Search NASA⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “spatial databases”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 163 records · Page 9

NEWTS Well Summary by Hydrologic Regions and Subbasins in the U.S.

Oil and gas well production data (2000-2022), including water production and injection, as well as summary information (e.g., well count by status, total vertical depth statistics, etc.) spatially summarized by Watershed Boundary Dataset's (WBD) region (Hydrologic Unit Code (HUC) 2) and subbasin (HUC8). Energy-related produced waters data were acquired and summarized in support of the development of the National Energy Technology Laboratory's NEWTS (National Energy Water Treatment and Speciation Database). Due to the proprietary nature of the wellbore data, this derived product has been spatially compiled by key areas to support research and stakeholder needs.

Energy Infrastructure↗

Utilization of GIS technology to support development of flow and contaminant fate and transport models at US DOE sites - 15457

U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) sites have accumulated years of data and millions of spatial and temporal records related to the hydrological cycle, contaminant transport, and parameters of remediation technologies. In addition, numerical models which use field monitoring data to help understand flow and transport produce gigabytes of computed spatial and temporal data for each computation node. There is a need therefore for an advanced spatial data structure that can be used to address the management, processing, and analysis of spatial and temporal numerical modeling data derived from multiple sources. This can be accomplished using a geo-database. The development of an ArcSDE geo-database facilitates the centralized storage, backup, accessibility, organization, and management of model configuration and computed simulation data, putting it into a structured, coherent, and logical computer-supported system. GIS data processing and automation would enable faster and hence more complex analyses of field test data. The Applied Research Center (ARC) at Florida International University (FIU) has provided analysis of flow and transport for several watersheds at DOE's Oak Ridge Reservation (ORR), including East Fork Poplar Creek (EFPC), Upper EFPC in the Y-12 National Security Complex area (Y-12 NSC) and White Oak Creek (WOC). Integrated surface and subsurface flow, fate and transport models were developed to provide analysis of contaminant patterns within each watershed. In addition, digital monitoring data available from the Oak Ridge Environmental Information System (OREIS) related to mercury (Hg) contamination and remediation within these watersheds was used for calibration and verification of the model. Experimental studies were also carried out which provided kinetic and equilibrium data about important parameters related to Hg transport, speciation and methylation/demethylation kinetics within the watershed. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology was employed to support the modeling work through storage and geo-processing of spatial and temporal data required by the models and to produce hydrogeological maps for visualization. An ArcGIS geo-database was developed for centralized storage and management of experimental and computed model data and its capabilities were extended over the years using tools such as ModelBuilder combined with Python scripting to automate repetitive tasks, perform statistical analyses and generate maps and reports. The hydrologic geo-database model developed possesses a structure that enables linkage with scalable hydrologic modeling tools/applications to model hydrologic systems, and in this case, enables the testing of the potential impacts of various remediation scenarios on the ORR watersheds. The ArcSDE geo-database can also be used to automate and simplify the process of calling stored GIS and time series data. This geo-database can serve as a tool for contaminant flow and transport analyses which require large amounts of high-quality spatial and temporal data in order to ensure reliability and validity of modeling results. The existing geo-database structure developed for the hydrological modeling at ORR was designed to be replicable for application at other DOE sites. An investigation of downloadable free/open source GIS software along with required security protocols to facilitate online querying of the database was also conducted to determine methods by which project-derived data can be more easily shared with other project stakeholders such as DOE personnel and site contractors. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

Assessing the Skill of the Improved Treatment of Riverine Freshwater in the Community Earth System Model (CESM) Relative to a New Salinity Climatology

