Course Description and Objectives

Floods and debris flows are among the most destructive of all water related processes. They affect both rural and urban areas in a wide range of morphoclimatic environments and in recent years have attracted more and more attention from the scientific and professional communities and concern from the public due to the death toll they claim. The increased frequency of these natural hazards, coupled with climatic change predictions and urban development, suggests that they are set to worsen in the future.

Taking this into consideration, the objectives of the course are:

• To provide basic understanding of floods and debris flows using the most advanced and up-to-date methodologies currently available
• To improve capabilities for modelling floods in both rural and urban environments
• To develop hazard maps based on model results
• To assess risk and design prevention and mitigation measures
• To use state-of-the-art mathematical models

Participants will gain a broad overview of global water related disasters, including risk assessment, development of hazard maps and design of prevention and mitigation measures.

 Programme

Over a period of three days, the following topics will be covered:

• Fundamentals of debris and hyper-concentrated flows
• Fundamentals of floods
• Mathematical and numerical models for flood and debris flow routing
• Risk assessment and hazard map methodology
• Case studies
• Using state-of-the-art mathematical models