GEOframe Winter School 2022 (GWS2022) - Save the dates Dec 20-22, 2021; January 10-14, 2022

December 20-22, 2021 - Installations and Informatics - Online

January 10 - 14 2022 - Onsite and Online

Scientific Committee: Prof. Riccardo Rigon, Ph.D.; Prof. Giuseppe Formetta, Ph.D; Ing. Niccolò Tubini, Ph.D., Ing. Marialaura Bancheri, Ph.D.

Organizing Committee: Ing. 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)

Organizing 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

GENERALITIES

GEOframe is a system for doing hydrology by computer. By saying that it is a system, we emphasize that it is not a model but an infrastructure that can contain many differentiated modelling solutions (some tens of that) that are built upon models components. This is because GEOframe leverage on the Object Modelling system-framework (v3) that allows to connect modelling components to solve a specific hydrological issue together and having many alternative for its mathematical/numerical description. This infrastructure allows adapting the tools to the problems and not viceversa. GEOframe has been applied to hydrological simulations from the point scale to large catchments as the Blue Nile, and among those is being deployed to the Po river (the largest in Italy) with great detail. GEOframe is open source and built with 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, and so on.

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 summarized in these7 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.

And Pizza party every night ! Just Kidding

PARTICIPANTS' BACKGROUND

Admissions are reserved to up to 30, PhD students and postdoctoral students, young researchers willing to learn the use of the GEOframe tools envisioned for the study of infiltration, energy budget, vegetation transpiration, water budget with process-based models

All students 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, 20-22 of December will be dedicate to the the installation of the new version of GEOframe-OMS system tools. Lectures will be brief, dedicated to informatics and the exploiting of the concepts of modeling by components, digital twin Earth and most of the time will be used for supporting participants’ installations.

The other five days (10-14 January) will cover:

• Catchment and Hydrologic Response Unit delineation
• Meteorological variables interpolation with Kriging techniques
• Simple evapotranspiration methods
• Rainfall-Runoff modelling (as explained in these 7 steps)

LOCATION & TIMING

University of Trento Polo Mesiano, H1 Room and Online. The three days on informatics and installations will be online. The others online and 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 and therefore they could be followed off line. Special agreement will be arranged for supporting abroad students with fuse issues.

PARTICIPATION COSTS

The cost 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 WATZON PRIN project and for all who wants to participate without having a certificate of GEOframe proficiency. Subscription to the class is necessary for anyone to receive the information to participate. For those who want the certificate, the Course costs 180 Euros. In any case 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.

CONTACTS

For further information write to: abouthydrology@google.com or to the Secretary of the Class dott. Lorena Galante, lorena.galante@unitn.it

OTHER INFORMATION

The GSS2022 talks and labs will be recorded and made publicly available during the School for self-training through the GEOframe blog (http://geoframe.blogspot.com). Information about past Schools can be found here.

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 Winter School 2026
• GEOframe Winter School 2025
• GEOframe Summer School as IIT Mumbai 2025
• GEOframe Winter School 2024
• GEOframe Winter School 2023
• GEOframe Summer School 2022
• GEOframe Winter School 2022
• GEOframe Summer School 2021
• GEO frame Short Course for AdbPO 2021
• GEOframe Winter School 2021
• GEOframe Winter School 2020
• GEOframe Winter School 2019

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

• Biosphere Atmosphere and Climate (BACI2025) 2025
• Hydrological Modeling 2025
• Hydrology 2025
• Hydrological Modelling 2024
• Hydrology 2024
• Hydrological Modelling 2023
• Hydrology 2023
• Hydrological Modelling 2022
• Hydrology 2022
• Hydrological Modeling  2021
• Hydrology 2021
• Hydrological Modelling 2020
• Hydrology 2020
• Hydrology 2019

The material of the GWS 2021 is ready

And now everybody can enjoy it for its own work or research. Lectures was recorded and uploaded on VIMEO. Whilst GEOframe is an alive and evolving project, GWS2021 represent the best way to approach the GEOframe system. 

 Instructors

• Prof. Riccardo Rigon, Ph.D. (GS)
• Prof. Giuseppe Formetta, Ph.D. (GS)
• Ing. Marialaura Bancheri, Ph.D. (GS)
• Ing. Niccolò Tubini, Ph.D. candidate
• Ing. Concetta D’Amato, Ph.D student

Participants

• Participants resumè

Topics overed:

• Homework to do before the School - Installations and introduction to the Object Modelling System Infrastructure and Jupyter
• Homework -  Radiation for Hydrologists
• Day 1- Hydrologic Response Units delineation and treatment of spatial features
• Day 2- Interpolation of hydrometeorological datasets 
• Day 3 - Exercise with your own catchments under instructors supervision
• Day 4 - Evaporation and Transpiration with GEOframe-Prospero
• Day 5 - Modelling lumped models with GEOframe-ERM
• Day 6 - Adding features to your modellingg with ERM
• Day 7 - Looking forward

Next Day/Task

Subscriptions for having credits for this class and support can be obtained by applying at  https://webapps.unitn.it/form/en/Web/Application/winterschool/GEOframeWS2021 and compile the form or write to abouthydrology@gmail.con with subject: GWS2021 if you need more information. After payment of the fee you can have individual support and gain the participation certificate if you setup and perform an exercise with the GEOframe tools. You can do it on a your own catchment or we can provide you with a catchment and the required data. 

