Professor Maria C. Cunha from University of Coimbra, Portugal visited WIT to present a short course on Integrated Water Resources Management
Over a period of three days lectures were presented on the following topics:
- Water governance
- Conventional versus optimization approaches
- Decision-aid model building
- Types of models and solution methods
- Reliability, resilience and vulnerability concepts
- Reliability optimization
- Explicit and implicit probabilistic models.
- Chance-constrained models
- Decision-aid models for reservoirs/dams management
- Decision-aid models for aquifers management
- Decision-aid models for wastewater and wastewater treatment schemes management at regional level
The course had the following objectives:
1. To provide basic understanding of integrated water resources management principles, paradigms and methodologies.
2. To provide capabilities for understanding the various interdependencies and interactions among the aspects related to technical, economic and social issues, end-users and different interest groups in an integrated water resources management context.
3. To gain experience to work as an expert in an interdisciplinary team for integrated water resources management projects.
Professor Maria C. Cunha received a PhD in Natural Sciences - Water Sciences (University of Louvain – Belgium,1990). She is Professor at the Civil Engineering Department, University of Coimbra, lecturing at graduate and post-graduate level. She is the Coordinator of the Hydraulic, Water Resources and Environment MSc. Program at the University of Coimbra and her main research has given rise to the publication of over 100 scientific and technical papers. Professor Cunha is the principal investigator of a number of research projects financed by the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation, and also coordinates the research team of a number of international research projects. She has acted several times as an "expert evaluator" for EU projects associated with FP5 and FP6 and is very experienced in solving water management problems for Portuguese water companies.
Wessex Institute