Abstract Recent studies have explored the sensitivity of global ocean model simulations to the treatment of riverine freshwater and the representation of estuarine processes via an estuary box model applied within Community Earth System Model (CESM). This study builds on these efforts by assessing the model skill score relative to a new salinity climatology. The new climatology averages the original observational data of the World Ocean Database directly onto the CESM ocean component tracer grid cells without spatial interpolation, smoothing, or other gap‐filling techniques to mitigate coastal ocean salinity bias present in the World Ocean Atlas. The mean square error for coastal upper ocean salinity relative to climatology is reduced by up to 14%, and the mean square error of near‐surface salinity stratification is reduced by up to 28% near major river mouths in the simulations with improved treatments of river runoff. The improvement in upper ocean bulk salinity is attributed primarily to focusing runoff as point sources thereby avoiding the artificial horizontal spreading of the control run and to applying a locally varying instead of a global constant reference salinity for riverine virtual salt fluxes. The improvements in near‐surface salinity stratification are primarily attributed to adding parameterized estuarine mixing with the estuary box model. Salinity and salinity stratification skill improvements are achieved not just near large rivers but also along the global coast and skill improvements extend far offshore. Despite these improvements, many other sources of model‐climatology mismatch in coastal salinity and stratification remain and merit further attention.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Low-complexity atlas-based prostate segmentation by combining global, regional, and local metrics

Purpose: To improve the efficiency of atlas-based segmentation without compromising accuracy, and to demonstrate the validity of the proposed method on MRI-based prostate segmentation application. Methods: Accurate and efficient automatic structure segmentation is an important task in medical image processing. Atlas-based methods, as the state-of-the-art, provide good segmentation at the cost of a large number of computationally intensive nonrigid registrations, for anatomical sites/structures that are subject to deformation. In this study, the authors propose to utilize a combination of global, regional, and local metrics to improve the accuracy yet significantly reduce the number of required nonrigid registrations. The authors first perform an affine registration to minimize the global mean squared error (gMSE) to coarsely align each atlas image to the target. Subsequently, atarget-specific regional MSE (rMSE), demonstrated to be a good surrogate for dice similarity coefficient (DSC), is used to select a relevant subset from the training atlas. Only within this subset are nonrigid registrations performed between the training images and the target image, to minimize a weighted combination of gMSE and rMSE. Finally, structure labels are propagated from the selected training samples to the target via the estimated deformation fields, and label fusion is performed based on a weighted combination of rMSE and local MSE (lMSE) discrepancy, with proper total-variation-based spatial regularization. Results: The proposed method was applied to a public database of 30 prostate MR images with expert-segmented structures. The authors’ method, utilizing only eight nonrigid registrations, achieved a performance with a median/mean DSC of over 0.87/0.86, outperforming the state-of-the-art full-fledged atlas-based segmentation approach of which the median/mean DSC was 0.84/0.82 when applying to their data set. Conclusions: The proposed method requires a fixed number of nonrigid registrations, independent of atlas size, providing desirable scalability especially important for a large or growing atlas. When applied to prostate segmentation, the method achieved better performance to the state-of-the-art atlas-based approaches, with significant improvement in computation efficiency. The proposed rationale of utilizing jointly global, regional, and local metrics, based on the information characteristic and surrogate behavior for registration and fusion subtasks, can be extended naturally to similarity metrics beyond MSE, such as correlation or mutual information types.

62 RADIOLOGY AND NUCLEAR MEDICINE↗

Airplane flight through wind-shear turbulence

An analytical model is developed for the interaction between wind shear and turbulence to improve the database for realistic flight simulator programming. Shear is treated as a spatially nonconstant mean flow, with consideration given to the associated anisotropy which can be a critical factor in landing approaches and take-offs during microburst events. A two-point velocity correlation is defined for anisotropic turbulence and the dynamical implications are analyzed. Emphasis is placed on turbulence conditions and scale lengths during a microburst, when turbulence is nonhomogeneous.

Trevino, G.↗

Geometric processing of digital images of the planets

New procedures and software have been developed for geometric transformation of images to support digital cartography of the planets. The procedures involve the correction of spacecraft camera orientation of each image with the use of ground control and the transformation of each image to a Sinusoidal Equal-Area map projection with an algorithm which allows the number of transformation calculations to vary as the distortion varies within the image. When the distortion is low in an area of an image, few transformation computations are required, and most pixels can be interpolated. When distortion is extreme, the location of each pixel is computed. Mosaics are made of these images and stored as digital databases. Completed Sinusoidal databases may be used for digital analysis and registration with other spatial data. They may also be reproduced as published image maps by digitally transforming them to appropriate map projections.

