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DOE OSTI2024

PSU-BSEC Doppler Lidar Processed Scans

This data repository includes the processed vertically staring measurements (stare files) and the angled scans (profile files) necessary to calculate horizontal winds retrieved by the Pennsylvania State University (PSU) Doppler Lidar as a part of the Baltimore Social-Environmental Collaborative Urban Integrated Field Laboratory (BSEC UIFL). The PSU Doppler Lidar measures aerosol backscatter intensity (m-1 sr-1), signal-to-noise ratio, and radial velocity (i.e., vertical velocity in the case of stare files, units: m/s) at approximately 1 Hz temporal resolution and 30 m spatial resolution. Within the "stare_data" subdirectory there exist example figures of all retrieved data. For further information, please email Nicholas Prince, nec5299@psu.edu.

Air Quality↗

DOE OSTI2025

Mitigating Impact Through Community-Engaged Flood Modeling

Urban pluvial flooding poses a growing threat to the city of Baltimore, driven by heavy rainfall, increased impervious area, and aging infrastructure. Adapting to the risks posed by pluvial flooding is critical for building greater climate resiliency in Baltimore's Inner Harbor Watershed. This study addresses these challenges through community-informed decision analysis, which uses hydrologic modeling and optimization tools to identify robust flooding adaptation pathways. We will collaborate with community partners to identify key concerns and objectives regarding flooding. These concerns have been purposefully built in to a combined surface-subsurface dynamic flow simulation model. Model outputs are used to identify flooding locations within the Inner Harbor, and to test adaptation methods. Machine learning will be used search for solutions which meet diverse environmental, financial, and social goals, and solution performance will be examined under a wide range of potential future climatic conditions and integrated with an adaptive planning approach. This novel set of adaptation pathways will enhance the City's capacity to respond to evolving pluvial flood risk.

climate resilience↗

DOE OSTI2026

Horne et al. (2026) supporting files - WRF-LES model outputs for a summer heatwave event on June 2025 in Baltimore, MD

Brief Description Shown is the supporting information for Horne et al. (2026). These files include all outputs from the WRF model simulations and the observational datasets used for comparison in the study. Scripts are provided so users can recreate the manuscript's figures using the provided observational and modeling data. For more information regarding the study, please contact the primary author of the associated manuscript, Jason Horne. Horne, J. P., Pan, Y., Davis, K. J., Waugh, D., Ahlswede, B. J., Prince, N. E. (2026). Simulating near-surface environments in urban neighborhoods using WRF-LES: A case study of classic atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) during a heatwave event JAMES. (to be submitted)

atmosphere↗

DOE OSTI2026

Horne et al. (2026) supporting files - WRF-LES model outputs for a summer heatwave event on June 2025 in Baltimore, MD

atmosphere↗

DOE OSTI2020

Lessons Learned from the First Year of Property Remediation - 20475

The Port Hope Area Initiative (PHAI) is a federal environmental clean-up program. Its mandate is the remediation and local, long-term, safe management of approximately 1.7 million cubic metres of historic low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) in the adjacent communities of Port Hope and Port Granby in Southern Ontario, Canada. The PHAI is being undertaken by Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) on behalf of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, a federal Crown corporation. It is currently one of the largest environmental remediation projects in Canada. The safety of workers, the public and the environment while delivering the PHAI compliantly, on time and within budget is CNL's number one priority. The PHAI is being carried out as two projects - the Port Hope Project and the Port Granby Project. The larger of the two PHAI scopes of work - the Port Hope Project - involves the cleanup of approximately 1.2 million cubic metres of historic LLRW from 18 major sites in Port Hope, the construction of an engineered aboveground mound where the waste will be safely contained and the long-term maintenance and monitoring of the facility. Construction of the waste water treatment plant, the first three of four cells in the mound and supporting infrastructure is complete, with construction of the fourth cell in progress. In 2017 with the movement of on-site waste at this facility began and is now complete. Waste excavation and transportation from off-site locations within the community began in 2018; the cleanup of four temporary storage sites is now complete and remediation at several other major sites is underway. The Port Hope Project also includes a survey of the interior and exterior investigation of approximately 4,800 properties, primarily residential, in the urban area of Port Hope for the presence or absence of historic LLRW. The current projection is that approximately 1,250 privately owned residential and commercial properties known as Small-Scale Sites (SSS) will be identified as having waste exceeding the PHAI clean-up criteria. This paper will outline some of the challenges and lessons learned from the first year of SSS remediation including contractual, data and design issues; interaction with and managing expectations of stakeholders; weather, site and structure conditions as well as municipal permitting, resourcing, transportation and remediation verification. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

