Publications associées à Technical note: Preliminary estimation of rockfall runout zones

Snowfall deposition in mountainous terrain: a statistical downscaling scheme from high-resolution model data on simulated topographies

One of the primary causes of non-uniform snowfall deposition on the ground in mountainous regions is the preferential deposition of snow, which results from the interaction of near-surface winds with topography and snow particles. However, producing high-r ...

Frontiers Media Sa2024

A Depth-Averaged Material Point Method for Shallow Landslides: Applications to Snow Slab Avalanche Release

Bertil Trottet, Johan Alexandre Philippe Gaume, Denis Aloyse Joseph Steffen, Lars Kristoffer Uhlen Blatny, Louis Marie Cédric Guillet

Shallow landslides pose a significant threat to people and infrastructure. Despite significant progress in the understanding of such phenomena, the evaluation of the size of the landslide release zone, a crucial input for risk assessment, still remains a c ...

AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION2023

On the role of energy infrastructure in the energy transition. Case study of an energy independent and CO2 neutral energy system for Switzerland

Sidi-Rachid Cherkaoui, Manuele Domenico Margni, François Maréchal, Jonas Schnidrig

The transition towards renewable energy is leading to an important strain on the energy grids. The question of designing and deploying renewable energy technologies in symbiosis with existing grids and infrastructure is arising. While current energy system ...

2023

Alternative energy supply approach for industrial complexes and district heating networks based on biomass integrated gasification

François Maréchal, Daniel Alexander Florez Orrego, Meire Ellen Gorete Ribeiro Domingos

In this work, a systematic approach combining different energy solutions and the time-varying energy demands is used to identify the operating conditions and arrangements for industrial complexes. A kraft pulp mill integrated to an urban district heating n ...

Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria2023

Leveraging industrial biorefineries for the energy transition

François Maréchal, Julia Granacher

Biorefineries hold the potential to provide products and energy carriers at reduced environmental impact compared to their fossil-based counterparts. Thus, they can contribute to the decarbonization of sectors in which electrification of demands is challen ...

Elsevier Sci Ltd2023

Downscaling of Historical Wind Fields over Switzerland Using Generative Adversarial Networks

Anthony Christopher Davison, Ophélia Mireille Anna Miralles

Near-surface wind is difficult to estimate using global numerical weather and climate models, because airflow is strongly modified by underlying topography, especially that of a country such as Switzerland. In this article, we use a statistical approach ba ...

2022

How Forward-Scattering Snow and Terrain Change the Alpine Radiation Balance With Application to Solar Panels

Michael Lehning, Annelen Kahl

Rough terrain in mid- and high latitudes is often covered with highly reflective snow, giving rise to a very complex transfer of incident sunlight. In order to simplify the radiative transfer in weather and climate models, snow is generally treated as an i ...

2021

Design and temporal issues in Soil Bioengineering structures for the stabilisation of shallow soil movements

Giovanni De Cesare, Massimiliano Schwarz

In the last decades, soil bioengineering has gained considerable popularity worldwide, especially in hillslope, riverbank, and earth embankment stabilisation works. The use of plants as a building material transfers the plant multifunctionality within engi ...

2021

Mapping quality prediction for RTK/PPK-equipped micro-drones operating in complex natural environment

Jan Skaloud, Davide Antonio Cucci, Laurent Valentin Jospin, Emmanuel Pierre Quentin Clédat

Drone mapping with GNSS-assisted photogrammetry is a highly efficient method for surveying small -or medium- sized areas. However, the mapping quality is not intuitively predictable, particularly in complex environments (with steep and cluttered terrain), ...

2020

Potential and uncertainty of wind energy in the Swiss Alps

Albertus Christiaan Kruyt

Switzerland has committed itself to an ambitious energy strategy. It aims to replace the exist- ing nuclear generation capacity with predominantly indigenous renewable resources. Wind power could play a significant role in this transition, yet the wind res ...