Edwards, Kathleen↗

Sequential Imaging of Earth by Astronauts: 50 Years of Global Change

For nearly 50 years, astronauts have collected sequential imagery of the Earth. In fact, the collection of astronaut photography comprises one of the earliest sets of data (1961 to present) available to scientists to study the regional context of the Earth s surface and how it changes. While today s availability of global high resolution satellite imagery enables anyone with an internet connection to examine specific features on the Earth s surface with a regional context, historical satellite imagery adds another dimension (time) that provides researchers and students insight about the features and processes of a region. For example, one of the geographic areas with the longest length of record contained within the astronaut photography database is the lower Nile River. The database contains images that document the flooding of Lake Nasser (an analog to today s flooding behind China s Three Gorges Dam), the changing levels of Lake Nasser s water with multiyear cycles of flood and drought, the recent flooding and drying of the Toshka Lakes, as well as urban growth, changes in agriculture and coastal subsidence. The imagery database allows investigations using different time scales (hours to decades) and spatial scales (resolutions and fields of view) as variables. To continue the imagery collection, the astronauts on the International Space Station are trained to understand basic the Earth Sciences and look for and photograph major events such as tropical storms, landslides, and volcanic eruptions, and document landscapes undergoing change (e.g., coastal systems, cities, changing forest cover). We present examples of selected sequences of astronaut imagery that illustrate the interdependence of geological processes, climate cycles, human geography and development, and prompt additional questions about the underlying elements of change.

Evans, Cynthia A.↗

Northern Rockies Ecological Conservation: Leveraging Earth Observations to Monitor and Predict Populations of Federally Threatened Whitebark Pine (Pinus albicaulis) across the Intermountain West

Whitebark pine (WBP; Pinus albicaulis) is an ecologically important species in North America. As a federally listed threatened species, an understanding of WBP habitat, distribution, and health is important for the natural resource managers of the National Park Service, United States Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, and non-profit organizations such as the Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation. Previous attempts to develop models of WBP habitat suitability and distribution lack confidence in their validity and integrity for these organizations. The updated models of habitat suitability and distribution developed by this study would provide managers with a capability to be employed in the conservation and future research direction for WBP. Thus, we developed a habitat suitability model of WBP at a high spatial resolution (Landsat 9 Operational Land Image-2, National Land Cover Database, NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission; 30m pixels) using a generalized logistic regression with an area under the curve value of 0.754. We extracted spectral reflectance signatures from overlapped ground sample points and Sentinel-2 Multispectral Instrument. The spectral signature analysis indicates WBP is separable from other tree species. We also utilized a visual validation approach and random forest (RF) modeling to separate WBP from limber pine. Through visual validation the RF classifier successfully identified 8out of 10 WBP trees gathered through ground truth points. Additionally, we achieved an overall accuracy of 91%in our confusion matrix for the distribution model using a dependent validation approach. The derived products from this study allow project partners to assess current suitable habitat and apparent health status in areas of identified WBP occurrence, providing data to aid future research regarding WBP health.