DOE OSTI2022

Acoustic Properties of Aerogels: Current Status and Prospects

Noise reduction remains an important priority in the modern society, in particular, for urban areas and highly populated cities. Insulation of buildings and transport systems such as cars, trains, and airplanes has accelerated the need to develop advanced materials. Various porous materials, such as commercially available foams and granular and fibrous materials, are commonly used for sound mitigating applications. In this review, a special class of advanced porous materials, aerogels, is examined, and an overview of the current experimental and theoretical status of their acoustic properties is provided. Aerogels can be composed of inorganic matter, synthetic or natural polymers, as well as organic/inorganic composites and hybrids. Aerogels are highly porous nanostructured materials with a large number of meso‐ and small macropores; the mechanisms of sound absorption partly differ from those of traditional porous absorbers possessing large macropores. The understanding of the acoustic properties of aerogels is far from being complete, and experimental results remain scattered. It is demonstrated that the structure of the aerogel provides a complex three‐dimensional architecture ideally suited for promising high‐performance materials for acoustic mitigation systems. This is in addition to the numerous other desirable properties that include low density, low thermal conductivity, and low refractive index.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

DOE OSTI2025

High‐Performance Low‐Emissivity Paints Enabled by N‐Doped Poly(benzodifurandione) (n‐PBDF) for Energy‐Efficient Buildings

Abstract Low‐emissivity (low‐e) paints reduce radiative heat exchange between buildings and the environment, stabilizing indoor climates and lowering air conditioning demand. However, low‐cost, durable, and colored low‐e paints have yet to be demonstrated. Here, an approach is proposed using n‐doped poly(benzodifurandione) (n‐PBDF), a transparent organic conducting polymer, coated over colored commercial paints. This achieves a low thermal emissivity of 0.19 in the mid‐infrared spectrum, attributed to the efficient charge transport of delocalized π‐electrons in n‐PBDF structure. The reduction in thermal emissivity aids in regulating building temperatures by minimizing heat transfer between buildings and their surroundings across diverse climate zones and seasons. The n‐PBDF coating preserves the underlying paint's color due to its high visible transparency, meeting aesthetic requirements. It also shows strong stability in accelerated indoor weathering tests, ensuring long‐term performance. Simulations estimate annual HVAC energy savings of over 10,800 kWh in San Francisco and 5,500 kWh in Chicago for the typical mid‐rise apartments. The paint's versatility, scalability, and durability make it suitable for buildings, vehicles, and greenhouses, aiding urban heat island mitigation.

Liu, Xiaojie [School of Mechanical Engineering and↗

DOE OSTI2023

Material Design Strategies for Recovery of Critical Resources from Water

Population growth, urbanization, and decarbonization efforts are collectively straining the supply of limited resources that are necessary to produce batteries, electronics, chemicals, fertilizers, and other important products. Securing the supply chains of these critical resources via the development of separation technologies for their recovery represents a major global challenge to ensure stability and security. Surface water, groundwater, and wastewater are emerging as potential new sources to bolster these supply chains. Recently, a variety of material-based technologies have been developed and employed for separations and resource recovery in water. Judicious selection and design of these materials to tune their properties for targeting specific solutes is central to realizing the potential of water as a source for critical resources. Here, the materials that are developed for membranes, sorbents, catalysts, electrodes, and interfacial solar steam generators that demonstrate promise for applications in critical resource recovery are reviewed. In addition, a critical perspective is offered on the grand challenges and key research directions that need to be addressed to improve their practical viability.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

