B8639 - WATER ENGINEERING AND CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION DESIGN PROJECTS

Academic Year 2025/2026

  • Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
  • Campus: Bologna
  • Corso: Second cycle degree programme (LM) in Civil Engineering (cod. 6708)

Learning outcomes

Students attending the course will delve into water engineering design projects. Students will acquire knowledge on standards and procedures towards resilient design solutions under changing climatic and socioeconomic conditions. Students will learn the use of open source softwares to analyse the water cycle and related hydraulic problems. Interaction and collaboration between students will be fostered through group activities during classes.

Course contents

Recommended Prerequisites

All lectures, apart from seminars, will be held in english. Therefore, comprehension of the english language is necessary to successfully follow the course and utilize the provided learning materials.

 

Program

Hydraulic evaluation of a river cross section against flood risk, considering also changing climatic conditions. The student will be able to identify critical rainfall events, compute the associated river flow and perform a preliminary flood risk assessment.

The main activities include:

  • Rainfall statistical analysis

  • Definition of Depth-Duration-Frequency (DDF) curves for relevant durations and return periods

  • Catchment-scale infiltration and runoff production assuming several rainfall sequences, including the annual maximum rainfall with a return period of 100 years, considering also the effect of climate change

  • Analysis of high-resolution digital elevation models (DEM) for the characterization of river cross sections properties

  • Water depth computation and preliminary flood risk assessment

Readings/Bibliography

Teaching material, including ppt, notes and scientific articles, and videos of each lesson are available on virtuale.unibo.it

For further readings:

T. M. WALSKY, D.V. CHASE, D.A. SAVIC Water distribution modeling, 1st Edition, Heasted press, 2001.

CHIN: Water-Resources Engineering

MAYS: Water Resources Engineering, Wiley

Y.-K- TUNG, B.C. YEN, C. S. MALCHING Hydrosystems Engineering Reliability Assessment and Risk Analysis, , Mc Graw Hill, 2005

Teaching methods

The course employs a blend of frontal lectures, thematic site visits, and expert seminars. Students will undertake a project which may involve the use of spreadsheets, programming languages, or specialized software (Excel, Matlab and QGIS).

All activities planned will be carried out in class with the support from the Professor.

Assessment methods

Oral exam will assess whether students have achieved the learning objectives, particularly the basic concepts for modeling and designing water systems take into account water cycle and related hydraulic problems, along with a discussion of the projects completed. 

The project submission deadline is one week prior to the intended examination date.

Teaching tools

For slides, presentations and lecture notes on the topics covered during the course go to UNIBO Virtuale platform.

Office hours

See the website of Cristiana Bragalli

SDGs

Clean water and sanitation Industry, innovation and infrastructure Sustainable cities Climate Action

This teaching activity contributes to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN 2030 Agenda.