Sentinel-2↗

The ABCflux database: Arctic–boreal CO 2 flux observations and ancillary information aggregated to monthly time steps across terrestrial ecosystems

Past efforts to synthesize and quantify the magnitude and change in carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems across the rapidly warming Arctic–boreal zone (ABZ) have provided valuable information but were limited in their geographical and temporal coverage. Furthermore, these efforts have been based on data aggregated over varying time periods, often with only minimal site ancillary data, thus limiting their potential to be used in large-scale carbon budget assessments. To bridge these gaps, we developed a standardized monthly database of Arctic–boreal CO 2 fluxes (ABCflux) that aggregates in situ measurements of terrestrial net ecosystem CO 2 exchange and its derived partitioned component fluxes: gross primary productivity and ecosystem respiration. The data span from 1989 to 2020 with over 70 supporting variables that describe key site conditions (e.g., vegetation and disturbance type), micrometeorological and environmental measurements (e.g., air and soil temperatures), and flux measurement techniques. Here, we describe these variables, the spatial and temporal distribution of observations, the main strengths and limitations of the database, and the potential research opportunities it enables. In total, ABCflux includes 244 sites and 6309 monthly observations; 136 sites and 2217 monthly observations represent tundra, and 108 sites and 4092 observations represent the boreal biome. The database includes fluxes estimated with chamber (19 % of the monthly observations), snow diffusion (3 %) and eddy covariance (78 %) techniques. The largest number of observations were collected during the climatological summer (June–August; 32 %), and fewer observations were available for autumn (September–October; 25 %), winter (December–February; 18 %), and spring (March–May; 25 %). ABCflux can be used in a wide array of empirical, remote sensing and modeling studies to improve understanding of the regional and temporal variability in CO 2 fluxes and to better estimate the terrestrial ABZ CO 2 budget.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

PAVC Gridded 20m Alaska NGEE Tier3 PFTs v1.0

These 20-meter spatial resolution gridded products provide per-pixel fractional cover (%) of Next Generation Ecosystem Experiments (NGEE) Arctic Plant Functional Types (PFTs) Tier 3 across Alaska, north of the boreal treeline. The products were developed for the NGEE Arctic project, which is improving Arctic vegetation representation and parameterization of the E3SM Land Model. This dataset includes 8 files containing fractional cover for NGEE Tier 3 PFTs (https://data.ess-dive.lbl.gov/view/doi:10.15485/2529470): (1) bryophytes; (2) lichens; (3) non-vascular plants, i.e., the sum of lichens and bryophytes; (4) deciduous shrubs, (5) evergreen shrubs, (6) forbs, (7) graminoids, and a non-PFT class, (8) litter. Each pixel contains the percent cover (expressed as a fraction of total ground cover) that was predicted by random-forest regression models. The random-forest models were trained on cover data collected at 978 plots from 2010 to 2021, of which are archived in the Pan-Arctic Vegetation Cover (PAVC) database (https://data.ess-dive.lbl.gov/datasets/doi:10.15485/2483557). The plot cover was linked to 20-meter spatial resolution, satellite-derived predictor variables: Sentinel-2 spectra and Sentinel-1 polarizations averaged over the 2019 growing season, as well as topographical features derived from ArcticDEM. Then, spatio-temporally anomalous plot data that introduced large variability to the regression outcomes were dropped using the Cook’s distance outlier detection method, and the models were re-created using high-quality plots and their associated satellite derived explanatory variables per each PFT. The correlations between plot-observed and satellite-derived fractional cover for all PFTs were well correlated (R2 = 0.69–0.95 and 0.5 for litter) and had low RMSE bias (0.02–0.11). This research was performed as a part of the NGEE Arctic project. The NGEE Arctic project was a research effort to reduce uncertainty in Earth System Models by developing a predictive understanding of carbon-rich Arctic ecosystems and feedbacks to climate. NGEE Arctic was supported by the Department of Energy's Office of Biological and Environmental Research.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Spatial and Temporal Analysis of a Global Landslide Catalog

