River Basin Hydrology and Water Management

Floods and droughts are among the most concerning water system threats and may be aggravated by land use and climate change. Water resources engineers use process understanding, mathematical models and observation technology including remote sensing to study floods, droughts and the effects of interventions.

In this module students will learn about hydrological processes that occur at different scales in river basins and how they are affected by land use change, climate change, and/or human interventions. Focus lies on floods, droughts and the role of vegetation. Students will learn about the physics of hydrological processes and how to observe and model them and to evaluate the effects of management strategies on the river basins taking ethical considerations into account.

Processes in river basin hydrology and water management

Link to learning objectives of the module:

A3: LO1.

In this first topic students will focus on understanding the physical processes at different scales through lectures and discussing recent journal papers. The specific topics include:

- Macroscale Laws, structure and organization in hydrological processes.

- Role of Vegetation en land management in the Water Cycle

- Flood processes en management

- Cold region processes

- Drought processes en management

Remote sensing data and data assimilation in river basin hydrology and water management

Link to learning objectives of the module:

A3: LO3.

In this second topic students will learn, via tutorials and assignments, about observation techniques, data handling and how to use them in modelling.

• Remote sensing data types, sources and properties

• Accessing, handling and processing data

• Automatizing data access

• Learning from data: basic concepts of data assimilation

Models in river basin hydrology and water management

Link to learning objectives of the module:

A3: LO2.

The third topic aims to conceptualize the hydrological processes such that the effects of climate and land use change can be quantitatively evaluated. Typical hydrological and river basins model concepts will be explained and how to calibrate and test them.

• Model types and applications in Hydrology

• Flow paths

• Model parameter calibration and testing

• Sources of uncertainty and the role of inverse, ill-posed problems

• Model evaluation and selection techniques