Saleh A. Wasimi

Statistical Forecasting of Tropical Cyclones for Bangladesh

Bangladesh being a densely populated country and mostly deltaic region with many people living in thatched cottages along the coast is afflicted severely when lashed by a tropical cyclone (TC). TCs in the region have claimed by far more lives than anywhere else in the world - 49% of the world’s total fatalities by cyclone is in Bangladesh alone and 22% in India (Ali 1996). The tropical cyclones that hit Bangladesh are mostly formed in the Bay of Bengal and their destructive force is primarily due to the accompanying storm surge, whose development is influenced by unique features such as shallow bathymetry and near funnel shape of the Bay (Mandal et al. 2007). As cyclones at different oceans are formed at different times, it is now well established that regional climate and weather patterns play an important role in cyclogenesis (JTWC Annual tropical cyclone reports 2007; Vecchi and Soden 2007). The climate of the region around Bangladesh besides its latitudinal and longitudinal location is influenced by the presence of the highest mountains to its north and northeast. In summer (May-October), a low-pressure system is created in northwest India by heating of landmass that marks the position of the monsoon trough, which causes wind to blow northeast from the Bay of Bengal over the shallow ocean waters to Bangladesh and then get deflected by the mountains to northwest. In winter (November-March), the monsoon trough is over the Bay of Bengal and cold airmass over land in north India moves outward through Bangladesh into the Bay of Bengal in southwest direction. The transition period (May or November) is when the wind is slowest offering ideal conditions for tropical cyclones to form over warm waters.

Climate change in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and implications for water resources project planning and management

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to assess the extent of climate change likely to be manifested in the MENA region using statistical tools as well as outputs from physics‐based General Circulation Models (GCMs).Design/methodology/approach – Atmospheric temperature and precipitation primarily capture climate change features and are considered the drivers of other manifestations of climate change such as rises in sea‐level, tropical cyclone intensities, severe floods, prolonged droughts, and retreating ice. Data on atmospheric temperature and precipitation have been statistically analysed for trend, distribution and variability in this study. Long‐range prediction is then made using time series analysis. Long‐range projections have also been made by many investigators using physics‐based GCMs and the Fourth Assessment Report of IPCC provides a summary. IPCC projections are not indisputable because of some inherent limitations of GCMs. A comparative study is made between statistical predictions and IPC...

Combating Cyber Attacks in Cloud Systems Using Machine Learning

One of the crucial but complicated tasks is to detect cyber attacks and their types in any IT networking environment including recent uptake of cloud services.

Impacts of Climate Change on Water Resources in Diyala River Basin, Iraq

Diyala River is the third largest tributary of the Tigris River running 445 km length and draining an area of 32,600 km2. The river is the major source of water supply for Diyala City for municipal ...

Social considerations in domestic water pricing: A case study of Perth, Western Australia

Domestic water pricing is a challenging balancing act of the three critical dimensions of sustainability: economic, environmental and social objectives (OECD, 2010). The increasing block tariff approach to water pricing is growing in popularity throughout the world because, arguably, it is seen to best address all three dimensions. However, social equity considerations are often at odds with other criteria and needs special scrutiny, as affordability and equity aspects may not be properly addressed especially when income and household size are not accounted for. This paper looks at social considerations that are relevant for decision making in water pricing for the city of Perth, Western Australia and proposes a pricing scheme that would address the social issues satisfactorily. The optimisation model, particle swarm optimisation, which has been used in this study can also be applied when multiple objective functions that include other considerations such as economic efficiency and environmental sustainability are used.

A hybrid encryption/hiding method for secure transmission of biometric data in multimodal authentication system

Biometric security is a fast growing area that gains an increasing interest in the last decades. Digital encryption and hiding techniques provide an efficient solution to protect biometric data from accidental or intentional attacks. In this paper, a highly secure encryption/hiding scheme is proposed to ensure secure transmission of biometric data in multimodal biometric identification/authentication system. The secret fingerprint and iris vectors are sparsely approximated using accelerated iterative hard thresholding technique and then embedded in the host Slantlet-SVD domain of face image. Experiments demonstrate the efficiency of our technique for both encryption and hiding purpose, where the secret biometric information is well encrypted and still extractable with high fidelity even though the carrier image is seriously corrupted. Our experimental results show the efficiency of the proposed technique in term of robustness to attacks, Invisibility, and security.

The Impacts of Climate Change on Fitzroy River Basin, Queensland, Australia : The Impacts of Climate Change on Fitzroy River Basin, Queensland, Australia

An analysis of historical data of Fitzroy River, which lies in the east coast of Australia, reveals that there is an increasingtrend in extreme floods and droughts apparently attributable to increa ...

A secure hiding scheme for tamper-proofing and authentication of color biometrie templates

With the rapid growth of the biometric-based identification and authentication systems, establishing the integrity and authenticity of biometric data has become a serious research issue. Information hiding has emerged as an efficient way to secure the biometric data during transmission in web-based applications. In this paper, a content authentication and tamper-proofing system is presented to localize and correct the corrupted area in color biometric data. Information hiding based on sparsity theory is utilized to hide a copy of the luminance component of the color biometric image. The proposed scheme has been evaluated using Georgia Technology face database, and the results have demonstrated the reliability and efficiency of the proposed scheme in identifying and restoring the tampered area, even when the biometric image is seriously corrupted.

Climate Change Impacts on Water Resources of Greater Zab River, Iraq : Climate Change Impacts on Water Resources of Greater Zab River, Iraq

Greater Zab is the largest tributary of the Tigris River in Iraq where the catchment area is currently being plagued by water scarcity and pollution problems. Contemporary studies have revealed tha ...

Model-based climate change impact assessment on water resources of Kurdistan, Iraq

Kurdistan in northern Iraq, a semi-arid region, predominantly a pastureland, is sustained by Lesser Zab, which is a major tributary of Tigris River. The discharge in the tributary, in recent years, has been experiencing increasing variability contributing to more severe droughts and floods which could be due to climate change. For a proper assessment, SWAT model has been used to capture the impact of climate change on its hydrological components for about half-a-century lead time to 20462064 and about one-century lead time to 2080-2100. The suitability of the model was first evaluated, and then, outputs from six GCMs were incorporated to evaluate the impacts of climate change on water resources under three emission scenarios: A1B, A2 and B1. The results showed worsening water resources regime.