Abbas El-Zein

Associate Professor of Environmental Engineering

My research falls in the area of computational mathematics and environmental science and engineering, with focus on environmental geomechanics and environmental risk. I am currently working on the mathematical modelling of problems of water flow and contaminant migration in saturated and unsaturated soils, as well as climate change vulnerability assessment under conditions of uncertainty and non-linearity. The goal of research of this nature is to develop better theories that account for the behaviour of ecological systems under environmental stress as well as a better understanding of human-environment interactions and, consequently, better environmental policy-making. One spinoff of my research is the finite-element computational software, SPAS, in 2D and 3D that simulates water flow and chemical transport in saturated and unsaturated soils. My teaching covers environmental, geomechanics and computational topics.

Contact Details: Abbas El-Zein, Civil Engineering, Building J05, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia.

Phone: 61-2-9351 7351, Fax: 61-2-9351 3343, Email: abbas.elzein@sydney.edu.au

EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND

BE in Civil Engineering, 1986, American University of Beirut, Lebanon.
MSc in Structural Engineering (with distinction), 1987, University of Southampton, UK.
MSc in Environmental Science and Technology (DEA), 1993, Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees, Universite Paris XII, Ecole Nationale du Genie Rural des Eaux et des Forets, Paris, France.
PhD in Computational Mechanics, 1990, University of Southampton, UK.

RESEARCH

1. Water Flow and Contaminant Transport

2. Environmental Decision-Making and Vulnerability to Climate Change

3. Online Educational Tools for Science and Engineering Students

RECENT SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS

TEACHING AND UNIVERSITY ROLES

Teaching

CIVL3010 Engineering and Society; 3^rd year undergraduate core unit of study.

CIVL5351 Geoenvironmental Engineering; postgraduate unit of study.

University Roles

Director of Teaching and Learning at the School of Civil Engineering.

Member of the Faculty of Engineering and IT Teaching and Learning Committee.

Member of the Faculty of Engineering and IT advisory board for Engineers without Borders (EWB) Partnership.

Chair of the Faculty of Engineering and IT Library Committee.

RESEARCH

1. Research: Water Flow and Contaminant Transport Problems in Saturated and Unsaturated Soils. Soils provide the biochemical base of our food system, harbour and protect groundwater, contribute to vital biogeochemical cycles, break down harmful by-products of human activities and so on. Understanding and predicting the behaviour of water and chemical species as they migrate in soil is an important pre-requisite for managing the multi-functional nature of soils. This line of research develops numerical methods for the modelling of multi-layered and highly heterogeneous subsurface systems, under saturated or unsaturated conditions. Three research projects are underway:

a. Hydro-chemical and thermo-hydro-mechanical behaviour of composite liner systems. Liners are manufactured soil systems that aim to insulate toxic substances from the surrounding environment. The project carries out experimental and computational investigations into the behaviour of compacted clay liners and geosynthetics clay liners under aggressive chemical and thermal conditions prevalent in hazardous and non-hazardous waste. Numerical algorithms in 2D and 3D are developed and/or used for modelling hydro-chemical and hydro-thermo-mechanical behaviour. The aim is to derive best practice guidance to minimize the risk of groundwater contamination. Collaborators: Prof. R Kerry Rowe, Queen's University, Canada; Dr Nathalie Touze-Foltz, CEMAGREF, France; A/Prof David Airey, University of Sydney; PhD Student: Farzad Meysami Azad-completed Nov 2011; Undergraduate Research Student: Ingrid McCaroll.

b. Carbon sequestration in coal seams: One of the long-term options for mitigating climate change is injection of carbon dioxide in deep geological formations. Coal strata may be a suitable host because of its affinity to CO2, i.e. its ability to sorb it, and the release of methane that would offset geosequestration costs. However, our understanding of the impact of CO2 on the properties of coal is still in its infancy owing to the complex structure of coal. The project, funded by an ARC Discovery grant jointly with the Geomechanics group at Monash University, conducts tri-axial and diffusion tests and develops new dual and multiple-porosity models for simulating the fate of injected CO2. Collaborator: Assoc Prof David Airey; PhD Student: Mohsen Massoudian.