DOE OSTI2023

Measuring environmental and cost benefits of riparian buffers for drinking water production in a Midwest watershed

Here, this study focuses on the economic value and carbon benefits of riparian buffers in urban drinking water production. The impact of riparian buffers on the waterworks operation in the Raccoon River watershed was quantified using the following metrics: nitrate concentration, days of nitrate removal operation, material and energy cost (based on 17 years of historical records with a watershed model), regression, and cost analysis. The findings indicate that the presence of riparian buffers in agricultural land can substantially decrease nitrate concentration in the water intake of the waterworks during the crop-growing season: 19% in April, 9% in May, and 11% in June. These reductions mean less nitrate treatment of the plant intake flow: 23% in April, 12% in May, and 3% in June. These changes lead to significant resource savings: 425 metric tons of sodium chloride (NaCl), 147 810 kWh of electricity, 253 metric tons of powdered activated carbon, and 20.8 million liters of fresh water. The buffers would also reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 86.9 metric tons (CO 2 equivalent) in 17 years. The total cost saving was estimated at $\$$327 326, with the highest potential savings in May ($\$$215 100), followed by April ($\$$65 465), and June ($\$$46 761). When factoring in buffer installation, cropland loss, nitrate removal, and cost associated with buffer harvest for biofuel in an established biomass market, the benefit to the entire watershed community would be $\$$2.63 million annually. The results underscore the significant cost benefits and environmental benefits associated with cropland riparian buffers in a watershed community. The approach employed in this study holds promise for assessing riparian buffer benefits in other watersheds, contributes to an understanding of sustainable water management practices, and provides a basis for decision making in a wide range of agricultural regions.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2023

A multiscale landscape approach for prioritizing river and stream protection and restoration actions

River and stream conservation programs have historically focused on a single spatial scale, for example, a watershed or stream site. Recently, the use of landscape information (e.g., land use and land cover) at multiple spatial scales and over large spatial extents has highlighted the importance of incorporating a landscape perspective into stream protection and restoration activities. Previously, we developed a novel framework that links information about watershed-, catchment-, and reach-scale integrity with stream biological condition using scatterplots and a landscape integrity map. Here we examined an application of this approach for streams in urban and other settings in King County, Washington State, United States, where we related stream macroinvertebrate condition to two indices of landscape integrity, the US Environmental Protection Agency's (USEPA) nationally available Index of Watershed Integrity (IWI) and Index of Catchment Integrity (ICI). We generated a scatterplot of IWI versus ICI for sample sites, where points represented site macroinvertebrate condition from poor to good. The same data were also visualized as a landscape integrity map that displayed catchments of King County according to the level of watershed and catchment integrity (high or low IWI/ICI). Almost three-quarters of poor-condition sites were associated with high-integrity watersheds and catchments (i.e., underperforming sites), which suggested that either one or both national indicators were insufficient for this area, and that sites underperformed because of local-scale factors. In response, we used a catchment-scale indicator related to forest condition (PctForestCat) after examining several GIS-based dispersal indicators from the National Hydrography Dataset and other candidates from the USEPA's StreamCat dataset. We then compared the results of the scatterplots and maps based on the current and original analyses and found that many of the sites previously classified as underperforming now performed as expected, that is, they were poor-condition sites in poor-condition catchments. This analysis demonstrates how results based on a national dataset can be improved by developing an alternative that represents regionally important stressors. The methods used to develop an effective landscape indicator based on StreamCat datasets, and the utility of the multiscale approach, could provide important tools for prioritizing, optimizing, and communicating stream conservation actions.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2024

Anthropogenic effects on flood hazards in a hyper-arid watershed: The 2015 Atacama floods

