Wednesday04 March 2020
14:00 - 18:00
Auditoire Gerty Cori
Tour Laennec, 57 - Woluwe
The objective of the Louvain4Water Seminars is to strengthen the network of researchers and other actors working in the water domain at UCLouvain and identify common actions in this domain.
For this meeting, we are pleased to receive Prof. Sanda Lenzholzer (Wageningen University and Research Centre WUR) who will give a keynote speech on the project "REALCOOL - Research through Design for Cool Urban Water Environments".
In addition to this, the Louvain4Water Seminar will offer its members the opportunity to pitch their research works on topics related to water (app. 3 minutes per presentation). Please do not hesitate to contact us through the registration form below if you wish to present your work. The presentation can equally be in French or English.
Keynote by Prof. Sanda Lenzholzer (Wageningen University and Research Centre WUR) REALCOOL - Research through Design for Cool Urban Water Environments
Urban design practitioners believed that urban water bodies (such as canals, ditches or ponds) can solve urban heat problems but recent research shows that the cooling effect of large water bodies during summer is limited over day and can actually induce a night-time warming effect. But what is the situation around small water bodies and how can they provide cooling for their environment? This was studied in the ‘Really cooling water bodies in cities’ (REALCOOL) project. In a Research Through Design process we explored the most effective combinations of shading, water vaporisation and natural ventilation to cool smaller water bodies. It showed that the water itself cannot be cooled effectively, but that the environment of the water bodies can be cooled: shading was the most important factor followed by openness to wind and evaporating water through fountains and sprays. We created virtual prototypes/ design guidelines that we tested according to criteria such as water-storage capacity, compatibility with other urban functions, costs, maintenance and effects on public health. Our user committee concluded that the final prototypes can be easily applied in design practice.
Pitches presentations
Infrastructure, Topography and Landscape - Daniel Otero Peña – UCLouvain LOCI (abstract)
Infrastructure, topography and landscape. Strategies for the design of landscape infrastructure through the spatialization of Urban Metabolism (UM) flows. Based on public space analysis related to geographical characteristics (e.g. topography, climate) and informality (e.g. governance, economy), the design of high quality and inclusive public space, linked to water and energy infrastructure, could help to enhance environmental justice in less favored communities. This urban landscape design approach, can be a medium to explore new kinds of strategies to work across different social and geographical contexts and scales of water and energy infrastructure. Significantly, through application of UM analysis as a diagnostic tool, researchers could identify and spatialize design processes emerging within a specific urban landscape.
The Language of Water. Mapping water systems across Belgian regions - Thaïs Delefortrie - UCLouvain LOCI (abstract)
According to the World Resource Institute, by 2040 waterstress in Belgium will be “extremely high”: risks such as flooding risk, sea level rising, drought and extended pollution will soon become the everyday condition threatening all types of human activities. This situation calls for a comprehensive understanding of all water systems as a unique, and possibly integrated one. Water indeed runs within a unique and interconnected apparatus (above and below ground, within dense and diffuse urban areas) that, while designing different landscapes, intertwines different physical infrastructures, knowledges and ultimately policies. Furthermore, water in Belgium often crosses regional boundaries, thus worsening governance fragmentation. This project aims at mapping Belgian interregional water geographies to foster integrated water management as a necessary practice for spatial planning, grounding on the hypothesis that a simultaneous visualisation of urban and water spaces entails the integration of otherwise sectorialised knowledges and actions. The language of water intends to reveal the complexity of water elements, flows and systems that, despite belonging to different networks (and thus entailing sectorial policies, employments, owners and users) are deeply interconnected where ultimately the same interconnections are key factors in coping with the increasing water related challenges to which the city and territories are nowadays evermore exposed.
Designing with uncertainty: Nature-based Solutions for Flood Resilience Sareh Moosavi - ULB (abstract)
This project aims to map out the role of design experimentation in the process of planning, designing and implementing nature-based solutions for creating flood resilience in cities. Case studies of built projects with a focus on water management across Europe will be identified and investigated. An in depth inquiry into the realisation of selected projects will include interviews with the multidisciplinary design team as well as questionnaires. This research is based on the premise that experimentation and safe-to-fail testing can play a major role in accounting for uncertainty and dynamic changes, which are inherent to nature-based solutions. How do designers use experimentation as a tool for testing performance, what do they test and when is best to use experimentation? The results will help developing a toolkit for planners and designers to integrate preformative thinking in developing nature-based solutions that are adaptive and resilient.
2D modeling of Cavaillon River floods in the Southern province of Haiti - Gerardson Mathieu – UCLouvain IMMC (abstract)
This study presents a two-dimensional modelling methodology for a two-kilometer reach of the Cavaillon River located in the Southern Department of Haiti, with the aim of better managing and mitigating flood risks. This river was chosen as a pilot river because one-dimensional modelling work has already been carried out (Joseph, 2019). This two-dimensional modelling is carried out using a triangular mesh, given the complexity of the river. The finite volume method implemented in a calculation code developed at UCLouvain is used for the discretization of the Saint-Venant equations. The results of water levels and flow velocities in the calculation cells are used to produce hazard maps related to the flooding of the river.
