Each civil engineering activity requires, first, to know the environmental condition, starting from the geospatial data, digital mapping and open data. Civil engineers work with a voluminous amount of data from a variety of sources. Geographic information system (GIS) technology provides the tools for creating, managing, analyzing, and visualizing the data associated with developing and managing infrastructures. GIS allows civil engineers skilled in this topic to manage and share data and turn it into easily understood reports and visualizations that can be analyzed and communicated to others. This data can be related to both a project and its broader geographic context. It also helps organizations and governments work together to develop strategies for sustainable development. Thus, GIS is playing an increasingly important role in civil engineering companies and decision making processes, supporting all phases of the infrastructure life cycle. The course starts showing how to design a correct and useful GIS model and how to organize the geospatial data (data format, web service, data collection). Then it is developed around three main pillars: geomatics, hydrology and transport. More specifically, geomatics is adopted to learning the geospatial data, data modelling, GIS model and spatial analyst. These knowledges are then applied in two important domains of civil engineering: hydrology and transport. In the first case, GIS will be used to assess hydrological variables, such as precipitation and discharge, quantify water resources and produce risk maps. In the latter case, GIS will be adopted to make a transport network analysis, to show how to track vehicles through GPS to infer traffic flow measures and to study the issue of accessibility. The course is based on the concept of “learning by doing”, meaning that all theoretical parts will be supported by a practical activity in the informatics laboratory, in particular about half of the course will be focused on practical applications of GIS for problem solving in civil engineering.

Knowledge of GIS and geospatial data, data modelling, statistical analysis and spatial analysis. Moreover, application of Geomatics techniques for mapping. In particular, the students will learn to master geospatial information for hydrological applications. They will aquire the skills for producing and manipulating maps of variables, such as precipitation and temperature, soil properties, geophisical variables and land use. Students will learn to manage distributed variables for hydrological modelling, to produce basic risk maps and to assess water resources according to regionalized methods. For the transport part, students will learn how to represent and analyse road networks, to match them with GPS traces which are nowadays widely available by the diffusion of nomadic devices and to produce spatial accessibility maps by public transport.

In addition to the basic mathematical knowledge, we require the basics of geomatics, such as geodesy (surfaces and reference systems), cartography and some basic concept about digital data. The course also requires a basic knowledge of hydrology (soil water balance, flow duration curves, rainfall-runoff principles, IUH method). and of traffic flow theory (fundamental diagram of traffic flow). The course attendance requires fluent spoken and written English, in that all lectures, exercises and exams will be in English and the communication among students and with the lecturers is fundamental.

The course is mainly composed by three pillars: geomatics, hydrology and transport. In particular, Geomatics will offer the theoretical knowledge about GIS design, data modelling, GIS data collection, geospatial data analysis and data processing. These competences will be applied in different practical cases, considering some problems in Hydrology and Transport domains. GEOMATICS: - Reference system : briefly recall and how the Reference system are used in GIS - Data format and Open service (WMS, WFS, WCS) - GIS DATA MODEL and DB model (model builder) - Spatial analyst - Geometric and Topological analysis - DTM and DSM analysis - ODK system for data collection - Relation and join - Use of ODK solution for data collection - Use of symbology and statistical tool in GIS - Network analyst - Geocoding - Raster and vector analysis - Layout - 3D GIS MODEL and City modelling HYDROLOGY CASE 1: Spatial analyses on precipitation data Import time series of precipitation data from raingauges; perform a spatial interpolation with different methods (Thiessen, inverse distance, kriging); produce maps of interpolated values; perform comparisons and extractions. CASE 2: Catchment, geomorphological characteristics and stream network Import the digital elevation model (DEM) of an area; identify data issues (gaps, discontinuities, …) and arrange them; define the drainage network and identify a catchment of interest; import data about land use and soil characteristics; define the classes of land use and soil type for SCS-CN (Curve Number) method and compute the average CN.CASE 3: River cross-sections and discharge assessment Select a relevant river cross section and extract the profile (for hydraulic applications) use a regional method to assess the flow duration curve in the section; compute a peak discharge using precipitation data and CN values; with a given flow rating curve, derive the flow depth and map the risk of inundation in the surrounding of the chosen cross section. TRANSPORT CASE 1: Road network representation Import a road network into GIS from sources such as Openstreetmap (which is obviously different from simply displaying an OSM layer in GIS). Identify data quality issues (connectivity, one-way links...) and potential workaround to fix them. Perform some analyses on such network based on the given network attributes. CASE 2: GPS applications in transport planning Matching some GPS traces from vehicles with the road network built in workshop 1. Derive paths and traffic flow measures to show how congestion differently affects different road users. CASE 3: Spatial analysis of public transport services Import and visualize GTFS data describing the offer of public transport in a city. Perform an accessibility analysis to and through public transport to support transport policy decision makers on the development of public transport systems.

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.

Educational material will be distributed during the course All material that is necessary for the course will be presented and discussed in class. Reference books are: - GIS fundamentals 2017 Stephen Wise, CRS press, 2° edition - GIS Fundamentals: A First Text on Geographic Information Systems - Electronic course reader distributed by the instructor through the course webpage, for the transportation engineering 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 orale obbligatoria; Progetto di gruppo;

Exam: Compulsory oral exam; Group project;

... The exam aims to test the individual achievement of the basic objective of the teaching, the ability to develop a process in which knowledge of design and project proposal are connected in each phase. The autonomy and maturity of each student are verified by finding a correct solutions to some problems explained during lectures or tutorials. Working on small team, specific problems (about transport or hydrology issues) will be solved using dedicated GIS models. Each project will be described in a report that will be graded, forming a part of the final score (50%). If the project’s score is positive (>= 18), the student will be admitted to the (mandatory) oral exam which will be graded separately (50% final score). It starts from the activities carried out during the laboratories and external survey, that occurred individually processed by the comment of the results. Usually the oral exam requires about 30 minutes and it is generally based on 3 questions.

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.