M. Fiorentino – författare

This book contains a selection of papers arising from an international conference, held in Maratea, Italy, June 26-28, 1991. It comprises six sections encompassing a range of the major aspects of entropy-based developments in water resources. Each section normally starts with an invited, state-of-the-art paper, followed by contributed papers. Section one presents a discussion on the perspectives of entropy and energy dissipation. The applications of entropy and hydrology are considered in section two, water resources in chapter three and hydraulics in section four. Sections five and six deal with the applications of energy principles in, respectively, hydrology and hydraulics. This book should interest reseachers as well as those engaged in civil engineering, agricultural engineering, environmental engineering, hydrology, water resources, earth resources, forestry, geography and climatology. Graduate students, as well as those wishing to conduct research on entropy or its applications, should find this book useful.

This text provides a comprehensive treatment of GIS technology and its application to a range of hydrologic problems. It contains 16 chapters, written by leading scientists from around the globe, that provide an in-depth discussion of GIS applications. Hydrologic modelling is becoming increasingly global, in terms of both spatial scale and depth of treatment. This globalization of hydrology is placing new and greater demands for data, and more sophisticated techniques for managing and processing them. It is now possible to meet those demands through application of remote sensing and GIS technology.

The last few years have witnessed an enormous interest in application of GIS in hydrology and water resources. This is partly evidenced by organization of sev­ eral national and international symposia or conferences under the sponsorship of various professional organizations. This increased interest is, in a large measure, in response to growing public sensitivity to environmental quality and management. The GIS technology has the ability to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, and visualize the diverse sets of geo-referenced data. On the other hand, hydrology is inherently spatial and distributed hydrologic models have large data requirements. The integration of hydrology and GIS is therefore quite natural. The integration involves three major components: (1) spatial data construction, (2) integration of spatial model layers, and (3) GIS and model interface. GIS can assist in design, calibration, modification and comparison of models. This integration is spreading worldwide and is expected to accelerate in the foreseeable future. Substantial op­ portunities exist in integration of GIS and hydrology. We believe there are enough challenges in use of GIS for conceptualizing and modeling complex hydrologic processes and for globalization of hydrology. The motivation for this book grew out of the desire to provide under one cover a range of applications of GIS tech­ nology in hydrology. It is hoped that the book will stimulate others to write more comprehensive texts on this subject of growing importance.

Since the landmark contributions of C. E. Shannon in 1948, and those of E. T. Jaynes about a decade later, applications of the concept of entropy and the principle of maximum entropy have proliterated in science and engineering. Recent years have witnessed a broad range of new and exciting developments in hydrology and water resources using the entropy concept. These have encompassed innovative methods for hydrologic network design, transfer of information, flow forecasting, reliability assessment for water distribution systems, parameter estimation, derivation of probability distributions, drainage-network analysis, sediment yield modeling and pollutant loading, bridge-scour analysis, construction of velocity profiles, comparative evaluation of hydrologic models, and so on. Some of these methods hold great promise for advancement of engineering practice, permitting rational alternatives to conventional approaches. On the other hand, the concepts of energy and energy dissipation are being increasingly applied to a wide spectrum of problems in environmental and water resources. Both entropy and energy dissipation have their origin in thermodynamics, and are related concepts. Yet, many of the developments using entropy seem to be based entirely on statistical interpretation and have seemingly little physical content. For example, most of the entropy-related developments and applications in water resources have been based on the information-theoretic interpretation of entropy. We believe if the power of the entropy concept is to be fully realized, then its physical basis has to be established.

Since the landmark contributions of C. E. Shannon in 1948, and those of E. T. Jaynes about a decade later, applications of the concept of entropy and the principle of maximum entropy have proliterated in science and engineering. Recent years have witnessed a broad range of new and exciting developments in hydrology and water resources using the entropy concept. These have encompassed innovative methods for hydrologic network design, transfer of information, flow forecasting, reliability assessment for water distribution systems, parameter estimation, derivation of probability distributions, drainage-network analysis, sediment yield modeling and pollutant loading, bridge-scour analysis, construction of velocity profiles, comparative evaluation of hydrologic models, and so on. Some of these methods hold great promise for advancement of engineering practice, permitting rational alternatives to conventional approaches. On the other hand, the concepts of energy and energy dissipation are being increasingly applied to a wide spectrum of problems in environmental and water resources. Both entropy and energy dissipation have their origin in thermodynamics, and are related concepts. Yet, many of the developments using entropy seem to be based entirely on statistical interpretation and have seemingly little physical content. For example, most of the entropy-related developments and applications in water resources have been based on the information-theoretic interpretation of entropy. We believe if the power of the entropy concept is to be fully realized, then its physical basis has to be established.