Citizen Science for smart water monitoring in Tunisia - Raed Fehri, Patrick Bogaert, Slaheddine Khlifi, Marnik Vanclooster - UCLouvain ELI (abstract)
Citizen Science (CS) has been emerging in the last decade as a new field of environmental monitoring involving a direct collaboration between everyday citizens and scientists. In Tunisia, several recent governmental efforts aimed at reinforcing the existing official water-related information through the renovation of the Tunisian monitoring systems. However, the lack of reliable hydrological data is still an issue. This major point of concern can be partially addressed through a CS approach. In this study, we present results of the ongoing Together4Water initiative, a water resources CS project that was launched in Tunisia in 2018. We monitored river flow and rainfall in a test region of the Medjerda catchment using the publicly available mobile phone application “Discharge app” and regular cost-effective rain gauges. The Medjerda river is considered the most important water resource in the country. We used a step-by-step approach to target, engage and to train citizens from different generations on using the monitoring tools and transmitting the data to a centralized user-friendly online platform. The collected CS measurements are compared with observations from official reference stations. Results yield a good agreement between CS river flow data collected at two sites (Slouguia and Medjez) and the reference stations (Pearson Correlation Coefficient (PCC) ranges between 0.8 and 0.97 for all citizens). For rainfall, measurements collected by citizens in eight locations correlate well with reference observations (PCC ranges between 0.95 and 0.98). Statistical tests were applied in order to evaluate the significance of agreement between both data sources. In addition, the uncertainty associated with CS data is compared with the uncertainty of the reference ones. We conclude that the ongoing Together4Water initiative delivered consistent hydrometrological datasets. The variability between the citizens’ measurements can be explained by many factors such as the location of rain gauges for rainfall observation, and the wind and light reflection for river flow measurement using the Discharge app. The Together4Water CS approach is considered promising to complement existing Tunisian monitoring systems, and also to enhance innovation, adaptation, and local capacity building in the Tunisian water sector.
Exploring Causes of Streamflow Alterations in the Isser Catchment, Algeria - Mokrane Kadir - UCLouvain - ELI (abstract)
In this study, the causes of hydrological alteration of the Isser catchment are explored. Hydrological alteration is evaluated based on standard hydrometeorological data (streamflow, precipitation) enriched with generic time series on evapotranspiration (ET), temperature (T), and soil moisture (SM) inferred from the Google Earth Engine (GEE) cloud-based platform. Time series of hydrologic data and possible causal attributes are constructed on a monthly time step and for a period of 1970 to 2011. Standard trend analysis is first applied to elucidate alterations in hydrological behavior and possible causal factors. Subsequently advanced nonlinear time series analysis tools (Convergent Cross Mapping, CCM) are applied to detect causal relationships and to quantify the importance of different factors contributing to the hydrologic alterations in this catchment. Results indicate that significant hydrological alterations have been identified in the selected catchment. Trend analysis elucidate consistency between hydrological alterations and possible causal factors of these alterations. CCM allows analyzing the strength of the causal factors in the streamflow alterations. It is shown that streamflow alteration is unidirectionally caused by changes in precipitation, temperature, SM, ET and patterns and that there is little feedback from streamflow alteration to the causing factors.
Cartographie du potentiel en eau souterraine dans le bassin versant de la Medjerda( Nord est Algérien) - Mohammed Bouklab, Marnik Vanclooster - UClouvain, ELI (abstract)
Ce travail a pour objectif d’identifier les zones potentielles en eau souterraine dans le bassin versant de la Medjerda (Nord est algérien), cela permet de tracer une meilleure planification au futur pour le développement et la gestion des ressources en eau souterraines , et en vue de l’approvisionnement en eau pour les populations , l’ industries et l’agriculture … .
La détermination des zones potentiel à la recharge des nappes nécessitent une évaluation quantitative précise , on utilisant des nouvelles techniques de la télédétection ,le système d’informations géographique (SIG), et les techniques du processus d’analyse multicritère et hiérarchique (AHP). Cette méthode développée en 1971 par Thomas . Saaty ,elle est utilisée pour déterminer le poids des divers critères, ces poids sont appliquées dans une combinaison binaires de chaque niveau de la hiérarchie par rapport aux éléments du niveau supérieur
L’analyse de la carte finale du potentiel en eau souterraine a révélé cinq classes dont une classe de bonne recharge couvrant 40 % de la totalité de la zone d’étude . Celle-ci est localisée en majorité dans la partie centrale de la nappe, spécifiquement dans la nappe de Taoura , qui est caractériser par des grands fissures et des pentes relativement faibles. Les zones de faible recharge sont localisées sur les zones de forte pente. Cette carte de répartition spatiale de la recharge peut être considérée comme un soutien à la décision, notamment pour la gestion de la ressource.
Location
Auditoire Gerty Cori
Tour Laennec
Avenue Hippocrate, 57
Woluwe
