Mohammad Rafee Majid

Prediction of Surface Flow by Forcing of Climate Forecast System Reanalysis Data

Meteorological data are key variables for hydrologists to simulate the rainfall-runoff process using hydrological models. The collection of meteorological variables is sophisticated, especially in arid and semi-arid climates where observed time series are often scarce. Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR) Data have been used to validate and evaluate hydrological modeling throughout the world. This paper presents a comprehensive application of the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) hydrologic simulator, incorporating CFSR daily rainfall-runoff data at the Roodan study site in southern Iran. The developed SWAT model including CFSR data (CFSR model) was calibrated using the Sequential Uncertainty Fitting 2 algorithm (SUFI-2). To validate the model, the calibrated SWAT model (CFSR model) was compared with the observed daily rainfall-runoff data. To have a better assessment, terrestrial meteorological gauge stations were incorporated with the SWAT model (Terrestrial model). Visualization of the simulated flows showed that both CFSR and terrestrial models have satisfactory correlations with the observed data. However, the CFSR model generated better estimates regarding the simulation of low flows (near zero). The results of the uncertainty analysis showed that the CFSR model predicted the validation period more efficiently. This might be related with better prediction of low flows and closer distribution to observed flows. The Nash-Sutcliffe (NS) coefficient provided good- and fair-quality modeling for calibration and validation periods for both models. Overall, it can be concluded that CFSR data might be promising for use in the development of hydrological simulations in arid climates, such as southern Iran, where there are shortages of data and a lack of accessibility to the data.

Travel emission profile of Iskandar Malaysia neighbourhoods from pre-1980s to 2000s

Vehicle Miles Travelled (VMT), an indicator of travel levels on the roadway system mainly by private vehicles, has been widely used in urban planning to help indicate CO2 emission due to changes in built environment. Bordering Singapore to the south, neighbourhood development has been constantly happening in Johor Bahru since 1980s. These neighbourhood developments are believed to have undergone a continuous layout design evolution affecting its land use distribution, road network design, and density. Thus, this paper investigates the quiet influence of neighbourhood design, as it evolves over the decades on VMT and eventually travel carbon emission. Twenty two residential neighbourhoods representing several decades from pre-1980s to the 2010s were selected and travel diaries of their randomly selected households were recorded. Findings from this study reveal that travel carbon emission for pre-1980s residential areas is only 8.7 kilograms/household/day with a daily travel range of 40 km/day. However, the amount increases up to 21.8 kilograms/household/day for 2010s houses with daily travel range of 100 km/day. Car usage among residents in Iskandar Malaysia is undoubtly increasing as car ownership proportion increases from 0.8 in pre-1980s to 2.37 in 2010s. Number and distance of vehicles trip can be reduced by organizing activities in compact communities rather than in auto dependent suburbs. In addition, a carbon emission reduction of up to 10 percent may result from a change in land use approach alone while additional reductions will result from employing other strategies such as transit investment, fuel pricing, and parking charges.