Landslide inventories are critical to support investigations ofwhere andwhen landslides have happened andmay occur in the future; however, there is surprisingly little information on the historical occurrence of landslides at the global scale. This paper presents a new publicly available global landslide catalog (GLC), which is based on media reports, online databases, and other sources. This database is currently available at http://ojo-streamer. herokuapp.com/. The 5741 points in the GLC provide a foundation for evaluating spatial and temporal trends in landslide activity from 2007 to 2013. Globally, landslideswere reportedmost frequently from July to September. Most events occurred in Asia, North America and Southeast Asia. In contrast, fewer than 5% of the fatalities were reported in North America, suggesting a significant amount of under-reporting in other regions as well as potential discrepancies between developing and developed regions. Reported landslide events were also compared to satellite-based precipitation estimates fromthe Tropical RainfallMeasuring Mission (TRMM) to evaluate the co-occurrence of extreme precipitation and landslide activity. Of the 3550 points considered in a subset of the GLC, approximately 60% of the reported landslides have daily precipitation exceeding the 95th percentile of precipitation calculated over a 14-year TRMMrecord for the same location. This study also investigated how the recurrence interval of extreme precipitation corresponded to some of the most catastrophic landslide events. In spite of several reporting and cataloging biases, spatial and temporal analysis of the GLC suggests that it is a valuable database for characterizing global patterns of landslide occurrence and evaluating relationships with extreme precipitation at regional and global scales.

Analysis↗

Digital Mapping and Environmental Characterization of National Wild and Scenic River Systems

Spatially accurate geospatial information is required to support decision-making regarding sustainable future hydropower development. Under a memorandum of understanding among several federal agencies, a pilot study was conducted to map a subset of National Wild and Scenic Rivers (WSRs) at a higher resolution and provide a consistent methodology for mapping WSRs across the United States and across agency jurisdictions. A subset of rivers (segments falling under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service) were mapped at a high resolution using the National Hydrography Dataset (NHD). The spatial extent and representation of river segments mapped at NHD scale were compared with the prevailing geospatial coverage mapped at a coarser scale. Accurately digitized river segments were linked to environmental attribution datasets housed within the Oak Ridge National Laboratory s National Hydropower Asset Assessment Program database to characterize the environmental context of WSR segments. The results suggest that both the spatial scale of hydrography datasets and the adherence to written policy descriptions are critical to accurately mapping WSRs. The environmental characterization provided information to deduce generalized trends in either the uniqueness or the commonness of environmental variables associated with WSRs. Although WSRs occur in a wide range of human-modified landscapes, environmental data layers suggest that they provide habitats important to terrestrial and aquatic organisms and recreation important to humans. Ultimately, the research findings herein suggest that there is a need for accurate, consistent, mapping of the National WSRs across the agencies responsible for administering each river. Geospatial applications examining potential landscape and energy development require accurate sources of information, such as data layers that portray realistic spatial representations.

Environmental concern↗

Architecture of a large object-oriented database for remotely sensed data

Attention is given to the proposed Intelligent Information Fusion System (IIFS) within the framework of the Intelligent Data Management project at NASA-Goddard. IIFS is to use connectionist architectures to extract high-level attributes from incoming sensor images, and then send those characterizations and their associated ephemeris and ancillary image data to a large object-oriented database which will serve as the master catalog of sensor data. Important issues facing this project include the choice of rapid-access data structures (RADSs) for cataloging images by their high-level characterization, the implementation of efficient spatial data structures for cataloging images by their scene location, the automated population of such a database from a continuous stream of incoming ephemeris and ancillary data, and the translation and optimization of natural-language database queries so that RADSs are employed when appropriate.

