Sustainable Design of Water Resources System is a subject included in the study plan of the master degree programs in Civil Engineering and Earth Resources Engineering at the University of Bologna. The course will be taught during 48 hours of frontal teaching, including lectures given by the teacher and exercises developed by collaborative work by students and the teacher.
The purpose of the course is to provide an overview of modern techniques for estimating design variables for water resources systems in the presence of human impact. Systems considered during the course will be natural and artificial river networks and water supply systems. Design variables that will be considered here are those quantifying water resources availability in natural and human impacted river networks, peak flow, and design hydrograph. The course will focus on rainfall-runoff modeling as a tool to assess river flow regime and human impact in ungauged basins; the impact of climate change will be discussed as well as techniques for increasing the resilience of water resources systems.
The teacher will make extensive use of interaction with the students to stimulate interest for the topic and the development of personal ideas. Interactive activities will be optional. If the students opt for them, they will contribute to the final evaluation.
Interactive activities will consist of:
- Integration and further development of the tutorials distributed by the teacher. Tutorials will be made available through a Google drive, students will have the opportunity to make comments and changes to the text. The documents resulting from the interaction between students and the teacher will be published on the web page of the teacher.
- Preparing a discussion on specific optional topics. Students will be suggested to collect additional information on a selected subject, by eventually reading scientific papers suggested by the teacher, and will be asked to present a short Powerpoint presentation (10-15 minutes) during the lectures.
- Preparing a Wikipedia entry, in English, related to sustainability, hydrology and water resources management.
- Preparing a 10-minute question&answer session "Challenge the teacher".
- Additional activities possibly suggested by the students.
Students that participate to the interacting activities will be asked to prepare a brief summary of their work. The teacher will give to the students the option to evaluate their interacting activities as part of their final exam. This is an opportunity to make the evaluation of the student a continuous and interactive process along the semester. For more details on interactive activities see here.
The tutorials for the course will be delivered in the form of open web pages, open media and freely accessible videos of all the lectures, for the sake of developing academic education through fully open information.
Tutorial web pages for the lectures (the list will be updated as soon as lectures are given):
- Premise - The learning process adopted in the course
- Sustainability in the 21st century
- Sustainable management of water resources
- Assessing water resources availability - Inductive methods
- Assessing water resources availability - Deductive methods
- Model calibration and validation
- Design of river barrages
- Climate change and water resources
- Assessment of human impact on water resources
- Decision theory
- Salt water intrusion
Tutorial web pages for the practical exercises (the list may be updated during the course depending on the ambition and preferences of students):
- Short introduction to R and R Studio
- Exercise: estimation of the flow duration curve. Suggested R code.
- Exercise: Application of the linear reservoir rainfall-runoff model Mean areal rainfall and evapotranspiration data (hourly data for one year) River flow data (hourly data for one year) Suggested R code
- Calibration of the Hymod rainfall-runoff model. Suggested R code for resolving the exercise and applying the Hymod model. Mean areal rainfall and evapotranspiration data (hourly data for one year). River flow data (hourly data for one year).
- Application of pairwise comparison for decision making. The theory of pairwise comparison was only briefly introduced during the lectures. The text and suggested R code of the exercise give all the required information and details.
The videos of the lectures are available at the link below: Playlist of Sustainable Design of Water Resources Systems Videos will be made available within one week after the lecture.
The calendar of the lectures is given here below. Please note that changes may occur. Any variation will be communicated by the teacher to the students one week earlier at the latest. If the schedule is not significantly altered the course will terminate around the mid of May.
- Feb 26, 2 hours
- Feb 27, 2 hours
- March 6, 2 hours
- March 12, 2 hours
- March 13, 2 hours
- March 19, 2 hours
- March 20, 2 hours
- March 26, 2 hours
- March 27, 2 hours
- April 16, 2 hours
- April 17, 2 hours
- April 23, 2 hours
- April 24, 2 hours
- May 7, 2 hours
- May 8, 3 hours
- May 14, 2 hours
- May 15, 3 hours
- May 17, 3 hours
- May 21, 2 hours
- May 22, 3 hours
- May 28, 2 hours
- May 29, 2 hours
Learning outcome will be assessed through an oral examination. The exam typically lasts for about 20-30 minutes and is articulated through 3-4 questions. The student will be given the option to include interactive activities as part of the exam; in this case the duration of the oral examination may be shorter. The teacher may require to provide written response to one question and may ask to develop simple exercises in written form, involving simple calculations. One question aims to assess the ability of the student to deliver a clear and well articulated presentation (this question could be addressed with an interactive activity). Questions are related to the topics that are taught during the lectures and are described in the supporting documents. The teacher may ask questions not directly related to what has been discussed during the lecture in order to assess outstanding capabilities of the student to integrate the notions delivered by the teacher.
The highest score (30/30) is reserved to students who demonstrate a full knowledge of the notions, a very good ability to address questions through an efficient synthesis, and a very good presentation. The laude is reserved to students who demonstrate exceptional motivation and integrate the course content with additional notions by following their personal interest and attitude.
The teacher is available for a first pre-exam as soon as the lecture are finished. 3 official exam dates will be scheduled from the official closure of lecture until the end of July. Exam dates will be fixed in agreement with the students by the first week of April.
The teacher is available to provide clarifications on request, by receiving individual students or groups. The office of the teacher is located at the Direzione of the Department DICAM, ground floor, Via del Risorgimento. The entrance is from the internal courtyard looking towards Via Vallescura. Teacher can be contacted by email.
- 4 views