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Online Course on Advanced Water Transport and Distribution

This course focuses on state-of-the-art knowledge and cutting edge tools, enabling a vision of the water supply challenge much beyond standard engineering practices, a prerequisite when coping with global challenges related with water supply. 

For whom?

Mid-career professionals dealing with technical aspects of drinking water transport and distribution, working for water supply companies, municipal assemblies or consulting bureaus.

Prerequisites

BSc degree in Civil Engineering or similar; a few years of relevant experience; knowledge of steady-state hydraulics of pressurised flows; basic use of network models; good English command. Students without any WTD experience should first complete the module Water Transport and Distribution.

Learning objectives

  1. Apply state-of-the-art network software for assessment of irregular operational scenarios and develop a reliability-based and cost effective design.
  2. Recognize GIS and remote sensing technologies and familiarize with the GIS-based techniques for sustainable planning and management of WTD systems.
  3. Select modern tools for monitoring of operation and planning of maintenance of WTD systems
  4. Critically evaluate arguments and use them in debates on pros and cons of specific design and operational decisions for water distribution.
  5. Understand the theory of advanced hydraulic modelling.
  6. Understand the theory of transient flows (water-hammer) and plan surge protection measures.

This course covers cardinal aspects in water transport and distribution engineering such as hydraulic modelling, water-hammer theory, decision support systems, asset management or water quality.

State-of-the-art knowledge and cutting edge tools are taught enabling a vision of the water supply challenge much beyond standard engineering practices, a prerequisite when coping with global stresses like climate change, population growth or water scarcity. 

The course is subdivided into the following parts:

  • Introduction to WTD: This section of the course focuses on distinguishing the main definitions and objectives of water transport and distribution systems.
  • Geographic Information Systems: The students are introduced to GIS tools for pre- and post-processing of data when building numerical models and analyzing results output from simulations.
  • Hydraulic modelling (I): advanced techniques to boost the applicability of hydraulic models by means of artificial intelligence techniques such as genetic algorithms are taught in this part of the course.
  • Hydraulic modelling (II): In this part of the course students are introduced to advanced software, offering a range of add-ons to the basic computational hydraulics, such as automatic calibration, that enables bridging theory with practice in complex water distribution networks.
  • Water-hammer theory: the physical phenomena of water-hammer wave will be explained, including the governing equations and the numerical methods for their solution. Critical thinking for post-accident analysis and surge protection is developed.
  • Python tools for hydraulics: In this part of the course students get hands on Python, enabling them to make use of friendly applications for their WTD analyses.

Ready to apply?

Course Coordinator

David Ferras

Senior Lecturer in Water Supply Engineering

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