Dorfman, Erik↗

National soil organic carbon estimates can improve global estimates

Global inventories of spatial and vertical distribution of soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks are being used in national and global initiatives targeted to mitigate climate change and land degradation impacts. Yet, national level high-resolution estimates of SOC stocks can be useful for improving the accuracy of global SOC inventories. We estimated spatially resolved SOC stocks of surface 0–30 cm and subsurface 30–100 cm layers at a spatial resolution of 30m in tropical Island, Sri Lanka using a legacy harmonized soil database of 122 soil profiles. The national estimates were compared with two global estimates derived from WISE30sec and SoilGrids250m. The tropical Island (land area=64,610 km2) occupying 0.03% of global land area showed a considerable heterogeneity in SOC stocks ranging from 2.0-342.5 Mg ha -1 and 2.7-391.7 Mg ha -1 in the surface and subsurface soil layers, respectively. We found, elevation, precipitation and slope angle as main environmental controllers of the spatial distribution of SOC stocks under tropical climate. Incorporating the pedogenic information (derived from soil series level legacy map, soil orders and suborders) with environmental controllers resulted in better regression models of predicting surface (R 2 =0.61) and subsurface (R 2 =0.81) SOC stocks. Geographically weighted regression kriging derived maps of SOC stocks revealed that 0–100 cm soil layer of the tropical Island stored 500 Tg C contributing for 0.04% of the global SOC stocks. The validation results of our estimates showed low Mean Estimation Error (MEE: surface -1.6 and subsurface -1.6 Mg ha -1 ) and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE: surface 29.5 and subsurface 24.9 Mg ha -1 ) indicating a low bias and satisfactory predictions. The relative improvement of the prediction accuracy of the SOC stocks of our geospatial estimates in the 0–30 cm layer in comparison to SoilGrids250m and WISE30sec data derived SOC stocks were 51.7% and 35.2%, respectively. The SOC stocks predictions of the 30-100 cm soil layer showed even better relative improvement compared to SoilGrids250m (78.4%) and WISE30sec (57.4%) SOC estimates. Compared to estimates of total SOC stocks resulted in this study, WISE30sec data derived SOC stock maps showed 30% over estimation of the C stock in surface 0-30 cm (332 Tg C) and 41% overestimation in 30-100 cm layer (343 Tg C). The over estimation of total SOC stocks by the SoilGrids250 SOC stocks map for the surface 0-30 cm layer was 122% (567 Tg C) and for the 30-100 cm layer it was 209% (750 Tg C). We conclude that the fusion of legacy soil information of SOC stocks with appropriate environmental covariates and pedogenic information derived from legacy area-class soil maps at national level can produce more accurate inventories of spatial and vertical distribution of SOC stocks. As a result, these national inventories have a great potential of upgrading global inventories of SOC stocks.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Understanding the Spatial Organization of Simultaneous Heavy Precipitation Events Over the Conterminous United States

We introduce the idea of simultaneous heavy precipitation events (SHPEs) to understand whether extreme precipitation has a spatial organization manifested as specified tracks or contiguous fields with inherent scaling relationships. For this purpose, we created a database of SHPEs using ground-based precipitation observations recorded by the daily Global Historical Climatology Network across the conterminous United States during 1900–2014. SHPEs are examined for their seasonality, spatial manifestation, orientation, and areal extent. We quantified the spatial distribution of the centroids and principal axes of SHPEs and their quasi-elliptical manifestations, azimuthal orientations, and areal extents on the ground. Four seasons, December-January-February (DJF), March-April-May (MAM),June-July-August (JJA), and September-October-November (SON) are considered to examine the spatial patterns and associated large-scale atmospheric circulations. Results indicate that there are 54, 58, 103, and204 SHPEs in DJF, MAM, JJA, and SON seasons, and their longest stretches range on average between 650and 1,600, between 850 and 1,500, between 950 and 1,550, and between 750 and 1,450 km, respectively. SHPEs in the DJF, MAM, and JJA seasons occur mostly over the Pacific coast and central and midwestern United States, respectively. The atmospheric circulation patterns and mechanisms of precipitable water vapor and moisture transport in the atmosphere are also discussed in relation to these SHPEs. Power laws explain SHPEs' underlying area scaling behavior in all the four seasons, with stronger evidence in DJF and MAM. A seasonal spatial risk model is developed to predict the likelihood of SHPEs. Quantifying the characteristics of SHPEs and modeling their footprints can improve the projections of flood risk and understanding of damages to interconnected infrastructure systems.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Disease Prediction Models and Operational Readiness