GEOframe Winter School 2020 - It is time to apply !

The second edition on the Winter School on GEOframe will be held between January 8 and 17, 2020 in Trento, Italy.  The course is devoted to Ph.D. Students, Post-docs, Young researchers (and Professionals!) interested in estimating all the components of the hydrological cycle (rainfall, evapotranspiration, snow-melting, and river discharge).  The system they will learn allows to work out very small catchments and continental basins as well (e.g. Abera et al., 2017a,b) up to build operational solutions as the one used in in Basilicata.

The aim of the course is to enable participants to run their own simulations and eventually on their own catchments and estimate the hydrological budget components.
With respect to the 2019 Winter School, there will be more practice and more detailed work on evapotranspiration and rainfall-runoff. It will be much more focused on exercises and on getting the water budget performed under various hypotheses on models' structure.

Website for the enrollment go here.

For the hole definitive material of the School go here. 

Teachers will be:

Prof. Riccardo Rigon, Ph.D.

Prof. Giuseppe Formetta, Ph.D.

Marialaura Bancheri, Ph.D.

Michele Bottazzi, Ph.D. candidate

Niccolò Tubini, Ph.D. student

Daniele Dalla Torre, research assistant

The provisional topics will be:

• Day 1 -   Installation and introduction to the Object Modelling System Infrastructure and Jupyter
• Day 2-   Hydrologic Response Units delineation and treatment of spatial features.
• Day 3- Interpolation of hydrometeorological datasets and elements of parameters calibration with LUCA and particle swarm tools
• Day 4 - Estimation of evaporation and transpiration 
• Day 5 - Rainfall-Runoff I - Representation of semidistributed models with the Extended Petri Nets. The embedded reservoir (ERM -see also here) and other available models. Discussing  inputs data to models and modelling solutions. 
• Day 6 - Rainfall-Runoff - II  - How Net3 works (see also here). Preparing the topology and the simulation files.  Connecting and disconnecting components. Running modelling solutions. 
• Day 7 - Rainfall-Runoff - III Calibration issues, multisite calibrations and first results production

To have an idea of the topics, the interested researchers should give look at the material (slides, video etc. of the 2019 Winter School).  The material of the first three days remains very similar (but refined) to the old one. Therefore, for students is possible also to participate only to the second week (at the same cost, but saving some lodging) but, in that case, is mandatory to follow the on-line courses and tutorials  relative of 8-9-10 January topics and having done the exercises before December 15. We will offer prompt online support to them up to that date and no support whatsoever on the same topics later or  between 13-17 of January for clear reasons of course efficiency and organisation.  The refined material of the first three days will be available on the Winter School website  from November 15, 2019.

With respect to the 2019 School, there will be more practice and more detailed material on Evapotranspiration and Rainfall-Runoff. For every 40 minutes of talk there will be 70 minutes of supervised exercise for a total of 8 hour a day of activities. 

Cost of the School is 350 Euros for who will subscribe before November 15, 400 Euros for others. A discount of 20 Euros is granted to fellows of the Italian Hydrological Society (subscriptions for students are available at the IHS-SII site for 10 Euros to students and 20 to seniors). Who attended the last year school can participate free of charge, upon subscription. Inclusive of the costs will be coffee breaks and lunch at the Cafeteria of Department of Civil, and one social dinner for all the schoolmates Environmental and Mechanical Engineering. 

Website for the enrollment go here.

For any further information, please fill free to contact me at riccardo.rigon <at> unitn.it

Material for the GEOframe Winter School - Opinions on (hydrological) modelling

At the end day of the school there is the place for some opinions o modelling. These were expressed many other times in different posts but collected here in three different parts.

