APPLIED HYDROLOGY
Professor Ke-Sheng Cheng
Department of Bioenvironmental Systems Engineering
Course objectives
Over the last several decades the study of hydrology has made great strides
and emerged from an engineering discipline into a multidisciplinary field of
study. From the fundamental principles and theories of hydrological processes
to engineering design and operation practices of hydrological/hydraulic
facilities, and to monitoring the effect of climate changes on hydrological
processes, the study of hydrology involves multiple aspects including
geoscience, engineering design and practice, and environmental monitoring
and adaptation.

The study of hydrology is about monitoring, analyzing and modeling
hydrological processes. Hydrological processes on one hand are described by
physical principles and/or conceptual models, they are on the other hand
associated with various degrees of uncertainties. Uncertainties which are
embedded in nearly all hydrological processes stem from (1) natural
variabilities of many variables involved in the hydrological processes and (2)
our limited knowledge of the hydrological processes. As a result, hydrologists
nowadays are keen aware of the importance of assessing the uncertainties
associated with all hydrological studies.

This course is intended to offer students a holistic and integrated view of the
field of multidisciplinary hydrology. The material covered in this course will be
divided into three major categories: (1) hydrological engineering design, (2)
modeling hydrological processes, and (3) Assessing risks related to
hydrological studies.

Grade policy
Homeworks (70%), Midterm exam (15%), Final exam (15%)

Syllabus
Part I – Engineering Hydrological Design
1. Rainfall observation and analysis [Lecture PPT]
    (1) Measuring rainfall
    - Raingauge types
    - Temporal and spatial resolutions
    - Raingauge network design [Network PPT]
    (2) Partitioning storm events from historical records
    - Duration and total depth
    - Average intensity
    - Inter-arrival time and inter-event time
    (3) Characteristics of different storm types
2. Hydrological frequency analysis
    (1) Data preparation
    (2) GOF tests
    - Probability plotting
    - Nonparametric tests
    - MRD/LMRD-based GOF tests
    (3) General equation of frequency analysis
    (4) Regional frequency analysis
3. Design storm hyetograph
    (1) Alternating block model
    (2) Average rank model
    (3) SSGM model
4. Infiltration
5. Rainfall-runoff modeling
    (1) Origin of surface runoff
    (2) Time of concentration
    (3) Unit hydrograph (UH) and instantaneous unit hydrograph (IUH)
    (4) SCS UH
    - Limitation and misuse of the SCS UH
    (5) Isochrones and Clark’s IUH
    (6) Nash’s linear reservoir IUH
    (7) WRA dimensionless UH
    (8) Kinematic wave overland flow routing
6. Reservoir routing
    (1) Modified Puls method
    (2) Mass balance perspective
    (3) Examples
    - Dah-Poh Lake
    - Tseng-Wen Reservoir real-time operation
7. Channel routing
8. River basin network
9. Detention basin design
10. Peak flow estimation
11. Introduction of HEC-HMS
Midtern Exam

Part II – Hydrological modeling and forecasting
1. Drought modeling and drought indices
2. Rainfall and flood flow forecasting
    (1) GMS spatial convolution approach
    (2) QPESUM
    (3) ECMWF ensemble precipitation forecasting
    (4) Rain-burst and autoregression coupled model
3. Assessing model performance uncertainties

Part III – Global hydrology and climate change
1. Overview of GCMs
2. GCM scenarios
3. Downscaling techniques
4. GCM outputs evaluation and bias corrections
5. Hydrological scenarios
6. Stochastic storm rainfall simulation model
7. Assessing the impact of climate change on hydrological extremes
8. Modeling uncertainties of climate change
Final Exam
COURSE Announcements"
  1. Hourly rainfall data of the Sun-Xia station has been uploaded. [02/20/2012]
  2. There will be no class on Feb. 27.