NUFU Project on Capacity Building in Water Sciences for Improved Assessment and

Management of Water Resources

NUFU Water Sciences Technical Report No. 3

REGIONAL COURSE ON

HYDROLOGICAL MODELING

Berhanu Alemaw & Chongyu Xu

9 to 13 June 2008,

University of Botswana

The NUFU Project on Capacity Building in Water Sciences for Improved Assessment and

Management of Water Resources, NUFUPRO-2007-10079, is a joint network research

program of the University of Malawi, the University of Oslo, the University of Botswana and

the University of Western Cape.

Title: Regional Course on Hydrological Modeling

Technical report: Nr. 3

Authors: Berhanu Alemaw (UB) & Chongyu Xu (UiO)

Organisations: University of Botswana (UB)

University of Oslo (UiO)

Submission date: December 2008

Content list

Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 1

Description of the Regional Course ........................................................................................... 1

Target groups .............................................................................................................................. 2

Participants ................................................................................................................................. 2

Presenting of the course certificate ............................................................................................ 3

Evaluation ................................................................................................................................... 4

Appendices ................................................................................................................................. 4

Front page photo:

Scene from the lecturing on Hydrological Modeling

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Introduction Hydrological Modelling – mathematical modeling of watershed hydrology is essential

(1) for understanding of the hydrologic phenomena operating in a catchment and of how

changes in the catchment may affect these phenomena,

(2) for generation of synthetic sequences of hydrologic data for facility design or for use in

forecasting, and

(3) for studying the potential impacts of changes in landuse or climate.

Indeed hydrologic models are being increasingly applied to address a range of societal and

developmental problems, involving water, energy, environmental and ecology. It is now well

accepted that modelling seems to be the only resort to address complex environmental and

water resources problems (Appendix 1).

The motivation for organizing this training course stemmed from the desire to provide an

opportunity for the young hydrologists in the Southern Africa countries to learn (1) the

principal elements of the hydrological processes, their combination into simple and

comprehensive hydrological models, and the importance of the models in solving typical

problems of engineering hydrology, (2) how to choose s suitable model according to the

objective of the study, (3) the issues and methods in calibration and validation of the different

types of models (lumped-distributed, physically-based- conceptual, catchment scale-

macroscale, groundwater flow), (4) the methods of regional parameterization, (5) use of the

selected models in solving various problems including the hydrological impact of climate

change.

Description of the Regional Course The course is a 5-day training course organized by the NUFU, University of Botswana,

University of Oslo, University of Western Cape and University of Malawi.

The training course is financially sponsored by the NUFU (The Norwegian Programme for

Development, Research and Education) project, implying that the costs for travel, subsistence

and course material is partly covered.

During first 4 days Prof Chongyu Xu from UiO and Dr Berhanu Alemaw from UoB shared

the lectures (Photo 1 & 2).

Photo 1 (left) Prof C-Y Xu is lecturing. Photo 2 (right) Dr Berhanu Alemaw is lecturing.

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During the last date of the training course, participants are asked to give a short presentation

on their background, interests and motivation. Experienced participants is encouraged to give

a short presentation during the workshop on their own or a national study of modeling,

possibly linked with climate change to share knowledge. Participants are expected to study

part of the course material prior to the course. Participants receive a certificate after

completing the Course provided they have actively taken part in the course and completed the

assignments.

As an example, one participant the PhD student Cosmos Ngongondo is presenting his

preliminary research result to other participants during the last day workshop (Photo 3).

Photo 3 PhD student Cosmos Ngongondo is presenting his work

Target groups The course is suitable for master and PhD students as well as junior scientists and practicing

engineers in the field, who are engaged in hydrological modeling and who are interested to

increase their knowledge and learn more about modeling tools to solve hydrological problems

for resources assessment, simulation, forecasting and possibly optimization of hydrological

and water resources systems. The course is intended to be at graduate level.

Participants An informative flyer was widely distributed to project member Universities in Botswana,

Western Cape and Malawi as well as stakeholders in Malawi to inform potential participants

the course offer. A total of 12 applicants (Appendix 2) signed up for the course (Photo 4).

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Photo 4 Group photo of parts of the participants in the course.

Presenting of the course certificate Upon completion of the course the students were handed a course certificate (Photo 5).

Photo 5: Presentations of course certificate (see Appendix 3: an example of the certificate)

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Evaluation A feedback from the course participants was requested at the end of course.

More than 10 questions are prepared for participants to answer including general questions

about the organisation of the course as well as specific questions about the content of the

course. In general, all students responded quite positively to the questions (appendix 4).

Appendices

Appendix 1 Course flyer

Appendix 2 Participant list

Appendix 3 Sample of Diploma

Appendix 4 Course evaluation

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