ENAC Seminar Series by Dr D. Valero
Event details
Date | 18.07.2019 |
Hour | 09:00 › 10:00 |
Speaker | Dr Daniel Valero |
Location | |
Category | Conferences - Seminars |
09:00 – 10:00 – Dr Daniel Valero
Lecturer, IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, The Netherlands
Advancing hydraulic infrastructures, from tradition to innovation : The times they are a-changin'
The development of water systems has encompassed the evolution of the civilization through the past centuries. Water storage and conveyance has led to the largely advanced society by providing resources, sanitation and reducing risks. Today, hydraulic infrastructures seem too rigid for a world of emerging technologies and escalating stresses. Priorities have shifted across the globe, the statistic presented by United Nations being a revealing example: more people have mobile phones than toilets. Nevertheless, as time goes by, climate change is showing off more intensely and mitigation seems to come in an untimely and insufficient manner. Thus, adaptation arises as a natural measure, and it can only be achieved through the reengineering of our hydraulic infrastructures. Reduced water resources will harm hydropower – renewable – energy production potential, and increasing peak discharges will challenge dams and downstream environments.
Furthermore, our already-built dams are ageing, and some are now older than the time series originally used to obtain their associated hydrology. New dams will also have to incorporate this new source of uncertainty in a realisable form. The uprising numerical modelling techniques are changing the way we deal with fluid phenomena and the capacity to extract information from them. Nonetheless, the point is on robustness and accuracy, which is not yet fully assessed. In parallel, artificial intelligence has allowed disruptive experimental predictions beyond what we thought were the instrumentation limits and, recently, a study in Journal of Fluid Mechanics suggested that deep learning would promptly outsmart any state-of-the-art turbulence model. All things considered, climate change evolving at a temporal scale smaller than the lifetime of our ageing structures, the already thriving numerical modelling capabilities, and the seemingly unlimited potential of artificial intelligence can be expected to shape the imminent advances related to hydraulic infrastructures and water systems.
Lecturer, IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, The Netherlands
Advancing hydraulic infrastructures, from tradition to innovation : The times they are a-changin'
The development of water systems has encompassed the evolution of the civilization through the past centuries. Water storage and conveyance has led to the largely advanced society by providing resources, sanitation and reducing risks. Today, hydraulic infrastructures seem too rigid for a world of emerging technologies and escalating stresses. Priorities have shifted across the globe, the statistic presented by United Nations being a revealing example: more people have mobile phones than toilets. Nevertheless, as time goes by, climate change is showing off more intensely and mitigation seems to come in an untimely and insufficient manner. Thus, adaptation arises as a natural measure, and it can only be achieved through the reengineering of our hydraulic infrastructures. Reduced water resources will harm hydropower – renewable – energy production potential, and increasing peak discharges will challenge dams and downstream environments.
Furthermore, our already-built dams are ageing, and some are now older than the time series originally used to obtain their associated hydrology. New dams will also have to incorporate this new source of uncertainty in a realisable form. The uprising numerical modelling techniques are changing the way we deal with fluid phenomena and the capacity to extract information from them. Nonetheless, the point is on robustness and accuracy, which is not yet fully assessed. In parallel, artificial intelligence has allowed disruptive experimental predictions beyond what we thought were the instrumentation limits and, recently, a study in Journal of Fluid Mechanics suggested that deep learning would promptly outsmart any state-of-the-art turbulence model. All things considered, climate change evolving at a temporal scale smaller than the lifetime of our ageing structures, the already thriving numerical modelling capabilities, and the seemingly unlimited potential of artificial intelligence can be expected to shape the imminent advances related to hydraulic infrastructures and water systems.
Practical information
- General public
- Free
Organizer
- ENAC
Contact
- Cristina Perez