Climate Change and Sustainable Engineering and Design Lab
Dept of Civil Engineering and TISED, McGill University
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The Climate Change and Sustainable Engineering and Design (CCaSED) lab brings together the fields of engineering and natural sciences, to develop and support innovative solutions for sustainable engineering. The lab performs targeted climate change research relevant for engineering applications using state-of-the-art physical models and machine learning approaches. Climate-infrastructure interaction studies through CFD modelling is undertaken to inform various engineering systems and operations such as cold regions engineering, water resources engineering, transportation engineering, renewable energy systems and urban engineering systems. The lab also studies extreme events, their causality & projected changes in future climate
and impacts on infrastructure design and operations. Knowledge of land dynamics and its climate interactions are important and determine the evolution of many near-surface/sub-surface climate variables that are relevant for engineering applications. The lab also focuses on increasing the range and physical realism of surface types and processes represented in high-resolution climate models, through development and/or adaptation of appropriate parameterizations.
CCaSED’s interdisciplinary expertise covers many fields of engineering and science to develop sustainable and resilient infrastructure systems through fundamental and applied research
CCaSED leads projects, funded primarily by federal and provincial organizations, while also participating in various other capacities in national and international multi-institutional projects
Climate change adaptation of urban overpasses subject to flash floods
Hydrokinetic resource estimation for the Canadian Arctic for current and future climates
Understanding and modelling Canadian urban systems and their climate interactions for resilience building and developing climate change adaptation measures
High-resolution climate modelling and analysis of the St. Lawrence Seaway in current and future climates
Sustainability in engineering and design
Engineering climate simulations and thresholds for Nunavut
Pavement resilience in a warmer climate for cold regions (PI: G. Doré)
Dynamic flood inundation modelling in regional earth system models guided by space-based observations and machine learning
La congélation des sols basée sur les énergies renouvelables comme solution d'adaptation pour une exploitation minière durable dans le Nord sous un climat changeant (PI: A. Sasmito)
CCaSED members – comprising of undergraduate, masters and PhD students, postdocs, research associates and assistants – through individual and group projects, seek science-informed sustainable solutions to engineering problems
CCASED research reaches a wider audience through publications both in engineering and science journals and representation at national and international conferences
This study reported ultra high resolution application of the limited-area version of the Global Environmental Multi-scale (GEM) model over the Canadian Arctic. Results indicate that although some aspects of the seasonal mean values are deteriorated at times, substantial improvements are noted in the ultra high resolution simulation compared to a simulation performed at 12 km resolution. The representation of extreme precipitation events during summer and the simulation of winter temperature are better captured in the 3 km simulation. Moreover, the observed temperature–extreme precipitation scaling is realistically reproduced by the higher resolution simulation. These results advocate for the use of convective-permitting resolution models for simulating future climate projections over the Arctic to support climate impact assessment studies such as those related to engineering applications and where high spatial and temporal resolution are beneficial.
This study projects abrupt decreases in soil moisture in response to permafrost degradation over areas of the present-day permafrost region based on analysis of transient climate change simulations, for RCP8.5 scenario, performed using a state-of-the-art regional climate model. This regime shift is reflected in abrupt increases in summer near-surface temperature and convective precipitation, and decreases in relative humidity and surface runoff. Of particular relevance to northern systems are increases in the potential for intense rainfall events and increases in lightning frequency. Combined with increases in forest fuel combustibility, these are projected to abruptly and substantially increase the severity of wildfires, which constitute one of the greatest risks to northern ecosystems, communities and infrastructure.
In this study, super-resolution urban climate simulations over Montreal are used to assess the direct impact of the decrease in traffic-related heat emissions due to COVID-19 on urban temperature characteristics. Two simulations, one with normal and the other with reduced traffic, are used to assess the impacts throughout the year. The results show that an 80% reduction in traffic results in an up to 20% reduction in hot hours (when temperature exceeds 30 °C) in the traffic corridors during the warm season, which can be beneficial to pedestrians and bicyclists. As no substantial changes occur outside of traffic corridors, potential reductions in traffic would need to be supplemented by additional measures to reduce urban temperatures and associated heat stress, especially in a warming climate, to ensure human health and well-being.
We are looking for highly motivated students at both MSc and PhD levels to undertake research in the areas of sustainable engineering and design, high-resolution climate modelling and machine learning for engineering applications, climate-infrastructure interaction studies through CFD modelling, extreme events and climatic loads, land dynamics and land-atmosphere interactions with a focus on engineering applications. Interested candidates may send a complete curriculum vitae and motivation letter to: laxmi.sushama@mcgill.ca. Canadian and international students interested in summer internships can also send their curriculum vitae and motivation letter to: laxmi.sushama@mcgill.ca
A full or part-time scientific programmer position is currently available to support workflows for setting up, running, monitoring, processing and verifying climate model simulations and other engineering software on High Performance Computing clusters of Compute Canada. Interested candidates (requirements: graduate degree in computer science, engineering, physics, mathematics, or related fields; knowledge of Fortran, Python, MPI, OpenMP, Job scheduler for linux clusters, Shell scripting; experience with Matlab, CDO; good knowledge of data formats (e.g. NetCDF); communication and teamwork skills) may contact: laxmi.sushama@mcgill.ca.
Opportunities