Friday, February 6, 2026

The Hydrological Modelling 2026 Class

 Welcome to the 2026 Hydrological Modeling Class!

To better understand the materials provided:

  • Storyboards – Summaries of the lectures, usually in Italian.
  • Whiteboards – Explanations of specific topics, presented on a whiteboard using Notability on an iPad.
  • Slides – Commented in English (available since 2021).
  • Videos – Recorded during lectures to complement the slides, with no editing (as post-production would be too time-consuming).
  • Additional information & references – Marked in italics, for the curious and the brave who want to explore further.

📅 23 February 2026 

Syllabus & Introduction to Hydrological Modeling

In this session, I introduced the course and its learning-by-doing philosophy. We cover all theoretical concepts first, followed by the practical applications (with Professor Giuseppe Formetta).

The real start 

To begin is also worth to have a little (philosophical) analysis of what a model is. This is what done in the following parte of the lecture

📅 26 February 2026 – Geomorphometry

This session begins with a discussion of previous lesson topics and the rationale behind introducing geomorphometric concepts. Since catchments are spatially extended, understanding their geometry is essential for studying catchment hydrology.

In the first part, we focus on the geometrical and differential characteristics of topography, including:

  • Elevation
  • Slope
  • Curvature

These parameters are fundamental for extracting the river network and identifying different parts of a catchment.

We then define drainage directions and explore how they are computed using Digital Elevation Models (DEMs)—where topography is discretized on a regular grid. From these drainage directions, we determine the total contributing area at each point of a DEM.

These two key characteristics allow us to:

  1. Identify channel heads and extract the river network.
  2. Define hillslopes and establish an initial framework for Hydrologic Response Units (HRUs).

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