Water resources engineering and management
CIVIL-466 / 5 credits
Teacher(s): Bieri Martin Peter, Leite Ribeiro Marcelo, Perona Paolo
Language: English
Summary
The course focuses on designing and managing water systems to ensure sustainable use for both human and environmental needs. Engineering aspects:water quantity, quality, timing, distribution. Management: economic evaluation of water systems in the context of global changes and financial constraints.
Content
- Introduction and definitions: water availability, security and scarcity, river basins, riparian states, etc.;
- Water uses, supply and withdrawals: traditional vs non-traditional, consumptive vs non-consumptive uses, etc.;
- Time series analysis and modelling: water resources & climate change;
- Multipurpose water reservoir design and management (irrigation, domestic and industrial use, flood control, energy production);
- Review of pipe flow hydraulics: water distribution networks;
- Pumps and turbines: characteristics and operating points;
- Hydropower production;
- Drought analysis and flood control;
- Instream flow protection: environmental flows, static vs dynamic flow releases;
- Engineering economics: economic indexes, and marginal analysis
- Water allocation: multicriteria optimization, game theory, conflict and cooperation;
- Integrated Water Management:
- Advanced topics in water resources engineering: water footprint, virtual water network, etc.;
- WRM in action: balancing demand and supply;
- WRM in action: transboundary river basins and the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) concept;
- WRM in action: water economics and financing; investment and cash flow;
- WRM in action: decision making and risk assessment;
Keywords
Water resources, hydrological modelling, water uses, water allocation, optimization, decision making, management, sustainability, conclict and cooperation, water footprint
Learning Prerequisites
Required courses
Hydrology, elementary fluid mechanics or hydraulics related courses
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, the student must be able to:
- Assess / Evaluate and model water resources a vailabity at different scales.
- Assess / Evaluate Calculate different water needs.
- Formulate an integrated and sustainable water management concept.
- Design distribution networks and systems involving hydraulic machines.
- Perform a basic economic analysis and assess the economic value of water projects.
- Distinguish between project development with or without profitability goal.
- Assess / Evaluate water issues in the current economic context using engineering economics tools.
- Optimize the regulation of a watercourse with respect to human and environmental needs.
- Implement time series analysis and modeling concepts to hydrologic data.
Transversal skills
- Take responsibility for environmental impacts of her/ his actions and decisions.
- Take account of the social and human dimensions of the engineering profession.
- Plan and carry out activities in a way which makes optimal use of available time and other resources.
- Use both general and domain specific IT resources and tools
Teaching methods
Ex-cathedra teaching, exercise and small project
Expected student activities
- Attendance at lectures and exercise sessions
- Commitment to exercises and project
- Ability to basic use of common data analysis and programming softwares (e.g., Matlab, R, Python, Excel, etc.)
Assessment methods
20% Exercise assignments
10% small project
70% Written exam
Supervision
| Office hours | Yes |
| Assistants | Yes |
| Forum | No |
Resources
Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI)
No
Bibliography
Moodle
Notes/Handbook
Moodle
Moodle Link
Prerequisite for
Future water engineering and hydraulic courses, e.g. Irrigation and drainage engineering; ecohydrology, fluvial ecomorphology, dam engineering, etc. Because of the engineering economics, the optimization and the time series analysis acquired concepts, this course is however propedeutical to many non-directly related hydraulic courses proper of SIE and GC.
In the programs
- Semester: Spring
- Exam form: Written (summer session)
- Subject examined: Water resources engineering and management
- Courses: 3 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
- Exercises: 1 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
- TP: 1 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
- Type: optional
- Semester: Spring
- Exam form: Written (summer session)
- Subject examined: Water resources engineering and management
- Courses: 3 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
- Exercises: 1 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
- TP: 1 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
- Type: optional
- Semester: Spring
- Exam form: Written (summer session)
- Subject examined: Water resources engineering and management
- Courses: 3 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
- Exercises: 1 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
- TP: 1 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
- Type: optional
- Semester: Spring
- Exam form: Written (summer session)
- Subject examined: Water resources engineering and management
- Courses: 3 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
- Exercises: 1 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
- TP: 1 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
- Type: optional
- Semester: Spring
- Exam form: Written (summer session)
- Subject examined: Water resources engineering and management
- Courses: 3 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
- Exercises: 1 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
- Type: optional
- Semester: Spring
- Exam form: Written (summer session)
- Subject examined: Water resources engineering and management
- Courses: 3 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
- Exercises: 1 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
- Type: optional
- Semester: Spring
- Exam form: Written (summer session)
- Subject examined: Water resources engineering and management
- Courses: 3 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
- Exercises: 1 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
- TP: 1 Hour(s) per week x 14 weeks
- Type: optional