EPFL2019

FDTD Modeling of Lightning Electromagnetic Field Propagation Over Mountainous Terrain

Marcos Rubinstein, Dongshuai Li

The Full-Wave Finite-Difference-Time-Domain (FDTD) electromagnetic (EM) simulation method can simulate large domains and produce time-marching solutions for arbitrary time-domain sources, making it ideal for many lightning applications. In this paper, a tw ...

IEEE2019

Optimal Placement of Inertia and Primary Control: A Matrix Perturbation Theory Approach

Philippe René Joseph Jacquod

The increasing penetration of new renewable sources of electrical energy reduces the overall mechanical inertia available in power grids. This raises a number of issues regarding grid stability over short to medium time scales. A number of approaches have ...

2019

Multiport Energy Gateway

Yan-Kim Tran

The global problem of energy supply and the reduction of the carbon footprint can only be solved by a massive replacement of fossil fuels or atomic energy by renewable resources. As the latter are mostly weather-dependent, they are uncontrollable and unpre ...

EPFL2019

SCCER JA-RED - Detailed evaluation of the grid operation bottlenecks and load shifting potential for the reference system - Deliverable 1.2.2

Luc Girardin, Lionel Benjamin Bloch, Paul Michael Stadler, Jordan Holweger, Luise Middelhauve

Based on the analysis of the reference case, models developed at the PVLAB-EPFL and IPESEEPFL have been valued and improved to assess the impact of distributed generation and ancillary services on REel demonstrator. The models are used to evaluate solution ...

2019

Advanced models and algorithms to provide multiple grid services with battery storage systems

Emil Namor

Battery energy storage systems (BESSs) are expected to play a major role in the power grid of the near future. These devices, capable of storing and returning electrical energy, are valuable assets to a grid that integrates more and more distributed, inter ...

EPFL2018

A close-ridge small-scale atmospheric flow field and its influence on snow accumulation

Michael Lehning, Franziska Gerber, Sebastian Wilhelm Hoch

The rough, steep, and complex terrain in the alpine environment causes a variety of flow patterns such as blocking, speed-up, or flow separation, which influence precipitation, snow deposition, and ultimately snow distribution on the ground. Cloud-terrain ...

Amer Geophysical Union2017

Intercomparison of Terrain-Following Coordinate Transformation and Immersed Boundary Methods for Large-Eddy Simulation of Wind Fields over Complex Terrain

Jiannong Fang, Fernando Porté Agel

Accurate modeling of complex terrain, especially steep terrain, in the simulation of wind fields remains a challenge. It is well known that the terrain-following coordinate transformation method (TFCT) generally used in atmospheric flow simulations is rest ...

2016

On Lightning Electromagnetic Field Propagation Along an Irregular Terrain

Farhad Rachidi-Haeri, Marcos Rubinstein, Stefan Metz, Davide Pavanello, Mario Paolone, Mohammad Azadifar, Dongshuai Li, Zhaoyang Wang, Qilin Zhang

In this paper, we present a theoretical analysis of the propagation effects of lightning electromagnetic fields over a mountainous terrain. The analysis is supported by experimental observations consisting of simultaneous records of lightning currents and ...

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers2016

Adapting tilt corrections and the governing flow equations for steep, fully three-dimensional, mountainous terrain

Marc Parlange, Wolf Hendrik Huwald, Eric Richard Pardyjak, Holly Jayne Oldroyd

In recent studies of atmospheric turbulent surface exchange in complex terrain, questions arise concerning velocity-sensor tilt corrections and the governing flow equations for coordinate systems aligned with steep slopes. The standard planar-fit method, a ...

2016

Analysis of lightning electromagnetic field propagation in mountainous terrain and its effects on ToA-based lightning location systems

Farhad Rachidi-Haeri, Marcos Rubinstein, Keyhan Sheshyekani, Mohammad Azadifar, Dongshuai Li, Zhaoyang Wang, Qilin Zhang

In this paper, we analyze the propagation effects on lightning-radiated electromagnetic fields over mountainous terrain by using a three-dimensional (3-D) finite difference time domain (FDTD) method. We also discuss the time delay error in the time-of-arri ...

Amer Geophysical Union2016