The course of Hydrology gives all civil engineers a basic knowledge about the physical processes governing the water cycle and the quantitative techniques to model and estimate the relevant variables, such as precipitation and river discharge. Mathematical and statistical tools that are suitable to face common tasks in hydrology will be presented and their practical use illustrated with examples. Traditional hydrologic problems, such as quantifying design discharge values for civil infrastructures, assessing the return time of extreme events, or evaluating the water resources for hydropower or irrigation purposes, will be tackled from both a theoretical and a practical point of view. Different processes of the water cycle, from precipitation formation to soil water infiltration and vegetation evapotranspiration, will be studied to give an appropriate physical background to the theories and techniques that are used in practice. Advanced and innovative aspects of hydrology will be introduced where possible, for an up-to-date formation of future engineers.

After this course, students will be expected to have gained knowledge of the physical processes and principles governing the rainfall formation, the rainfall-runoff transformation, the soil water balance at different temporal and spatial scales. Students will acquire the principles of hydrologic data management and analysis as well as information on the measurement of precipitation and discharge. Students will come to know a set of modeling techniques, with the corresponding hypotheses, merits and limitations, useful to analyze different real problems, to estimate variables and to identify solutions. Expected acquired skills include: the use of probabilistic methods for the definition of rainfall and discharge design values and for the verification of past extreme events; the layout of hydrologic water balances for the estimation of peak floods or available water resources; modeling of soil-water interactions at different temporal and spatial scales.

Students must have taken a course of hydraulics and know the basic principles of hydrostatics, flow dynamics, pressure and force distribution. Knowledge of the fundamentals of probability and statistics is also necessary. In addition, students should have a basic knowledge of informatics and possibly know a programming software (e.g., Matlab) for the development of assignments and exercises. The course attendance requires fluent spoken and written English.

(i) Statistical hydrology (20 h) Definition of variables and basic statistical concepts, data analysis, statistical inference; Probabilistic models, methods for parameter estimation; Introduction to statistical tests, goodness-of-fit tests, definition of design values; (ii) Precipitations (10 h) Physical principles, measurement and instruments, assessment of areal rainfall and spatial interpolation; Statistical models for precipitation, IDF curves. (iii) Water and soil (10 h) Principles of soil-water interactions, hydraulic properties of soils, retention curves; Water in porous media, Richard’s equation, infiltration models; Effective rainfall, basin-scale water balance models, SCS-Curve Number model. (iv) Rainfall-runoff transformation (10 h) Morphology of river basins, relevant characteristics, hypsographic curve; Rainfall-runoff models, design hyetographs and flood hydrograph, kinematic model, IUH; (v) Water resources (10 h) Energy balance of soil surface, potential evapotranspiration, evaporation from free surface; Water resources in agriculture, actual evapotranspiration, vegetation and water stress, irrigation; Water resources for hydropower, flow duration curves, productivity of power plants, environmental flows.

The course will primarily address the Sustainable Development Goal n.6, related to the sustainable use of freshwater resources, but will also briefly discuss issues related to the energy and climate Goals.

The course is organized in lectures and exercise-classes. Lectures are devoted to the presentation of the course topics, in their theoretical aspects and applicative examples, and they will be held mainly by the lecturer who will illustrate the concepts at the blackboard. Exercise-classes will be held at the informatics LAIB, where students will form small workgroups of 2-3 people to develop assignments and numerical exercises at the computer, with the assistance of the instructor. Groups will be asked to prepare a written report for each assignment, summarizing the development and results obtained; the reports will not be graded but they can be used as supporting material during the exam.

All material that is necessary for the course will be presented and discussed in class. Reference books are: - Kottegoda, Rosso (2008) “Applied Statistics for Civil and Environmental Engineering”, Blackwell Publishing, for the statistical parts, - Chow, Maidments, Mays (1988) “Applied Hydrology”, McGraw-Hill, for the physical hydrology parts. Additional readings can be found in international reference textbooks. Some specific chapters will be provided to the students on the course web page. A useful online reference is: echo2.epfl.ch/VICAIRE/

Modalità di esame: Prova scritta (in aula);

Exam: Written test;

... Students will undergo a written exam (duration: 2 hours) including 2-3 exercises and one open question. The exercises will have to be solved by hand calculations (no laptop computers) and are aimed at verifying the learning and the understanding of quantitative methods for hydrologic applications. The exercises are shorter and different than the assignments developped during exercises-classes, but the use of assignment reports will be allowed during the exam in order to support the exercise solutions. The open question will focus on topics introduced during the lectures and it is aimed at verifying the acquired knowledge about hydrological processes and principles and the theory behind the modeling techniques introduced. The exam evaluation, given by the sum of marks obtained in the exercises and the open question, will take into account the resolution methods, the correctness of the numerical solutions, the knowledge demonstrated and the clarity of presentation.

Gli studenti e le studentesse con disabilità o con Disturbi Specifici di Apprendimento (DSA), oltre alla segnalazione tramite procedura informatizzata, sono invitati a comunicare anche direttamente al/la docente titolare dell'insegnamento, con un preavviso non inferiore ad una settimana dall'avvio della sessione d'esame, gli strumenti compensativi concordati con l'Unità Special Needs, al fine di permettere al/la docente la declinazione più idonea in riferimento alla specifica tipologia di esame.