infiltration basin. This was done using batch and flow-through column experiments designed to mimic conditions characteristic of a basin infiltration MAR scheme in Uppsala, Sweden. Bacteriophage MS2 was used as a proxy for enteric viruses. All of the experiments were conducted at 4°C. Experimental data were modeled to describe the fate and transport of viruses in the infiltrated groundwater. Conventional least-squares optimization and generalized likelihood uncertainty estimation (GLUE) were compared as model fitting-approaches in order to determine how data uncertainty affects parameter estimates and model predictions. Results showed that the sand used in the infiltration basins accumulates adsorbed organic matter as it is exposed to infiltrating surface waters. This reduced the amount of MS2 that was removed due to adsorption and inactivation. Results from GLUE indicated that MS2 is more likely to inactivate in a time-dependent manner when in the presence of sand with high concentrations of organic matter. Both model fitting techniques indicated that virus attachment rates were significantly lower for sand with high organic carbon content. Neither methodology was capable of adequately capturing the kinetics of virus adsorption. Uncertainties in the experimental data had a large effect on the conclusions that could be drawn from fitted models. This study showed that the presence of natural organic matter reduces the value of the infiltration basin as a microbial barrier.
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| 10. |
- Norén, Viveca, 1972-
(författare)
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When water becomes a threat : Risk assessment and risk management plans for floods and drinking water in Swedish practice
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Water is an essential but vulnerable resource. A shortage of good quality drinking water is a threat to human health and society as a whole. Abundance of water in the form of floods can also be a serious threat which can have consequences for the drinking water supply. To reduce these risks there is a need for systematic risk reduction. In the last decades a risk management approach has been developed in the management of both flood and drinking water risks. This means that a reactive, ad hoc management is being replaced by a more proactive and systematic approach where risks are analysed and evaluated as a basis for prioritising counter-measures. The complex nature of water issues has also made it evident that there is a need for a holistic view of the management, involving a variety of actors and sectors. An integrated management approach to floods and water resources has emerged.This thesis aims to examine how local level risk management, especially risk assessments, of floods and drinking water supply have been or can be performed in practice in Sweden. The existing practices have been characterised in relation to current risk management frameworks. Furthermore, the thesis aims to investigate how the effects of flood on drinking water supply have been considered in risk assessment methods and in flood risk management plans, as well as whether flood and drinking water risks have been considered in an integrated manner. The studies are based on interviews with flood risk managers in Swedish municipalities and Swedish water producers as well as on document studies of risk assessment methods and flood risk management plans.There are large variations between different municipalities and water producers in how, and to what extent, risk assessments have been performed. Some have performed very little, if any, risk assessment while others have worked systematically. The tools used are often those that are promoted by national agencies and are often less advanced than those described in the literature. The risk assessments do not always cover all relevant aspects of the risk and few actors have discussed an acceptable risk level. Flood risk assessments focus mostly on the exposure of objects to flood and investigate the consequences of such an exposure only to a limited extent. The incomplete risk assessments may result in a biased view of the risk which in turn can lead to poor decision-making. The theoretical knowledge about risk management is in many cases low and there is still often a practical approach. Strategic and holistic approaches are mostly lacking.The consequences of flood on drinking water supply are not known in detail and are not considered in detail in risk assessments commonly used in Sweden. There is an awareness of the need to coordinate the management of flood and water resources. However, despite the good intentions regarding integration, there are few signs in the risk assessments and risk management plans that integration is actually occurring.Both the risk management approach and integrated management have started to be implemented in Swedish flood and drinking water risk management. It is however on a basic level and it is still a long way to go. Further guidance and knowledge about risk management as well as commitment from and collaboration among all actors concerned is needed to make this development possible.
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