c. Adaptive techniques for coupled hydro-mechanical problems in unsaturated soils. A variety of problems in geoenvironmental engineering require the solution of coupled equations, representing hydrological, chemical, mechanical and thermal aspects of soil behaviour. When these equations are solved in 2D or 3D under unsaturated conditions, they become computationally expensive. The project develops adaptivity algorithms, based on continuous and discontinuous Galerkin techniques, to generate optimal finite-element meshes and produce high-accuracy, low-cost predictions of behaviour. Collaborator: Dr Fernando Alonso-Marroquain, University of Sydney; PhD student: Ali Ghavam Nasiri.

Research Application: Development of Soil Pollution Analysis System SPAS. A spinoff of my research is SPAS, a computer software, based on the finite-element engine CONFEM, which simulates 28 different equations, in 2D and 3D, representing problems of water flow and chemical contamination in saturated and unsaturated soils (collaborators: Dr Nigel Balaam). click here for more information on SPAS

2. Research: Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment and Environmental Decision-Making under Uncertainty and Non-Linearity. Assessing the impacts of environmental problems or infrastructure projects, and developing solutions for them, can be a complex exercise, owing to conflicting environmental, social and economic criteria that the assessment and decision-making processes have to take into account. Furthermore, various sources of uncertainty are inherent to these exercises, such as uncertain data and future projections, subjective assessments of criteria weights and non-linear effects. This multiple uncertainty raises questions about the validity of assessment and decision-making (the debate about the effect of uncertainty on climate change policy is an example). Two research projects are underway:

a. Stochastic outranking methods in environmental decision-making. The project integrates a life-cycle analysis system with a new multi-criteria outranking procedure and a new approach to the quantification of social criteria, all within a stochastic framework which takes into account various sources of uncertainty. The proposed approaches are applied to problems of waste management in Sydney, including a) the impacts of carbon pricing on optimal waste disposal and recycling configurations and b) the compatibility of carbon reduction targets with the promotion of renewable energy . PhD Student: Ali El-Hanandeh-completed March 2010.

b. Assessment of vulnerability to climate change under uncertainty, incommensurability and non-linearity. Indicator-based assessments of vulnerability to climate change can be used to identify vulnerable populations and guide adaptation policy-making. The exercise is challenging owing to a) complex interactions between biophysical and socio-political determinants of vulnerability and b) incommensurability of indicators and their non-linear relationship to vulnerability. Aggregating indicators into composite indices hence becomes methodologically problematic. The project build an outranking framework for aggregation of indicators and applies it to the assessment of vulnerability to heat waves of local government areas in Sydney. Collaborator: PhD Student: Fahim Tonmoy.

3. Research and Development: Online Educational Tools for Science and Engineering Students. Although science and engineering students possess a relatively high level of numeracy, learning how to use computing environments (e.g., Matlab, MS Excel) and computer languages (e.g., FORTRAN, Matlab, Python) remains a challenging task for many students. The projects consist of designing, developing and evaluating various online tools for aiding in the teaching and/or self-learning of computing. This is an empirical research area which builds upon emerging IT technology transforming the tertiary learning experience. An online tool for teaching MS Excel, The ExSite, has been completed and formally launched July 2011. Another online teaching tool, Sustainability Case Analysis Problems Engineering and Science (SCAPES) is under development and will help students achieve specific environmental learning outcomes through three real-life environmental case problems: Tasmanian forestry, Homebush Bay Olympic site regeneration and Woodlawn bioreactor. Post-doctorate researcher: Dr Ali El-Hanandeh.

