Environmental and Water Resources Engineering Seminar Series
April 14, 2023
11:00 AM
404 NH Lincoln
160 PKI Omaha
Hanh Phan, Ph.D.: Nebraska Wastewater Surveillance Program Update
Started in 2020, the Nebraska Wastewater Surveillance Program has used wastewaterbased epidemiology (WBE) for early detection of SAR-CoV-2 circulation and response. Wastewater samples are collected twice weekly at multiple community wastewater treatment plants and schools across the state. Our data showed that the prevalence of SAR-CoV-2 detected in the wastewater are consistent with the case rates and the hospitalization data. This implicates the advantage of NWS program to detect SAR-CoV-2 prevalence across the state and where in-person testing is not available.
Shivendra Srivastava: Flood Risk Assessment using Hazard, Exposure, Vulnerability, and Response as Drivers at County Scale for Nebraska
The assessment is conducted for the state of Nebraska, leveraging only open-source datasets. The framework consists of interactions among the drivers of flood risk - hazard, exposure, vulnerability, and response. To quantify hazard at county scale, we considered the percentage of properties at risk of flooding obtained from probabilistic flood model. Exposure was quantified by considering population, housing units, and agricultural and livestock exposure at county scale. We have added different dimensions to vulnerability, such as social, ecological, economic, and health, providing a new insight to vulnerability dimension. The study explores various factors to quantify response as a driver of flood risk, which is a relatively new approach.