An unprecedented precipitation event in the hyper-arid Atacama Desert of Northern Chile occurred in March 2015. Geomorphic alterations to the river channel and the coastal zone, coupled with the exceptional magnitude of the rainfall, caused catastrophic damage and loss of life. On the coast of the El Salado watershed, legacy mine tailings infilled the watershed-ocean connection, while the river channel was altered both by tailings and urbanization. The consequences of this event resulted from the coupling of anthropogenic geomorphic changes with an unusual climate event. Lack of field data, complex geomorphology and sediment loads influenced by human activity make analysing floods in these regions especially challenging. The objective of this work is to improve our understanding of the factors that control flood hazards by using numerical simulations to reconstruct the 2015 flood in El Salado. We carry out unsteady two-dimensional simulations fully coupled with the sediment concentration to identify the influence of tailing deposits, considering high-resolution data of the pre- and post-2015 flood topography. In conclusion, the results highlight the importance of specific event-based studies, using models that can help designing better strategies for climate change adaptation and risk mitigation, while providing information for risk reduction and channel restoration.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2020

Catchment storage and residence time in a periodically irrigated watershed

Understanding anthropogenic impacts on water storage and water flow pathways in catchments is an ongoing challenge in hydrology. Here, we study the dynamics of subsurface storage and residence time of water in a catchment in Berkeley, California, that is within a regional park but contains diverse land use within its perimeter, including a periodically irrigated golf course. Our study combines several isotopic tracers with water budget data to examine sources of water in a stream draining the site. Irrigation water, applied to a small area of the watershed, is a minor component of the water budget. However, geochemical tracers reveal that irrigation water is a significant fraction of stream flow downstream of the golf course during baseflow and during precipitation events. Isotopic tracers indicate that the watershed has a preference to release young water for stream flow generation, resulting in contrasting tritium ages for stream water and groundwater of 1.3 ± 0.5 year and 8.2 ± 1.7 year, respectively. We determined that the older water is a very small component (0.7%) of the stream water in the tail of an assumed exponential distribution. We used the seasonal variation of stable water isotopes in precipitation and stream water over two water years to explain the damping of the isotopic signature of stream water, which yields information about the catchment's response to the input signal. In conclusion, the methods described here may be applicable to other urban or suburban headwater catchments in areas with a component of non-natural recharge from, for example, leaky infrastructure, storm water routing or dry season irrigation.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2024

How Rains and Floods Become Groundwater: Understanding Recharge Pathways With Stable and Cosmogenic Isotopes

Anthropogenic climate change leads to increased precipitation intensity and exacerbated droughts in California, challenging the reliability and drought resiliency of water supply. Storing floodwater underground via managed aquifer recharge can mitigate these effects through direct infiltration or streambed infiltration. Seasonally dry streams (arroyos) already play an important part in managing groundwater recharge to the Livermore basin (CA). Understanding how, when and where stormwater and arroyo water infiltrate is critical to effectively utilise this strategy. To track water from recent storms (water year 2022–2023, WY23) into the Livermore Valley Groundwater Basin, we analysed stable water isotopes (δ 18 O and δ 2 H) in combination with naturally occurring radioactive isotopic tracers, sulphur-35 ( 35 S, t ½ = 87 days) and tritium ( 3 H, t ½ = 12.3 years). By comparing measurements of δ 18 O, 35 S and 3 H in arroyos to precipitation and groundwater, we classified the relative age and identified source of recharge to 16 wells near two arroyos. Two wells contained water with recent recharge (from WY23) from local precipitation. One well had recent recharge from variable (precipitation and imported water) sources. One well contained imported water recharge. Three wells contained water from mixed recent and older (pre-WY23) waters, from local precipitation sources. Two wells contained recent recharge from local mine settling ponds. Seven wells had older recharge from local precipitation sources. This combination of isotopes allows us to delineate where local and imported water recharges in this highly managed basin and identify locations where managed aquifer recharge is contributing to rapid groundwater infiltration. Our combined interpretation of isotopic water ages and sources in the context of land use shows that local infiltration of precipitation in open spaces is an important recharge mechanism, in addition to the managed arroyo recharge. Finally, a broader familiarity with 35 S will enable more extensive research on the infiltration of urban floodwaters.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2022

