Date Available

12-14-2011

Year of Publication

2006

Document Type

Dissertation

College

Engineering

Department

Civil Engineering

First Advisor

Lindell E. Ormsbee

Abstract

Urban watershed management poses a very challenging problem due to the varioussources of pollution and there is a need to develop optimal management models that canfacilitate the process of identifying optimal water quality management strategies. Ascreening level, comprehensive, and integrated computational methodology is developedfor the management of point and non-point sources of pollution in urban watersheds. Themethodology is based on linking macro-level water quality simulation models withefficient nonlinear constrained optimization methods for urban watershed management.The use of macro-level simulation models in lieu of the traditional and complexdeductive simulation models is investigated in the optimal management framework forurban watersheds. Two different types of macro-level simulation models are investigatedfor application to watershed pollution problems namely explicit inductive models andsimplified deductive models. Three different types of inductive modeling techniques areused to develop macro-level simulation models ranging from simple regression methodsto more complex and nonlinear methods such as artificial neural networks and geneticfunctions. A new genetic algorithm (GA) based technique of inductive modelconstruction called Fixed Functional Set Genetic Algorithm (FFSGA) is developed andused in the development of macro-level simulation models. A novel simplified deductivemodel approach is developed for modeling the response of dissolved oxygen in urbanstreams impaired by point and non-point sources of pollution. The utility of this inverseloading model in an optimal management framework for urban watersheds isinvestigated.In the context of the optimization methods, the research investigated the use of parallelmethods of optimization for use in the optimal management formulation. These includedan evolutionary computing method called genetic optimization and a modified version ofthe direct search method of optimization called the Shuffled Box Complex method ofconstrained optimization. The resulting optimal management model obtained by linkingmacro-level simulation models with efficient optimization models is capable ofidentifying optimal management strategies for an urban watershed to satisfy waterquality and economic related objectives. Finally, the optimal management model isapplied to a real world urban watershed to evaluate management strategies for waterquality management leading to the selection of near-optimal strategies.

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.