RECENT SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS

Journals Papers

Abbas El-Zein, Ingrid McCaroll and Nathalie Touze-Foltz. 2011. A three-dimensional analysis of water seepage and chemical transport in geosynthetics clay liners with multiple defects. Geotextiles and Geomembranes, in press.

Farzad Meysami Azad, Abbas El-Zein, Kerry Rowe and David Airey. 2011. Numerical investigation of thermally-induced desiccation of double composite geosynthetics clay liners in landfills. Geotextiles and Geomembranes, in press.

Farzad Meysami Azad, Kerry Rowe, Abbas El-Zein and David Airey. 2011. Laboratory investigation of thermally-induced desiccation of GCLs in double composite liners systems. Geotextiles and Geomembranes, 29(6):534-543. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geotexmem.2011.07.001.

Ali El-Hanandeh and Abbas El-Zein. 2011. Are the aims of increasing the share of green electricity generation and reducing GHG emissions always compatible? Renewable Energy, 36(11):3031-3036.

Ali El-Hanandeh and Abbas El-Zein. 2010. Life-cycle assessment of municipal solid waste management alternatives with consideration of uncertainty: SIWMS development and application. Waste Management 30(5):902-911.

Ali El-Hanandeh and Abbas El-Zein. 2010. The development and application of a multi-criteria decision making tool with consideration of uncertainty: the selection of a management strategy for the bio-degradable fraction in the municipal solid waste. Bioresources Technology, 101(2):555-561.

Abbas El-Zein. 2009. A non-isodimensional finite-element approach to the modeling of transient flow and mass transport through domains with thin layers. Computers and Structures (special journal issue for 5th MIT Conference on Computational Fluid and Solid Mechanics, Advances in CFD), 87:618-629.

Ali El Hanandeh and Abbas El-Zein. 2009. Strategies for the municipal waste management system to take advantage of carbon trading under competing policies: the role of energy from waste in Sydney. Waste Management, 29:2188-2194.

Abbas El-Zein, Tim Langrish and Nigel Balaam. 2009. Blended teaching and learning of computer programming skills in engineering curricula. Advances in Engineering Education, 1(3).

Abbas El-Zein. 2009. On approaching health in the Arab world. Invited Commentary. International Journal of Public Health, 54(5):359-360.

Abbas El-Zein and R. Kerry Rowe. 2008. Impact on groundwater of concurrent leakage and diffusion of dichloromethane through geomembranes in landfill liners. Geosynthetics International, 15(1):55-71.

Abbas El-Zein. 2008. A generalized approach to the modelling of contaminant transport through intact and leaking geomembranes. International Journal for Numerical and Analytical Methods in Geomechanics, 32(3):265-287.

Abbas El-Zein, David Airey, Peter Bowden, Henriikka Clarkeburn. 2008. Sustainability and ethics as decision-making paradigms in engineering curricula. International Journal for Sustainability in Higher Education, 9(2):170-182.

Abbas El-Zein, Iman Nuwayhid, Mutassem Fadel, Salman Mroueh. 2007. Did a ban on diesel-fuel reduce emergency respiratory admissions for children? Science of the Total Environment,384:134-140.

Abbas El-Zein. 2006. Steady-state diffusion-advection by exponential finite elements. International Journal of Geomechanics ASCE, 6(6):428-434.

Samer Jabbour, Abbas El-Zein, Iman Nuwayhid, Rita Giacaman. 2006. Can actions for better health be a vehicle for social and political reform? British Medical Journal, 333:837-839.

Hala Tamim, Ghassan Akkari, Abbas El-Zein, Rana El Roueiheb, Zena El Shemaly. 2006. Exposure of school children to environmental cigarette and narghile smoke in Beirut. European Journal of Public Health, 16:509-512.

Abbas El-Zein, Rola Nasrallah, Iman Nuwayhid, Lea Kai, Jihad Makhoul. 2006. Why do neighbours have different environmental priorities? An analysis of environmental risk perception in a Beirut neighbourhood. Risk Analysis, 26(2):423-436.