Characterization of ambient polychlorinated biphenyl background conditions in surface waters of the Pajarito Plateau, New Mexico

Abstract This study presents the development of polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) background threshold values (BTVs) that statistically characterize ambient background conditions for surface waters in undeveloped and developed landscapes of the Pajarito Plateau in the Rio Grande Basin of New Mexico. Between 2009 and 2018, surface water data were collected at 45 locations under a variety of flow conditions and regimes. A total of 163 samples were collected, with roughly 1/3 of samples and locations being in undeveloped areas (n = 53 from 17 locations), and the remainder being in developed areas (n = 110 from 28 locations). While there are areas on the Pajarito Plateau where PCB point sources are known or likely to have contributed to PCBs in soils, PCB BTVs calculated for undeveloped portions of watersheds (upstream of areas where PCB point sources are known or likely to have contributed to PCBs in soils, and therefore not affected by PCB sources within the watershed) are well above New Mexico's human health organism-only (HH-OO) water quality criterion (0.64 ng/L). Background threshold values are even higher in developed areas upstream of managed soil sites, suggesting that in developed areas, both diffuse ambient PCB sources (e.g., atmospheric deposition) and localized urban sources (e.g., building materials, paints, and electrical equipment) contribute to PCBs in those watersheds. These findings indicate that New Mexico's current HH-OO water quality criterion for PCBs cannot practicably be met due to ambient conditions. It is also impracticable to meet the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) criterion continuous concentration (CCC) of 14 ng/L in developed background areas, where the BTV is approximately 1.5 times the CCC. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2023;19:1307–1319. © 2022 SETAC

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2024

Toward a life cycle approach for classifying the toxicity of refrigerants

Refrigeration and air conditioning currently account for ~20% of the total electricity consumption in buildings around the world (IEA, 2018). Over the next three decades, as global temperatures are projected to increase, urbanization and economic growth will lead to an increased demand for refrigeration and cooling. While technological advances have led to increased cooling capacity and safer refrigerants over the years, emissions from refrigeration systems can affect the environment by contributing to greenhouse gas emissions or by depleting the ozone layer, depending on the gas emitted. Further, because of ongoing and pending policy and regulatory changes to avert ozone depletion and global climate change, there is an increasing focus on adopting compounds that are efficient at cooling while also reducing emissions and other adverse environmental impacts.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2022

Impact of the built, social, and food environment on long‐term weight loss within a behavioral weight loss intervention

Abstract Background Behavioral weight loss interventions can lead to an average weight loss of 5%–10% of initial body weight, however there is wide individual variability in treatment response. Although built, social, and community food environments can have potential direct and indirect influences on body weight (through their influence on physical activity and energy intake), these environmental factors are rarely considered as predictors of variation in weight loss. Objective Evaluate the association between built, social, and community food environments and changes in weight, moderate‐to‐vigorous physical activity (MVPA), and dietary intake among adults who completed an 18‐month behavioral weight loss intervention. Methods Participants included 93 adults (mean ± SD; 41.5 ± 8.3 years, 34.4 ± 4.2 kg/m 2 , 82% female, 75% white). Environmental variables included urbanicity, walkability, crime, Neighborhood Deprivation Index (includes 13 social economic status factors), and density of convenience stores, grocery stores, and limited‐service restaurants at the tract level. Linear regressions examined associations between environment and changes in body weight, waist circumference (WC), MVPA (SenseWear device), and dietary intake (3‐day diet records) from baseline to 18 months. Results Grocery store density was inversely associated with change in weight ( β = −0.95; p = 0.02; R 2 = 0.062) and WC ( β = −1.23; p < 0.01; R 2 = 0.109). Participants living in tracts with lower walkability demonstrated lower baseline MVPA and greater increases in MVPA versus participants with higher walkability (interaction p = 0.03). Participants living in tracts with the most deprivation demonstrated greater increases in average daily steps ( β = 2048.27; p = 0.02; R 2 = 0.039) versus participants with the least deprivation. Limited‐service restaurant density was associated with change in % protein intake ( β = 0.39; p = 0.046; R 2 = 0.051). Conclusion Environmental factors accounted for some of the variability (<11%) in response to a behavioral weight loss intervention. Grocery store density was positively associated with weight loss at 18 months. Additional studies and/or pooled analyses, encompassing greater environmental variation, are required to further evaluate whether environment contributes to weight loss variability.

