Advisory Committee Chair
Rouzbeh Nazari
Advisory Committee Members
Mohammad Al-Hamdan
Maryam E Karimi
Jason T Kirby
Wesley C Zech
Document Type
Dissertation
Date of Award
2021
Degree Name by School
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) School of Engineering
Abstract
Human-induced climate change has affected the ecosystems and communities across the world in numerous ways. The cascading consequences of climate change have already impacted our infrastructure, human health, energy, and productivity. Climate change likely caused significant changes in weather patterns with devastating effects such as droughts and flooding, sea-level rise, high-intensity rainfall, extreme heat stress, and much more. High fidelity quantification of the associated risk and resiliency to mitigate the impact of extreme weather events has become necessary as communities across the United States are suffering from the repetitive occurrence of natural disasters such as hurricanes, storm surges, and urban flooding. While extreme weather events are overwhelming the infrastructures of the U.S., the continuing rise in anthropogenic activities is also impacting the quality of human comfortability in outdoor spaces by bringing more heat stress and air pollution. Therefore, a robust decision-making system is necessary which combines thermal comfort and air quality into a single framework. The overarching goal of this study is to develop the most advanced and holistic approach to quantify the damage, risk, and resiliency associated with extreme weather and environmental events, including hurricanes, flooding, heat stress, and poor air quality. The dissertation has been organized into three different papers. Each papers provides a complete description of the computational modeling and development of novel methodologies utilized to help com-munity-based resiliency planning. Paper 1 focuses on developing high-resolution hydro- iv dynamic modeling to understand the fine-scale flooding behavior in the coastal commu-nities in the U.S. A new flood damage function was also proposed for micro and macro-scale flood damage levels. The study also utilized advanced geospatial analytics to sup-port a robust decision-making framework for public dissemination purposes. In paper 2, a novel methodological approach was developed to quantify flood damage and structural resiliency for the residential buildings. The study proposed restoration curves and recovery functions for flooding events to quantify the flood resiliency of residential structures. In paper 3, a holistic framework was developed to combine thermal comfort and air quality into a single system. The study utilized high-resolution gridded meteorological and station-based observation to develop forecasting which combines thermal comfort and air quality for the outdoor environment.
Recommended Citation
Fahad, Md Golam Rabbani, "Towards a Resilient Community: Application of Advanced Computational Models and Big Data Analytics" (2021). All ETDs from UAB. 320.
https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/etd-collection/320