Abbas El-Zein, John P. Carter and David W. Airey. 2006. Three-dimensional finite element method for the analysis of soil contamination. International Journal for Numerical and Analytical Methods in Geomechanics, 30(7), 577-597.

Abbas El-Zein. 2006. A Laplace boundary-element model of thermo-elastic consolidation of multi-layered media. Technical note. International Journal of Geomechanics ASCE, 6(2):136-140.

Abbas El-Zein, Rola Nasrallah, Iman Nuwayhid. 2006. Determinants of the willingness-to-participate in an environmental intervention. Environmental Management, 37(2):200-208.

Abbas El-Zein. 2005. Exponential finite elements for diffusion-advection problems. International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering, 62(15):2086-2103.

Abbas El-Zein, John Carter and David Airey. 2005. Multiple-porosity contaminant migration by finite-elements. International Journal of Geomechanics ASCE, 5(1):24-36.

Abbas El-Zein, Mylene Tewtel-Salem. 2005. On the association between high temperature and mortality in warm climates. Letter to the Editor. Science of the Total Environment, 343(1-3):273-275.

Abbas El-Zein, Mylene Tewtel-Salem and Gebran Nehme. 2004. A time-series analysis of daily mortality and air temperature in Greater Beirut. Science of the Total Environment, 330(1-3):71-80.

Conference Papers

Ingrid McCaroll, Abbas El-Zein, Nathalie Touze-Foltz. 2010. A Parametric Analysis of Seepage and Contaminant Transport Through Composite Liners With Three-Dimensional Defects. 3rd International symposium on geosynthetic clay liners, September 2010, Wurzburg, Germany.

Farzad Meysami Azad, David W Airey, R Kerry Rowe, Abbas El-Zein. 2010. Laboratory investigation of moisture content redistribution on the base of double composite liner systems. 6^th International Congress on Environmental Geotechnics, November 2010, New Delhi.

Abbas El-Zein and Nathalie Touze-Foltz. 2010. Equivalency of Landfill Liner Designs, including Clay Liners, Geosynthetics Liners and Polymer-Enhanced Mineral Barriers, under French Legislation. International Conference on Geosynthetics, Guaruja, Brazil, 2010.

Ali El Hanandeh and Abbas El-Zein. 2009. Energy from waste: A social multi-criteria evaluation framework. Australia New Zealand Conference on Ecological Economics, Darwin, October 2009.

Abbas El-Zein, Parnel Richards and Nigel Balaam. 2009. A stabilised finite element method for modelling fluid flow and contaminant migration in geosynthetics. Australian Geomechanics Society AGS Sydney Chapter Symposium, Geosynthetics: New Materials for a Modern Infrastructure, October 2009.

Abbas El-Zein and Nigel Balaam. 2008. SPAS: A New Finite-Element tool for modelling transport through damaged landfill liners, with advanced mass-conserving boundary conditions, 4^th European Conference on Geosynthetics, Edinburgh, September 2008, paper number 280.

Abbas El-Zein and R. Kerry Rowe. 2008. Parametric study of the effect on groundwater quality of leakage of benzene and toluene through composite liners. 4^th European Conference on Geosynthetics, Edinburgh, September 2008, paper number 231.

Ali El-Hanandeh and Abbas El-Zein. 2008. The viability of using film plastics in Sydney municipal solid waste as a source of energy. International Conference on Environmental Research and Technology (ICERT 08).

Ali El-Hanandeh and Abbas El-Zein. 2008. Waste to Energy: The Sydney Case. First International Conference of Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) Brunei Darussalam Network, 26-27 May 2008.

