Thursday, September 7, 2023

GEOframe Winter School 2024 - Save the dates: December 05-07, 2023; January 08-12, 2024

The GEOframe Winter School 2024 (GWS2024) will be will be held in Trento University (Department of civil, environmental and mechanical engineering) on

December 05-07, 2023; January 08-12, 2024



This is the preliminary program:
Output of the school 
The objective of the school is to enable the participant to set up and run the GEOframe system on their area of interest, with the spatially variable quantification of each component of the water balance (rainfall, snow, evapotranspiration, runoff, root-zone water content and groundwater levels)

Generalities
GEOframe is not just a model but a comprehensive system for hydrology that leverages computer technology. It consists of numerous differentiated modeling solutions, totaling tens of options, which are built upon model components. Each modeling solution represents an optimal combination of models to quantify specific components of the hydrological cycle in any study area, such as spatially varying rainfall, snow, evapotranspiration, runoff, root-zone water content, and groundwater levels, at various time resolutions ranging from sub-hourly to yearly. GEOframe utilizes the Object Modelling system-framework (v3)  to connect modeling components and solve specific hydrological issues, offering multiple alternatives for mathematical and numerical descriptions. This infrastructure allows the tools to adapt to the problems at hand, rather than the other way around. GEOframe has been successfully applied to hydrological simulations at different scales, from point scale to large catchments like the Blue Nile. Currently, it is being deployed in the Po river basin (the largest in Italy) and the Adige river basin, with high temporal and spatial resolution. Distributable modeling solutions calibrated and validated against measured data, such as runoff, are available for these applications. GEOframe is an open-source system built using open-source tools.

Contents of the school
GEOframe contains tens of components that cover rainfall-runoff, evaporation, transpiration, infiltration, terrain analysis tools, interpolation models, calibrations tools. The Winter school is about using some of these tools to perform the hydrological budget of catchments. The core rainfall-runoff model are dynamical systems (systems of ordinary differential equations) and the school mainly treats their theory and their use in a contemporary way as summarised in these 7 steps.
Besides the lectures and the hands-on sessions, the Summer School is the occasion for discussion and experience exchange among senior scholars and young researchers.

Participants' background
Admissions are reserved to up to 30, PhD students and postdoctoral researchers, young scientists, and local authorities professionals willing to understand hydrological processes and learning the modeling procedures based on the use of the GEOframe tools. Specifically, will study and model infiltration, energy budget, vegetation transpiration, water budget with process-based models.
All students, scientist and professionals are asked to upload a CV and a motivation letter when applying.

Workload and credits
The Winter School, which is to be held in English, consists of 8 hours/day of activities for 8 days. 

The first three days, December 05-07 2023, will be dedicated to the installation of the GEOframe-OMS system tools. Lectures will be brief, dedicated to informatics and the exploiting of the concepts of modeling by components, digital twin Earth. Most of the time will be used for supporting participants’ installations.

The other five days (January 08-12, 2024) will cover:
  • Catchment and Hydrologic Response Unit delineation
  • Meteorological variables interpolation with Kriging techniques
  • Short and longwave radiation estimate and simplified evapotranspiration methods
  • Snow modeling, Rainfall-Runoff modelling (as explained in these 7 steps) and automatic calibration
  • Hands on seminars on the following topics: 1) satellite data for hydrological application and 2) meteorological dataset for hydrological applications (in situ data, modeled data, real-time and forecast data)

Location and timing
University of Trento Polo Mesiano, H1 Room and Online.

The three days on informatics and installations (December 05-07 2023) will be also online. 
The other days (January 08-12 2024) will be onsite. The time schedule will be 9-13 and 14-18 CET each of the days. Lectures and workout will be recorded and immediately post on the VIMEO Channel of the School. Therefore, they could be followed off line. Special agreement will be arranged for supporting abroad students with fuse issues. 

Participation costs
Subscription to the class is necessary for anyone who want to attend the course. For Researcher, PhD students, and scientists who want the certificate of attendance and specific support on their own application, the Course costs 210 Euros. 

The certificate is issued after the presentation of a small project of simulations for which appropriate tutoring will be given during and after the School.

Please visit and register at the official registration form (Link will be updated soon) of the school.

The cost of the school is free for Students of the Hydrological Modelling Classes at the University of Trento; for Ph.D. students of the University of Trento DICAM and C3A programs; for the participants of the PRIN Waterstem, COACH-WAT, and SUNSET project; for the participant of the project “Studio delle caratteristiche idrologiche del Distretto del fiume Po mediante l’applicazione della modellistica GEOframe”; for Young Hydrological Society Italian members and the SocietĂ  Idrologica Italiana (SII).

Scientific Committee 
Prof. Giuseppe Formetta, Ph.D; Ph.D., Eng. Marialaura Bancheri; Ph.D., Eng. Prof. Riccardo Rigon, Ph.D.

Organising Committee
Prof. Giuseppe Formetta, Ph.D; Ph.D., Eng. Marialaura Bancheri; PhD Eng. Concetta D’Amato, Eng. Shima Azimi, Ms. Sc. Martin Morlot, Ing. Daniele Andreis, Ing. Gaia Roati, Ing. Riccardo Busti (the fantastic group of our Ph.D. students), Prof. Riccardo Rigon, Ph.D.

Organising Institutions
  • Department of Civil, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering, University of Trento
  • Center Agriculture Food Environment, University of Trento
  • Institute for Agricultural and Forest Systems in the Mediterranean, National Research Council, Ercolano NA, Italy
Contacts
For further information write to: abouthydrology@google.com, giuseppe.formetta@unitn.it or to the Secretary of the Class dott. Lorena Galante, lorena.galante@unitn.it

Other information
The GSS2024 talks and labs will be recorded and made publicly available during the School for self-training through the GEOframe blog. Information about past Schools can be found here.