1 Sep 2020

PUBLICATION NOTICE: Water Security Scenarios: Planning for Installation Water Disruptions

Abstract: The Army’s critical missions are at risk from interruption of water supplies. Sufficient amounts of high- quality potable water are a resource without substitute. The Army’s Installation Energy and Water Security Policy establishes requirements for installations to sustain critical mission capabilities and to mitigate risks posed by energy and water disruptions that affect installations; this includes coordinating vulnerability and risk assessments of potential disruptions and implementing adequate responses to mitigate identified risks. Resilient installations will develop storage capacity to forestall water shortages and will also have short- and long-term plans to help the installation recover from events and forestall progressing to more severe deficits. This project supports compliance with the water security policy by exploring the range of conditions and responses possible across installations. Multiple scenarios were developed to explore how a 14-day interruption in water supply might affect an installation and to provide preliminary guidance to help installations develop strategies to address water disruptions to critical missions drawing from existing processes used in mission assurance. Researchers investigated types of installations and classes of scenarios most relevant to installation water security planning and explored several scenarios to provide a framework to helps installations advance their water resilience and security planning.

1 Sep 2020

PUBLICATION NOTICE: Seasonal Effects on Vehicle Mobility: High-Latitude Case Study

Abstract: Seasonality plays a key role in altering the terrain of many military operating environments. Since seasonality has such a large impact on the terrain, it needs to be properly accounted for in vehicle dynamics models. This work outlines a variety of static and dynamic seasonal terrain conditions and their impacts on vehicle mobility in an austere region of Europe. Overall the vehicles performed the best in the dry season condition. The thaw season condition had the most drastic impact on mobility with all but the heavy tracked vehicle being almost completely NOGO in the region. Overall, the heavy tracked vehicle had the best performance in all terrain conditions. These results highlight the importance of incorporating seasonal impacts on terrain into NRMM or any vehicle dynamics model. Future work will focus on collecting more data to improve the empirical relationships between vehicles and seasonal terrain conditions, thereby allowing for more accurate speed predictions.

27 Aug 2020

USACE launches new podcast series “Engineering With Nature”

A new podcast series tells the stories of how, over the last 10 years, a growing international community of practitioners, scientists, engineers, and researchers across many disciplines and organizations are working together to combine natural and engineering systems to solve problems and diversify infrastructure value by applying the principles and practices of Engineering With Nature®.

25 Aug 2020

PUBLICATION NOTICE: Insights: An Update of the USACE Data Strategy Initiative; November 2019 Edition

Abstract: The Data25 strategy was advanced in FY19 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Chief Information Officer (USACE CIO) by funding pilots to show the power of data analytics on real USACE operations. This report details pilots that were conducted in three of USACEs Business Lines; Dredging, Hydropower, and Military Construction. The purposes for each of these pilots are listed below. 1. Enterprise value: Demonstrates the power of data analytics and its ability to generate business value by improving decision-making across the organization. 2. Technology value: Helps the CIO understand how cloud technology could support the overall data strategy. 3. Business value: Provides examples of data analytics in action. This view helps the Business Lines, Divisions, and Districts understand what it takes to supplement decision-making with insights generated from data. The main purpose of the pilots was to provide a glimpse of what could be gained from data analytics. From the initial business questions, the pilot Business Lines are seeking to use data to improve decisions through the automation of business processes, more rapid decision cycles, and the layering of previously siloed data on their own to reveal new insights.

25 Aug 2020

PUBLICATION NOTICE: Insights: An Update on the USACE Data Strategy Initiative; April 2019 Edition

Abstract: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineering (USACE) Commanding General, LTG Todd T. Semonite, announced 10 initiatives on May 2018 to improve execution through informed decision-making, enabling lower costs, and world-class engineering results today and tomorrow. Two of the initiatives were geared to transition USACE to data-informed decision-making through the use of data analytics. The first of these two initiatives sought to implement a data strategy that included a doctrine and governance, through creation of a data management plan. The plan implemented tools to aggregate data across the organization and improve reporting. Dr. Cary Butler, USACE Chief Data Scientist, led this effort. The second initiative sought to establish a dedicated USACE Innovations Team to build and recruit a skilled team to act as finders and enablers of innovative, enterprise solutions that enabled USACE to become a digital business. The USACE Chief Information Officer oversaw both initiatives. Because goals and objectives overlapped in many areas and gathered momentum for these initiatives, leaders from both teams came together and decided that showing the business value of data analytics to improve decision making across the Corps should be a top priority. This document was used to report on the progress of the initiatives and give a better understanding of the need for data-informed decisions throughout USACE.

