Tuesday, October 26, 2021

The GEOframe Schools Index

The number of GEOframe schools has grown regularly during the last years, since 2019.  We think that it could be interesting to keep track of them and their material in a unique place, and this is it. The most recent are first, the initial one the last.

Rock balancing done by Peter Juhl, author of  "Center of Gravity: A Guide to the Practice of Rock Balancing." 

Links contains presentations, video, reference to code. Obviously the most recent material is more up-to-date but we did not cover the same topics along the years and therefore it could be interesting to browse also the old stuff. Please notice that the Winter School address Catchment modelling with lumped models (Hydrological Dynamical Systems), i.e. GEOframe-NewAGE modelling solutions; the Summer Schools are dedicated  to process-based modelling, i.e. WHETGEO and GEO-SPACE.  (Water, Heat, Energy and Transport in GEOframe, GEOframe Soil Plants Atmosphere Continuum Estimator).

GEOframe parts are also taught in the Classes of Hydrology (in Italian) and Hydrological Modelling (in English and Italian) of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Monday, October 25, 2021

Driven by Francesco and Olaf, one step in surrogate modelling

 This is one of the paper to which I was more spectator than a real player. However, my name appears among the contributors because I was somewhat crucial for the project to succeed. The idea that bother many is that hydrological models aren too complicate and we need more simple models that get almost the same results. This is the rational for this work that was part of Francesco Serafin Ph.D. Thesis. 

The main ideas was to get into OMS3/CSIP framework an artificial neural network (ANN) system that could surrogate the hydrological models. Surrogate means that it can reproduce most of the dynamic features of the model training the ANN and then making using it. The roadmap is simple but the realization involves several steps that the paper delineates.


So, here it is our paper and its abstract: Serafin, Francesco, Olaf David, Jack R. Carlson, Timothy R. Green, and Riccardo Rigon. 2021. “Bridging Technology Transfer Boundaries: Integrated Cloud Services Deliver Results of Nonlinear Process Models as Surrogate Model Ensembles.Environmental Modelling and Software[R], no. 105231 (October): 105231.

Environmental models are often essential to implement projects in planning, consulting and regulatory institutions. Research models are often poorly suited to such applications due to their complexity, data requirements, operational boundaries, and factors such as institutional capacities. This contribution enhances a modeling framework to help mitigate research model complexity, streamline data and parameter setup, reduce runtime, and improve model infrastructure efficiency. Using a surrogate modeling approach, we capture the intrinsic knowledge of a conceptual or process-based model into an ensemble of artificial neural networks. The enhanced modeling framework interacts with machine learning libraries to derive surrogate models for each model service. This process is secured using blockchain technology. After describing the methods and implementation, we present an example wherein hydrologic peak discharge provided by the curve number model is emulated with a surrogate model ensemble. The ensemble median values outperformed any individual surrogate model fit to the curve number model. 

Sunday, October 24, 2021

To potential postdocs

Are you interested to work with me or my colleagues, inTrento, as a post-doc in hydrology and Earth System Sciences ?  Well, there are two main ways to do it and all of it has to do with the source of funding. If the funds comes from our own research, we expect that the post-doc interacts actively with the topics on which we  are working on. Coming to me, there are many places in this blog where one can deduce what I am doing, but the characteristic of my research work is the commitment to build the GEOframe infrastructure. Therefore for applicants who wants to work with me, a good idea is to learn the use of GEOframe from the Winter School and the Summer School  we held every year. There is a plenty of material (slides, video, codes, food for thinking) that we have prepared with which willing people can self-instruct. We also, I mean the group of GEOframers, will be very proactive in helping you if you want to learn it. Start here or here. To sum up: do you want to work with me/us ? Sweat to learn GEOframe! In the meanwhile you'll do it we will have time to know each other and understanding if we can get along whilst creating for you a reputation independent from ours


A postdoc is though to be a pro-active person in the group making to advance the research, supporting Ph.D. Students, injecting new ideas and enthusiasm. Therefore learning to do what we do is just a prerequisite. We have expectations that they postdocs is able to pose research questions, suggest solutions, indicate new roads, leading the writing of papers for the best journals,  and make our small community more rich.

Researchers who are more mature in this can try to get a grant by themselves, for instance, getting a grant through a project proposal, like, for instance, the Marie Slowdowska Curie calls. In this case, it is more appropriate to say that we can host their research in Trento University DICAM or C3A. They, grant winners,  has  their own research to pursue which is not exactly the mine and, in a sense, it cannot be. But I can give them support, exchange ideas, walk with them along the road drawn. It can be fun for both, and I am sure Trento is a nice place to do it. It is obviously worth if there is some connection with what I know and I am practicing or someone of us is doing. 

An intermediate step would be to try to design, in advance, together,  the project, before presenting it. I am, we are, available to help.

For other information, please give a look to what I wrote for Ph.D. Student applicants. We are talking, usually, of different ages, different maturity, different goals but some arguments remain the same.

Please, remind that I am also committed to produce open source software (meaning we do code and we do it open source) and open science. The most open possible. People with medieval attitude to science (i.e. who hide it selfish) can avoid the discussions applying elsewhere.

