Monday, 2 May 2016

Preparation for becoming a Hydroinformatics student

To be a Hydroinformatics student at UNESCO-IHE will be NOT so easy. There are couple of things that need you to be prepared. As its name, Hydroinformatics composes of two words i.e. Hydro and Informatics. It combines two different knowledge from different specialities. Hydro discusses about hydrology and hydraulic. At least you need to know about the basic knowledge of hydrology and river hydraulic. I am myself has a background of Ocean Engineering which no any relation with hydrology. Honestly, I found difficulties in the beginning year as hydroinformatics student. Be prepared for hydrology lessons is important. There some hydrology books are available on internet you can download and study it. The key words in hydrology are: precipitation, evapotranspiration, runoff, infiltration. At least you understand those words and little bit practices on its calculation, I think it is good enough.

In hydraulic part, probably we are little bit understand if your bachelor background is engineering. However, it will be much focused on river hydraulic. Laboratory exercises on river hydraulic will be conducted. Key words in hydraulic are: Manning, Chezy, Saint Venant, Steady/unsteady flow. Be familiar with those words is important as well. After all, the most important part is informatics. It will be simultaniously talking about modelling, modelling and modelling. Not only that, you also need to be good in IT especially programming. Any programming languages that you have understand will be benefit to your study. Matlab will be used almost all the time. Some language programming such as C, Java, Python will also be discussed. Last but not least is a Thesis part. In Hydroinformatics you cannot just have a topic of hydrology, hydraulic, or flood modelling separately. You need to combine the knowledge in Hydro and Informatics. For example: Optimization of flood mitigation measures. The mitigation measures is a processed result of hydrology and hydraulic analysis then you combine with informatics i.e. optimization. This is what I have done in my thesis. The other thing is the MSc program in IHE takes 18 months. So, be prepared not having much time for vacation L

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