25 Aug 2020

PUBLICATION NOTICE: New York/New Jersey Harbor Sedimentation Study: Numerical Modeling of Hydrodynamics and Sediment Transport

Abstract: The New York/New Jersey Harbor (NYNJH) is a vital economic resource for both the local economy and the entire US economy due to the vast quantity of imports and exports handled by the numerous ports in this waterway. As with most ports, there is a significant, recurring expense associated with dredging the navigation channels to the authorized depths. In an effort to determine the impact of channel enlargements (“the project”) on dredging volumes, a numerical model study was performed. The advantage of a numerical model study is the ability to isolate individual system modifications and associated impacts in terms of dredging volumes. Five years (1985, 1995, 1996, 2011, and 2012) were simulated for both the with- and without-project conditions to determine the impact of the channel deepening on the dredging requirements for a wide range of meteorological conditions including storm events. The numerical model results were analyzed to provide insight into which locations will experience increased/decreased deposition and quantify the amount of increase/decrease for a given channel reach. The model results indicate a relatively minor increase in the total dredge volumes for the NYNJH with the increase being insignificant in comparison to the natural variability in dredge volumes across years.

25 Aug 2020

PUBLICATION NOTICE: Fine-Grained Sediment within Olcott Harbor, Eighteenmile Creek, NY

Abstract: Olcott Harbor, located at the mouth of Eighteenmile Creek and Lake Ontario, and a Great Lake Area of Concern, provides a temporary sink for contaminated, fine-grained sediment transported downstream from the Superfund site near Lockport, NY. The volume of fine-grained sediment currently stored in Olcott Harbor and Eighteenmile Creek is unknown, complicating remediation efforts. The US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Buffalo District (LRB), has partnered with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to address the mitigation of contaminated sediment accumulating within Eighteenmile Creek. As part of this effort, researchers from the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) collaborated with LRB to delineate fine-grained sediment regions from coarse-grained regions in Olcott Harbor and Eighteenmile Creek via a geophysical survey in July 2017. Where possible, ERDC also estimated the thickness of the fine-grained sediment areas to determine overall fine-sediment volume. Sidescan sonar was used to map the surface transition from the coarser-grained sediment in the outer harbor to the finer-grained sediment in the inner harbor. Chirp sub-bottom profiles successfully imaged the subsurface transition from coarse- to fine-grained sediment in some areas but provided only limited thickness data. This technical note summarizes the field effort, data processing, and final interpretations.

20 Aug 2020

PUBLICATION NOTICE: Spatial and Temporal Variance in the Thermal Response of Buried Objects

ABSTRACT:  Probability of detection and false alarm rates for current military sensor systems used for detecting buried objects are often unacceptable. One approach to increasing sensor performance and detection reliability is to better understand which physical processes are dominant under certain environmental conditions. Incorporating this understanding into detection algorithms will improve detection performance. Our approach involved studying a small, 3.05 × 3.05 m, test plot at the Engineer Research and Development Center’s Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (ERDC-CRREL) in Hanover, New Hampshire. There we monitored a number of environmental variables (soil temperature moisture, and chemistry as well as air temperature and humidity, cloud cover, and incoming solar radiation) coupled with thermal infrared and electro-optical image collection. Data collection occurred over 4 months with measurements made at 15 minute intervals. Initial findings show that significant spatial and thermal temporal variability is caused by incoming solar radiation; meteorologically driven surface heat exchange; and subsurface-soil temperatures, density, moisture content, and surface roughness.

20 Aug 2020

PUBLICATION NOTICE: Shallow Water Seakeeping Tests with Columbia Class Submarine for Integration into the Environmental Monitoring and Operator Guidance System

Abstract: The Environmental Monitoring and Operation Guidance System (EMOGS) tool was developed in 1989 to provide a real-time risk analysis for underkeel clearance for the Ohio class submarine while in transit to the Naval Submarine Base at Kings Bay, Georgia. The program computes expected submarine response for input water level, depth, speed, wave, and other input conditions using shallow-water motion transfer functions generated by the strip theory tool, Large Amplitude Motion Program (LAMP). The integration of the new Columbia class submarine into EMOGS required that new transfer functions be developed using LAMP. The LAMP results are to be validated using measured motions from physical model laboratory testing. This report summarizes a laboratory study of the Columbia class submarine response in shallow-water waves. The study was conducted at the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center, Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory, and was done in direct support of the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division. These seakeeping tests were performed in a shallow basin with a multi-directional wave generator, with measured still water vessel motions and measured vessel motion in regular and irregular waves of varying height, period, and direction.

20 Aug 2020

PUBLICATION NOTICE: Evaluating Collection Parameters for Mobile Lidar Surveys in Vegetated Beach-Dune Settings

Purpose: The goal of this Coastal and Hydraulics Engineering Technical Note (CHETN) is to compare collection parameters and gridding techniques for mobile lidar surveys of beach-dune systems in the northern Outer Banks, NC.