Abbas El-Zein and R. Kerry Rowe. 2007. Simultaneous leakage and diffusion of organic pollutants through damaged geomembranes. Numerical Model in Geomechanics, edited by Pande and Pietruszczak, Taylor and Francis Publishers, Proceedings of the 10^th International Symposium on Numerical Models in Geomechanics NUMOG X, Rhodes, Greece, 25-27 April 2007, 297-301.

Ali El-Hanandeh and Abbas El-Zein. 2007. A new stochastic multi-criteria decision analysis tool based on ELECTRE III method. Australia New Zealand Conference on Ecological Economics, 2007, Brisbane, Australia, July 2007 (awarded prize for best PhD paper).

Abbas El-Zein, Timothy Langrish, Nigel Balaam. 2007. A self-practice online tool for teaching and learning computational skills in engineering curricula. International Conference on Engineering Education (INEER), Portugal, September 2007.

Abbas El-Zein, David Airey, Peter Bowden, Henriikka Clarkeburn. 2007. Teaching sustainability and ethics in engineering degrees. International Conference on Engineering Education (INEER), Portugal, September 2007.

Abbas El-Zein. 2006. A mass-conservation boundary condition for the modeling of contaminant transport through leaking geo-membranes. Proceedings of the ISSMGE's 5^th International Conference on Environmental Geotechnics, Edited by HR Thomas, Cardiff, Wales, June 2006, Volume 2, 1131-1137.

Peter Bowden, David W. Airey and Abbas El-Zein. 2006. Underpinning a discipline-specific ethics course. Thirteenth Annual Australian Association for Professional and Applied Ethics Conference, June 12-14, Sydney.

Soil Pollution Analysis System SPAS

SPAS is a computer program, based on the Finite-Element Method (FEM), which simulates 2D and 3D problems of water flow and single-species chemical contamination (ie solute transport) in saturated and unsaturated soils. SPAS, written in-house at the Centre for Geotechnical Research, is a spinoff of the research of A/Prof Abbas El-Zein. It solves 28 variants of the flow equation, reactive diffusion-advection equation and Richards equation, including coupled hydro-chemical problems, under steady-state or time-dependent conditions, in 2D and 3D. It runs on windows and high-speed UNIX environments and includes the following features:

Processes:

-Darcy water flow, molecular diffusion, mechanical dispersion, advection, sorption and decay;

-multiple-porosity solute transport including fractures and immobile solutions;

-non-linear and time-dependent sorption;

-choice of water-characteristic curves (e.g., van Genuchten, Gardner, van Genuchten and Muallem).

Boundary and Initial Conditions:

-hydraulic boundary conditions include total head, pressure head, Darcy velocity and combined head and velocity boundary conditions;

-solute transport boundary conditions include concentration, flux, advective discharge, mass-conserving conditions and combined concentration and flux conditions;

-initial total head, pressure head and solute concentrations.

Geometry Features:

-interactive graphic pre-processor with simple logical sequence for building models;

-automatic generation of detailed composite liner features (single and double liners, compacted clay or geosynthetics liners, geomembranes with or without defects, attenuation layers, aquifers, slopes and extensions);

-for experienced users, simple text-command data files with parametric specification of variables.

Finite-Element Meshing and Solvers:

-automatic mesh generator in 2D and 3D;

-linear and quadratic element types in 2D (3-noded, 4-noded, 6-noded, 8-noded) and 3D (8-noded, 20-noded);

-optimized automatic selection of time-marching or Laplace-domain solvers;

-use of optimized solvers of algebraic systems of equations.

Post-Processing:

-2D and 3D colour contours and graphs for viewing results including up to 20 variables, e.g., hydraulic heads, degree of saturation, pressure, velocities, concentration, fluxes, sorption concentration etc.;

-moving contours for visualising pollution plume evolution;

-flux visualisation;

-calculation of hydraulic and chemical leakage rates in liners;

-results can be exported to MS Excel or PostScript format.

Authorised by: Pro-Head (IT), School of Civil Engineering. Last Updated: Friday 21 October 2011 02:48:09 PM