• Simplifying (and viceversa) Hydrological model physics  - YouTube video I part and part II
• How can we make models more physically based - YouTube video 
• Another Post on the same topic
• Which is the best hydrological model ? YouTube video
• Same topic,  another post, and a second post

Some references

• Addor, N., & Melsen, L. (2018). Legacy, rather than adequacy, drive the selection of hydrological models. Water Resources Res., 1–34. http://doi.org/10.1029/2018WR022958
• Kirchner, J. W. (2006). Getting the right answers for the right reasons: Linking measurements, analyses, and models to advance the science of hydrology. Water Resources Research, 42(3), 1–5. http://doi.org/10.1029/2005WR004362
• Klemeš, V. (1986). Dilettantism in Hydrology: Transition or Destiny ? Water Resources Research, 22(9), 177S–188S.
• Savenije, H. H. G., & Hrachowitz, M. (2017). HESS Opinions: Catchments as meta-organisms - a new blue print for hydrological modelling. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 21(2), 1107–1116. http://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-1107-2017

Previous Winter School page

All Winter School pages

Next Winter School page 

Material for the post Winter-School-on-GEOframe

Dear All students of the Winter School on GEOframe. Was a pleasure to have you in Trento and a pleasure to see you work so hard for two weeks. On the organizer side, I have to thank my Ph.D. students Michele Bottazzi, Niccolò Tubini, Giovanna dal Piaz for their work and support. I have also to thank my former Ph.D. students Marialaura Bancheri and Francesco Serafin (almost former) for their support in the background. I also thank my former student Giuseppe Formetta and those who contributed in the past to this successful story (see here). For various reasons they were not present at this school, but they are absolutely part of our community.

It is important for us to have feedbacks from you and critique too, if they are constructive. Please address them to the mailing list of the School.

Now I hope that you complete your exercises, and let me to reuse your results for educational purposes. Let me know your opinions. With someone more interested, we can investigate a way to work around some topic and produce a paper on what you are doing.
If you want to go beyond in your knowledge, when you have assimilated well the GEOframe philosophy and tools, with your exercises,you can try Java. To start you can give a look to the Java 101 course for hydrologists. Is by far incomplete but in the next months I will work to add material (by me and collaborators) to bring people to contribute profitably to GEOframe. Our codes remans free and inspected at Github.
I indicated various book for self-instructions on Java that you can find here. I have other on OSF here that you can access upon request. We will certainly help you either at distance or in Trento, if you want to spend a period working with us.

So, again, was a pleasure to meet you.

Go to the first page of the School

Pictures from the Winter School on GEOframe

The course for doctoral students, post docs and young researchers in Hydrology, Forestry, and related disciplines will cover the simulation of the hydrological cycle of catchments of various sizes with the GEOframe system.  They say that all models are wrong but useful. However, with better tools you forecast and decide better.

The course has been completed and, please you can find below all the material, video, papers cited by clicking on the links.

The  topics treated has been:

• Tuesday, January 8: Introduction to the course - What is OMS - What is GEOframe - Using Python and Jupyter for visualising Inputs and Outputs 
• Wednesday, January 9- Catchments and Hydrologic Response Units delineation 
• Thursday and Friday, January, 10 - 11 - Treatment of spatial data and Calibration  
• Monday January 14 - Estimation of radiation components 
• Tuesday, January 15 - Evaporation and Transpiration 
• Wednesday, January 16 - Rainfall-Runoff modelling with various NewAGE components 
• Thursday, January 17 - Rainfall-Runoff modelling with various NewAGE components 
• Friday, January 18 - Opinions on hydrological modelling. Exercises on assignments.
• Epilogue and thanks

Go to the first day - Go to the last page of the School

Instructors

• Michele Bottazzi
• Riccardo Rigon
• Niccolò Tubini

with material prepared by

• Marialaura Bancheri
• Giovanna Dalpiaz
• Francesco Serafin

honours also to Giuseppe Formetta  and Hydrologis from whom we inherited a  lot.

Please find below some pictures of the School. A class always busy until late. But this did not prevent some social life!

Go to the last page of the School

Why choosing GEOframe over other models/platforms ? I would say for:

• Flexibility: GEOframe is not a model but a system of components that interact at run-time. You can chose among various components options for any of the processes.
• Expandability: If you like to program, with a little investment in Java you can write your own component and make them to interact with the others without having to reinvent the wheel.
• Parallelism. Components work in parallel when their tasks do not interact, but this is transparent for you (we call it implicit parallelism). 
• Spatial discretisation. A catchment is subdivided in parts (HRU) which can be modeled separately and are computed in parallel. The network structure is used to achieve the spatial parallelism. Its spatial modularity can be used to add/cut part of the basins without having to redo the spatial analysis, for doing multisite calibration, to progress the analysis of a larger basin in parts that are assembled together eventually.
• Beyond-state-of art components.  Besides traditional approach to processes, we implemented a few new ideas for all the processes we covered.
• Reliability.  GEOframe is currently used for the flood forecasting in real time by Regione Basilicata. It is not just a system for research that does not work in real cases. 
• Tracers studies. Not treated in the school are present tools for doing tracers studies,
• Process based modelling.  Not treated in the school, we have tools for integrating Richards equation in 1D, and we are developing tools for integrating it in 2d and 3d coupling it with the energy budget. These components will be able to interact with the other. We also started new developments on freezing soil and snow modelling.