Smart Rivers: Instrumenting watercourses to measure transport processes and assess risk

河流水力学是一个活跃的研究领域，原因包括：城市化和气候变化对地表水网络的压力；对泥沙输送等长期存在的问题的实验和数值方法的局限性；以及打开新可能性的技术进步。拟议的研究旨在开发新技术，以获得更好的信息，了解河流结构的组成部分，即储存的木材和沉积物，如何以及何时在河流中移动。理由是这些信息可以被利用来更好地评估风险。例如，当洪水期间木材和泥沙移动时，就会发生冲刷，河床高程发生变化，桥梁和下水道等已建基础设施发生木材堵塞或不稳定的风险增加。可以利用测量移动和及时传达信息来促进快速反应。在几年或几十年的时间尺度上，泥沙和木材移动的趋势支撑着河网的结构失衡，这种失衡可能是城市化和气候变化等外部力量造成的。需要网络建模工具将正确的信息提供给土地利用规划者和执业工程师。

River hydraulics is an active area of research for a number of reasons including: pressures from urbanization and climate change on surface water networks; limitations in experimental and numerical approaches to longstanding problems like sediment transport; and technical advances that open up new possibilities. The proposed research aims to exploit new techniques to gain better information about how and when the building blocks of river structure, i.e. the stored wood and sediment, move in rivers. The rationale is that this information could be exploited to better assess risk. For instance, when wood and sediment move during floods, scour is occurring, bed elevations are changing, and the risk of wood jams or instability at built infrastructure such as bridges and sewers is elevated. Measuring movement and communicating that information in a timely manner could be used to facilitate rapid response. At time scales of years or decades, trends in sediment and wood movement underpin structural imbalances in river networks that can result from external forces such as urbanization and climate change. Network modelling tools are needed to put the right information into the hands of land-use planners and practicing engineers.