Quality, Quantity and Design, Information and Advice

Water resources engineers develop engineering interventions to protect society from droughts, flooding and water pollution and minimize the scarcity of potable water. The design of these interventions requires fundamental understanding of processes that influence water availability and water quality.

Unit 1: Quality, quantity and design

In this part of the module students will study water quality and biochemical processes, the natural hydrological cycle, and the man-made urban water cycle (drinking water, wastewater, etc.) through lectures and design exercises of a range of water resources engineering systems (irrigation, reservoirs, polders, drinking water supply, etc.). This module contains three different subthemes: Environmental Water Quality en Biogeochemical Processes, Environmental Water Quantity en Hydrological Processes, and Water resources engineering system design with distinct teaching approaches.

Environmental Water Quality en Biogeochemical Processes

Link to learning objectives of the module:

SS: LO1 and LO4.

This subtheme addresses environmental water quality and biogeochemistry aspects relevant to water resources management. Knowledge about the water quality and reaction processes and matter cycles taught in the ENV programme module will be used. Through cases students learn to describe relevant water quality and biogeochemical processes and make first order quantitative descriptions using hand calculations and open access software.

Specific topics addressed include:

• Dissolution and precipitation of minerals; Thermodynamics and kinetics; pH/alkalinity

• Water-Air interaction and effects

• Sorption reactions: adsorption, ion-exchange

• Sorption reactions: surface complexation, pathogen filtration

• Redox reactions and microbial growth; kinetics

• Mass transport: Advection, dispersion, reaction, mixing

• Chemical modelling of water quality

• Interpreting and modelling of water quality data from environmental systems

Environmental Water Quantity en Hydrological Processes

Link to learning objectives of the module:

SS: LO2 and LO4.

This subtheme addresses environmental water quantity with a specific focus on hydrological and hydraulic processes, both in natural systems and man-made systems. It builds upon the knowledge on the hydrological cycle and water transport processes introduced in the ENV programme module. Through cases students learn to describe and quantify fluxes and stores in both the natural and the man-made water cycles. Topics that will be discussed are precipitation, evaporation, groundwater, drinking water, wastewater.

Specific topics addressed include:

• Hydrological cycle in natural and man-made systems: precipitation, evaporation and vegetation, unsaturated zone, groundwater, human fluxes)

• Flow and discharge in rivers and open channels

• Flow and discharge in (pressurised) pipe systems and networks

• Flow at water control structures (weirs, orifices, pumps)

Water resources engineering system design

Link to learning objectives of the module:

SS: LO3, LO4 and LO5.

Process understanding is required to design water resources engineering systems. In this subtheme the functional dimensioning of several common water resources engineering systems will be discussed. Partly process understanding introduced in the abovementioned subthemes will be applied and partly new process understanding will be taught. Furthermore, first order design and dimensioning models (formulas) will also be part of the material.Specific topics addressed include:

• Multi-purpose reservoirs

• Irrigation systems

• Polder and drainage systems

• Urban drainage systems (piped and non-piped)

• Rainwater harvesting systems

• Piped water distribution systems

• Blue green infrastructure

• Wastewater treatment systems

Unit 2 + 3: Information and Advice

Water resources engineers advise stakeholders on solution strategies for problems such as water pollution, water scarcity, floods and limited access to safe water. They build advice on extensive problem and data analysis and consider the ethical implications of their advice.

The second part of the steppingstone module Information and Advice will take place in Q3 and consists of a deepening of the data analysis skills from the MUDE specifically for water and of an advisory group project. In this project students will advise a stakeholder on a real-life water resources engineering project based on substantial data analysis. Several projects will be offered on various scales (local to catchment) and systems (urban, rural etc.). Steppingstone 2 will be taught as an intensive course of three weeks full time, including lectures, workshops and tutorial sessions. Information and advice are divided into the lecture- and exercise-base sub-theme ''Data quality and data analysis'' and the project-based sub-theme ''Evidence-based advice''.

Data quality and data analysis

Link to learning objectives of the module:

SS: LO6, LO7 and LO8.

This subtheme focusses on understanding and predicting the spatiotemporal behaviour of water resources engineering systems based on data. Students learn about typical monitoring methods and uncertainties associated and how to use statistical techniques for data analysis and prediction. This subtheme builds upon the faculty wide MUDE.

Specific topics include:

• Geographical Information Systems

• Raster and polygon data

• Spatiotemporal patterns in man-dominated fluxes such as (drinking) water demand

• Uncertainty and propagation of errors in hydrological time series

• Correlation and persistence in precipitation and other timeseries

• Frequency analysis and extreme value analysis of precipitation and discharge

• Methods for determining extreme (design) precipitation flood and drought conditions

• Time dependent groundwater flow

• (groundwater) timeseries analysis

• Spatiotemporal patterns in surface and groundwater quality

• Leakage detection

Evidence-based advice

Link to learning objectives of the module:

SS: LO6, LO9, LO10 and LO11.

In this advisory group project students will work in a diverse team in terms of personalities, cultures and study background and advise a stakeholder on a real-life water resources engineering project based on substantial data analysis. In addition, they will reflect on the challenges and opportunities that working in a diverse team brings and on their (ethical) professional responsibility as an engineer in such an advisory project. This part builds upon data quality and data analysis and on the experience with teamwork and ethics that students gained in the ENV programme module.

Specific attention will be paid to data availability and how to handle limited data availability. Students will practice systematic procedure to make assumptions and how to assess the effect of these assumptions on their final advice.

Specific topics include:

• Problem analysis for water resources engineering students

• Data availability and data scarcity

• Assumption development and assessment (sensitivity analysis)

• Team roles and team behaviour

• SCRUM

• Professional ethics on the responsible use of data

• Presentation skills