INTRODUCTION: The objective of this manuscript is to present a systematic review of biosurveillance models that operate on select agents and can forecast the occurrence of a disease event. One of the primary goals of this research was to characterize the viability of biosurveillance models to provide operationally relevant information for decision makers to identify areas for future research. Two critical characteristics differentiate this work from other infectious disease modeling reviews. First, we reviewed models that attempted to predict the disease event, not merely its transmission dynamics. Second, we considered models involving pathogens of concern as determined by the US National Select Agent Registry (as of June 2011). Methods: We searched dozens of commercial and government databases and harvested Google search results for eligible models utilizing terms and phrases provided by public health analysts relating to biosurveillance, remote sensing, risk assessments, spatial epidemiology, and ecological niche-modeling, The publication date of search results returned are bound by the dates of coverage of each database and the date in which the search was performed, however all searching was completed by December 31, 2010. This returned 13,767 webpages and 12,152 citations. After de-duplication and removal of extraneous material, a core collection of 6,503 items was established and these publications along with their abstracts are presented in a semantic wiki at http://BioCat.pnnl.gov. Next, PNNL’s IN-SPIRE visual analytics software was used to cross-correlate these publications with the definition for a biosurveillance model resulting in the selection of 54 documents that matched the criteria resulting Ten of these documents, However, dealt purely with disease spread models, inactivation of bacteria, or the modeling of human immune system responses to pathogens rather than predicting disease events. As a result, we systematically reviewed 44 papers and the results are presented in this analysis.

biosecurity↗

Offshore application of landslide susceptibility mapping using gradient-boosted decision trees: a Gulf of Mexico case study

Abstract Among natural hazards occurring offshore, submarine landslides pose a significant risk to offshore infrastructure installations attached to the seafloor. With the offshore being important for current and future energy production, there is a need to anticipate where future landslide events are likely to occur to support planning and development projects. Using the northern Gulf of Mexico (GoM) as a case study, this paper performs Landslide Susceptibility Mapping (LSM) using a gradient-boosted decision tree (GBDT) model to characterize the spatial patterns of submarine landslide probability over the United States Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) where water depths are greater than 120 m. With known spatial extents of historic submarine landslides and a Geographic Information System (GIS) database of known topographical, geomorphological, geological, and geochemical factors, the resulting model was capable of accurately forecasting potential locations of sediment instability. Results of a permutation modelling approach indicated that LSM accuracy is sensitive to the number of unique training locations with model accuracy becoming more stable as the number of training regions was increased. The influence that each input feature had on predicting landslide susceptibility was evaluated using the SHapely Additive exPlanations (SHAP) feature attribution method. Areas of high and very high susceptibility were associated with steep terrain including salt basins and escarpments. This case study serves as an initial assessment of the machine learning (ML) capabilities for producing accurate submarine landslide susceptibility maps given the current state of available natural hazard-related datasets and conveys both successes and limitations.

Dyer, Alec S. (ORCID:0000000219813904)↗

Determination of the five parameter grain boundary character distribution of nanocrystalline alpha-zirconium thin films using transmission electron microscopy

Grain boundary engineering and other fundamental materials science problems (e.g., phase transformations and physical properties) require an improvement in the understanding of the type and population of grain boundaries in a given system – yet, databases are limited in number and spare in detail, including for hcp crystals such as zirconium. One way to rapidly obtain databases to analyze is to use small-grained materials and high spatial resolution orientation microscopy techniques, such as ASTAR™/precession electron diffraction. To demonstrate this, a study of grain boundary character distributions was conducted for α-zirconium deposited at room temperature on fused silica substrates using physical vapor deposition. The orientation maps of the nanocrystalline thin films were acquired by the ASTARα/precession electron diffraction technique, a new transmission electron microscope based orientation microscopy method. The reconstructed grain boundaries were classified as pure tilt, pure twist, 180°-twist and 180°-tilt grain boundaries based on the distribution of grain boundary planes with respect to the angle/axis of misorientation associated with grain boundaries. The results of the current study were compared to the results of a similar study on α-titanium and the molecular dynamics results of grain boundary energy for α-titanium.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