Publications related to Debris

Improved marine debris detection in satellite imagery with automatic refinement of coarse hand annotations

Devis Tuia, Marc Conrad Russwurm, Elif Dilge Gül

Plastic litter is a major environmental hazard that endangers human, animal, and plant health on the planet. A substantial portion of plastic pollutants is washed from rivers and beaches into the oceans and aggregates at the surface as marine debris before ...

2023

Advancing spacecraft demisability through a novel composite bolt joint system: a step toward sustainable and safe space environments

Véronique Michaud, Alexandre Achille Looten, Muriel Richard, Antonio Caiazzo

From the recent awareness of the booming number of space debris and their derived worldwide re-entry event threat originating from the use of high survivability components, complementary mitigation measures must be taken for future orbital elements. In thi ...

2023

Large-scale detection of marine debris in coastal areas with Sentinel-2

Devis Tuia, Marc Conrad Russwurm

Detecting and quantifying marine pollution and macroplastics is an increasingly pressing ecological issue that directly impacts ecology and human health. Here, remote sensing can provide reliable estimates of plastic pollution by regularly monitoring and d ...

2023

Understanding the mechanisms of adhesive wear for heterogeneous materials through atomistic simulations

Jean-François Molinari, Antonio Joaquin Garcia Suarez, Sacha Zenon Wattel

When two rough surfaces slide against each other, two main behaviors can be observed at the asperity level: A ductile behavior where the asperities tend to smooth out or a brittle behavior where the asperities detach and form debris. Recently, a critical l ...

2022

Policy options to address collision risk from space debris

Romain Buchs

This IRGC policy brief focuses on the risk of collision from space debris. It provides a range of policy options and broad recommendations to improve the assessment, evaluation and management of collision risk, as well as its communication. It is based on ...

EPFL2021

Quantifying the transition of impact mechanisms of geophysical flows against flexible barrier

Xingyue Li

Flexible barriers have been increasingly used worldwide for mitigating natural hazards involving various geophysical flows. The analysis and design of flexible barriers need to distinguish two major impact mechanisms, runup and pile-up, which remain poorly ...

ELSEVIER2021

Three-dimensional and real-scale modeling of flow regimes in dense snow avalanches

Johan Alexandre Philippe Gaume, Betty Sovilla, Xingyue Li

Snow avalanches cause fatalities and economic loss worldwide and are one of the most dangerous gravitational hazards in mountainous regions. Various flow behaviors have been reported in snow avalanches, making them challenging to be thoroughly understood a ...

2021

Intensifying space activity calls for increased scrutiny of risks

Romain Buchs

As the pace of space activities accelerates and societies become more reliant on space-based systems, the associated risks deserve more attention. Satellites form a critical infrastructure on which military, civil and commercial entities rely. The services ...

EPFL International Risk Governance Center2021

Effect of debris damming on wave-induced hydrodynamic loads against free-standing buildings with openings

Anton Schleiss, Michael Pfister, Davide Wüthrich, Claudia Ylla Arbos

Tsunamis, impulse waves, and dam-break waves are rare but catastrophic events, associated with casualties and damage to infrastructures. An adequate description of these waves is vital to assure human safety and to generate resilient structures. Furthermor ...

2020

Re-entry survival analysis and ground risk assessment of space debris considering by-products generation

Pénélope Leyland, Stefano Mischler, Seong-Hyeon Park

Space debris that re-enter the Earth's atmosphere can be partially or fully ablated along the trajectory path after hitting the atmosphere layers, once these become denser (approximately below 82 km). This paper combines re-entry survival analysis to by-pr ...

2020

Periodic cellular aluminum structures for space applications : from casting to additive manufacturing

Florian Thibaut Gallien

Mass is one of the crucial parameters for hardware that has to be placed in Earth orbit. Due to its harsh environment, a material with highest specific properties is desired to achieve space missions. The rise and development of new technologies, such as a ...

EPFL2018

Monitoring geomorphological changes due to debris flows in mountain rivers using UAV: exploiting similarities between Alpine and Andean regions

Christophe Ancey, Tomás Alfredo Trewhela Palacios

Definition of proper methodologies for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to monitor debris flows will be done in two workshops: one in each participant institution. The objective is to do field demonstrations and measurements to exploit similarities between Al ...

2018

Dynamics of glide avalanches and snow gliding

Christophe Ancey

In recent years, due to warmer snow cover, there has been a significant increase in the number of cases of damage caused by gliding snowpacks and glide avalanches. On most occasions, these have been full-depth, wet-snow avalanches, and this led some people ...

Amer Geophysical Union2015

Rollable Multisegment Dielectric Elastomer Minimum Energy Structures for a Deployable Microsatellite Gripper

Herbert Shea, Volker Gass, Samuel Rosset, Jun Shintake, Muriel Richard, Irina Gavrilovich, Oluwaseun Adelowo Araromi

Debris in space presents an ever-increasing problem for spacecraft in Earth orbit. As a step in the mitigation of this issue, the CleanSpace One (CSO) microsatellite has been proposed. Its mission is to perform active debris removal of a decommissioned nan ...

Ieee-Inst Electrical Electronics Engineers Inc2015

Fluid dynamics of basal entrainment by geophysical gravity-driven flows

Belinda Margaret Bates

Geophysical gravity-driven flows -- including avalanches, debris flows, pyroclastic flows and submarine turbidity currents -- are multiphase natural hazards that flow under the influence of gravity. Despite their differences, they share much of the same ph ...

EPFL2015

Design of a bed load and driftwood filtering dam, analysis of the phenomena and hydraulic design

Giovanni De Cesare

Flood protection often calls on to the realization of retention works for bed load as well as wood and debris flow. Certain relatively recent arrangements did not perform according to their intended function, what shows the complexity of the design and the ...

CRC Press/Balkema2014

Mapping hazards from glacier lake outburst floods based on modelling of process cascades at Lake 513, Carhuaz, Peru

Javier García Hernández, Sebastián Guillén Ludeña, Daniel Schneider

Recent warming has had enormous impacts on glaciers and high-mountain environments. Hazards have changed or new ones have emerged, including those from glacier lakes that form as glaciers retreat. The Andes of Peru have repeatedly been severely impacted by ...

2014

Debris-Blocking Sensitivity of Piano Key Weirs under Reservoir-Type Approach Flow

Anton Schleiss, Michael Pfister, Blake Tullis

The collection of floating woody debris at flow control structures, such as spillways and weirs, can potentially result in reduced discharge efficiency (higher upstream head for a given weir discharge). Compared to less hydraulically-efficient control stru ...

Asce-Amer Soc Civil Engineers2013