At the Department of Civil Engineering Hydraulic Division, we are working with the use of our water resources as well as the waste problems of our society

At the Department of Civil Engineering Hydraulic Division, we are working with the use of our water resources as well as the waste problems of our society. A sustainable management of the available water resources belongs among the greatest challenges that the world is faced with. A sufficient amount of water of an acceptable quality is needed for irrigation (food production), energy production (hydro power), water supply (public and industrial) and recreation.

The department's activities fall primarily within the following area:

Hydraulic engineering;  Hydraulic conditions in water courses, watershed management, flow control and environmental consequences thereof, flood analysis and flood control, hydraulic structures, hydro power plants and dams.

Hydraulic and Hydrologic engineers work to prevent floods, to supply water for cities, industry and irrigation, to treat wastewater, to protect beaches, and to manage and redirect rivers. In the hydraulics and hydrology profession you will be using scientific study of the properties, distribution, and circulation of water on the surface of the land, in the soil and underlying rocks, and in the atmosphere.

In Civil Engineering's Hydraulic and Hydrologic Engineering specialty group, also sometimes termed Water Resources Engineering, you will deal with problems and issues involving the flow and storage of water. Specific applications have traditionally arisen in urban drainage, measures for mitigating the effects of floods and droughts, water supply, water treatment, and coastal protection.

More recently, the flow implications for water quality have become of greater concern, and the transport of sediment, nutrients, and pollutants in natural or engineered watercourses has received greater attention. The Hydraulic and Hydrologic Faculty members are particularly interested in applying the latest software and hardware technologies to investigate, understand, and model fundamental flow and transport processes with the widest range of applications. Research opportunities may be found in projects dealing with turbulent flows, watershed hydrology, environmental hydraulics, and contaminant transport.

Research interests of the Department of Civil Engineering Hydraulic Division include:

International water resources development

Watershed management

Pipe hydraulics

Open channel hydraulics

River mechanics

Large-scale hydrologic processes, hydrometeorology and hydroclimatology

Submarine debris flows

Environmental systems analysis

Urban hydrology

Predictions in ungauged catchments

Groundwater hydrology and contamination

Mathematical modeling