Tewahade, Selam↗

DOE OSTI2022

Bayesian time-varying occupancy model for West Nile virus in Ontario, Canada

Occupancy models determine the true presence or absence of a species by adjusting for imperfect detection in surveys. They often assume that species presences can be detected only if sites are occupied during a sampling season. We extended these models to estimate occupancy rates that vary throughout a sampling season as well as account for spatial dependence among sites. For these methods, we constructed a fast Gibbs sampler with the Pólya-Gamma augmentation strategy to conduct inference on covariate effects. We applied these methods to evaluate how environmental conditions and surveillance practices are associated with the presence of West Nile virus in mosquito traps across Ontario, Canada from 2002 to 2017. We found that urban land cover and warm temperatures drove viral occupancy, whereas viral testing on pools with higher proportions of Culex mosquitoes was more likely to result in a positive test for West Nile virus. Models with time-varying occupancy effects achieved much lower Watanabe-Akaike information criteria than models without such effects. Our final model had strong predictive performance on test data that included some of the most extreme seasons, demonstrating the promise of these methods in the study of pathogens spread by mosquito vectors.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2021

Explaining and predicting human behavior and social dynamics in simulated virtual worlds: reproducibility, generalizability, and robustness of causal discovery methods

Ground Truth program was designed to evaluate social science modeling approaches using simulation test beds with ground truth intentionally and systematically embedded to understand and model complex Human Domain systems and their dynamics Lazer et al. (Science 369:1060–1062, 2020). Our multidisciplinary team of data scientists, statisticians, experts in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and visual analytics had a unique role on the program to investigate accuracy, reproducibility, generalizability, and robustness of the state-of-the-art (SOTA) causal structure learning approaches applied to fully observed and sampled simulated data across virtual worlds. In addition, we analyzed the feasibility of using machine learning models to predict future social behavior with and without causal knowledge explicitly embedded. In this paper, we first present our causal modeling approach to discover the causal structure of four virtual worlds produced by the simulation teams—Urban Life, Financial Governance, Disaster and Geopolitical Conflict. Our approach adapts the state-of-the-art causal discovery (including ensemble models), machine learning, data analytics, and visualization techniques to allow a human-machine team to reverse-engineer the true causal relations from sampled and fully observed data. We next present our reproducibility analysis of two research methods team’s performance using a range of causal discovery models applied to both sampled and fully observed data, and analyze their effectiveness and limitations. We further investigate the generalizability and robustness to sampling of the SOTA causal discovery approaches on additional simulated datasets with known ground truth. Our results reveal the limitations of existing causal modeling approaches when applied to large-scale, noisy, high-dimensional data with unobserved variables and unknown relationships between them. We show that the SOTA causal models explored in our experiments are not designed to take advantage from vasts amounts of data and have difficulty recovering ground truth when latent confounders are present; they do not generalize well across simulation scenarios and are not robust to sampling; they are vulnerable to data and modeling assumptions, and therefore, the results are hard to reproduce. Finally, when we outline lessons learned and provide recommendations to improve models for causal discovery and prediction of human social behavior from observational data, we highlight the importance of learning data to knowledge representations or transformations to improve causal discovery and describe the benefit of causal feature selection for predictive and prescriptive modeling.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