HYDROLOGY AND CLIMATE CHANGE

Specifically, the following SDGs of the 2030 agenda will be covered:

• Goal 6: substantially increase water-use efficiency across all sectors and ensure sustainable withdrawals and supply of freshwater to address water scarcity and substantially reduce the number of people suffering from water scarcity (6.4); protect and restore water-related ecosystems, including mountains, forests, wetlands, rivers, aquifers and lakes (6.6)
• Goal 13: Improve education, awareness-raising and human and institutional capacity on climate change mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction and early warning (13.3)
• Goal 11: Substantially increase the number of cities and human settlements adopting and implementing integrated policies and plans towards inclusion, resource efficiency, mitigation and adaptation to climate change, resilience to disasters, and develop and implement, in line with the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, holistic disaster risk management at all levels (11.b)
• Goal 15: combat desertification, restore degraded land and soil, including land affected by desertification, drought and floods, and strive to achieve a land degradation-neutral world (15.3)

he course mainly is composed by:

• lectures;
• guided applications, aimed at the practical application of the concepts and methods of most commonly used analysis and modeling of hydrology and related natural hazard mitigation;
• guided tour of the DICAR green roof, to illustrate concepts of hydrological monitoring.  

INTRODUCTION

Course presentation. Development of hydrological science.

INTRODUCTION TO THE HYDROLOGICAL CYCLE 

Hydrological cycle components. Human effects on the hydrological cycle. Distribution of water resources on earth.

INTRODUCTION TO CLIMATE CHANGE

Climate and weather. Structure of the atmosphere. Earth radiation budget. Greenhouse effect. Emission scenarios and simulation of future climate. Climate change adaptation strategies.

HYDROLOGICAL INFORMATION

Instruments and methods for measuring hydrological variables. Sources of information. Hydrological and Hydrographic services. Radar and satellites. Reanalysis data.

WATERSHED AND DRAINAGE NETWORK CHARACTERIZATION USING GIS

Watershed delineation. Geomorphologic characterization of watersheds. Streamflow network characterization. Horton and Strahler’s laws.

INTRODUCTION TO PROBABILITY THEORY AND STATISTICS

Statistical description of data. Probability definitions. Probability function. Properties of probability functions. Random variables, cumulative distribution function (cdf) and probability density function (pdf). Discrete parametric cdf. Continuous parametric cdf. Return period and risk. Distribution fitting and goodness of fit assessment. Statistical tests. Regression analysis.

PRECIPITATION

Formation of precipitation. Precipitation types. Distribution of precipitation. Estimation of areal precipitation. Extreme precipitation frequency analysis. Intensity duration frequency curves.

FLOOD ANALYSIS

Objectives of flood analysis. Formation of runoff and streamflows. Infiltration. Hydrograph components. Rainfall-runoff models. Peak discharge estimation. Design hyetographs. Rainfall-runoff models. Rational method. Time of concentration estimation. Unit hydrograph. Instantaneous Unit Hydrograph. Conceptual models (time-area, linear reservoir, Nash, Clark). SCS Unit Hydrograph. GIUH. HEC-HMS software.

SHORT INTRODUCTION TO OTHER HYDROLOGICAL NATURAL HAZARDS

Drought, aridity and desertification. Landslides and their hydrological modeling, landslide early warning thresholds. 

IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON HYDROLOGICAL CYCLE AND RELATED HAZARDS

Climate change projections with climate models (GCM-RCM). Hydrological modeling of future climate. Examples of impacts on extreme hydrological hazards. 

1. DINGMAN, S.L. Physical hydrology, Prentice-Hall, 2002.

2. MAIDMENT, D. (ed.), Handbook of hydrology, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1993.

3. BRAS R., Hydrology: an introduction to hydrologic science, Addison-Wesley Publ. Company, Reading Ma, 1990.

4. FERRO, V. La sistemazione dei bacini idrografici, McGraw-Hill Education, 2013. [In Italian]

5. Peres, D., J., Longo, G., Palazzolo, N., Barbagallo, S., Cancelliere, A. (a cura di), Impatto dei cambiamenti climatici sulla disponibilità e la domanda idrica, Quaderni CSEI Catania, III serie, Vol. 26, Catania, Febbraio 2023.  SBNPal0359431 [In Italian]

6. MOISELLO U., Idrologia tecnica, La Goliardica Pavese, Pavia, 1997. [In Italian]

Handouts and other material will be distributed in class and made available through Teams and website.

• Natural and anthropized hydrological cycle
• Statistical analysis of hydrological data
• Fitting probability distributions and statical testing (graphical and analytical)
• Precipitation severity duration frequency curves
• Characterization of watersheds through GIS
• Precipitation measurements
• Streamflow measurements
• Flood hydrograph
• Drought analysis
• Climate change scenarios
• Hydrological modeling of climate change