Friday, October 22, 2021

Riccardo Busti Master Thesis on Using the GEOframe System to model the Brenta Catchment

 GEOframe-NewAGE is a tool that is becoming more and more tested on catchments. This Master Thesis presents the implementation of the system on the Brenta River. It presents some novelties, of which, some are visible and other more under the hood. The one visibile is the introduction of the possibility to model lakes, two of which are quite relevant for this part of the Brenta Catchment. The others are completely new algorithms for integrating the equations. 


Anyway, you can enjoy the Thesis and its contents just by reading it at this link. 

Thursday, October 21, 2021

Nobel Prize 2021 to Hasselmann and Manabe

 A good summary of Manabe and Hasselman work is in Real Climate.  It is worth to read. 



Klaus Hasselmann and Suki Manabe

The post is here and clarifies their outstanding contribution. 


Wednesday, October 20, 2021

Trento Hydrology Awareness Days (International Conference) - 13 October 2021

We planned for one day and a half of  presentations but eventually we occupied also the whole second day.  Here below, please find the presentations and the videos of the second THAD.  Also for this second day some remarkable guests: Fabrizio Fenicia (GS) and Christian Massari (GS)

The view of Trento from the Mesiano terrace


Tuesday 12
Lunch break



Trento University is a very nice place to study Hydrology: at the undergraduate level at the Course of Environmental and Land Engineering. At the Master level at the Courses of  and Environmental and Land Engineering and Environmental Meteorology. At the doctoral level in the course of DICAM or C3A.  Do not hesitate to contact us if you would like to have information.  As you've seen the Trento groups is open to collaborations and having scientific fun. 

Go to the first day

Trento Hydrology Awareness Days (International Conference) - 12 October 2021

 It happens that you have colleagues with who you want to start new collaborations.  It happens that you have colleagues-friends that work on the same subject you do and live few meters from you and you jokes with them at the cafeteria, talk of everything but rarely on what you are doing in research. It happens that you have some visiting that do exciting work and are in your lab and you would like to have a seminar from them, exchange ideas, and experiment the fun of talking about research. It happens that you all have many Ph.D. students that barely know each others.  It happens that you have an interesting project, WATZON, whose achievements should be presented. That's the origin of the Trento Hydrology Awareness Days (International Conference) 

Last weeks, on October 12 and 13. We have setup a small organizing committee (Giuseppe Formetta and Riccardo Rigon, plus our eldest PhD. students, Niccolò Tubini and Concetta D'Amato) and a small Scientific  Committee (Riccardo Rigon, Giuseppe Formetta, Alberto Bellin, Bruno Majone and Alessandra Marzadri).  Everybody was invited to talk about a topic of their research. The one they like, without restrictions. Twenty minutes each one that expanded sometimes to forty minutes with discussion.

Particular thanks have to be given to the visiting Scientists: Glen Tootle (GS), Venkataraman Lakshmi (GS), Chaopeng Shen (GS), Felipe de Barros (GS) who traveled for this and   Fabrizio Fenicia (GS) and Christian Massari (GS) who participated  online.  All our great Ph.D. students and postdocs who participated on site made their best. 

Here below, please find the first day program, with presentations and videos.

The Mesiano Building and environment where the talks were held



Monday 11
Lunch break



Friday, October 8, 2021

GEOframe Summer School 2021 material is ready for your browsing, inspection, peruse

The GEOframe Summer School, actually held in Autumn this year, is intended  to cover the the (distributed)-process-based hydrological modelling possible in the GEOframe system. This year the distributed part was  not so developed because the focus was on the 1D tools.  The School is intended to be held every year around mid-June.  The image (please let me know the source, which I know is an old book of which I have a copy but I cannot find) represents very well the hydrologic simulation  that our tools can model.  The material (slides, videos, codes, data) are now available to the public and you can find it addressed below. All the material is distributed as open source (the Java codes under GPL v3 license, the Python Codes and all the rest under a Creative Commons license). 



     
INDEX OF THE LECTURES for the inpatients (links to videos and material)

More details below. 

Specific Documentation

The specific documentation regards papers and thesis written on the GEOframe components used in this School. Other literature, of general interest, is provided within the presentations given during the course. Practical documentation for any of the tasks is provided by means of Jupyter Notebooks, of which the general ones are reported below.

 

Tuesday, October 5, 2021

The LysGEO modelling solution @ Italian Hydrological Society Hydrology days

 @ The Italian Hydrological Society Hydrology days, Concetta D'Amato presented her work on the LysGEO model. As some knows LysGEO put together the WHETGEO 1D component with the (revised) Prospero component. The first estimates infiltration, the second performs evaporation and transpiration. Together they constitute a soil-water-atmosphere model, that it is what LysGEO is. Or if you prefer, it is a tool to investigate the critical zone. 



LysGEO was already described elsewhere in the blog. However, in this case there is a relevant addition, derived from the work done utilizing the funding support of the WATSON cost action in Lausanne with Andrea Rinaldo e Paolo Benettin. They built a lysimeter whose seems to be the right experiment to test LysGEO. The presentation shows the first results (with almost no calibration). Clicking on the image above, you get the slides (in English). Here you can appreciate the presentation in Italian given by Concetta.   LysGEO is a product of the WATZON PRIN project.