Center for Environmental Sciences & Engineering

<p>Shiv Nadar University is a comprehensive, multidisciplinary, research-focused, and student-centric University offering a full range of academic programs at the undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral level. With state-of-the-art infrastructure, the University comprises of academic wings, sophisticated labs, international standard sports facilities, amphitheaters, auditorium, conference rooms and smart classrooms. The University&rsquo;s goal is to become internationally recognized for the quality of its research and creative endeavors and their applicability to improving quality of life, generating new insights and expanding the boundaries of human knowledge creativity. Committed to excellence in teaching, research and service, the University aims to serve the higher education needs of India and the world beyond.</p>

Shiv Nadar University

While river training structures are important tools to provide solutions to river engineering problems, conventional structures can be expensive and can create adverse environmental impacts. There is a need to develop affordable permeable river training structures. Jack jetties have been in use in the USA for various purposes, although there was no scientific methodology to support design of the structures when used for river training works. Therefore, laboratory studies have been carried out to develop this design methodology, which was verified by field-testing. Trail dykes were also tested in a similar fashion. Both types of structures show promise for use as inexpensive river engineering works. © 2017 Springer Science+Business Media Singapore.

World University root node

River System Analysis and Management

Design development and field application of RCC jack jetty and trail dykes for river training

Optimal water management and control of transboundary river system like the Brahmaputra warrants water sharing mechanism hinged on transparent and judicious framework for collective development of all riparians countries with the approach of benefit sharing. The issue of managing water is gaining prominence with increasing dependence of countries on international rivers. Nowhere can it get more pertinent than the Brahmaputra river system which can transform the plight of a sizable world population in abject poverty. In the absence of any water-sharing mechanism in place, an imperative need is felt to manage and harness the common pool resource of the river as well as tame its flood and erosion problems. The idea is to shift the focus from physical volumes of water to the various values derived from water use for poverty alleviation. A study is presently underway jointly at IIT Roorkee to explore a framework to promote cooperation in the Brahmaputra basin by using a framework of benefit sharing. It is envisaged to analyze various scenarios that could be developed out of the recent damming and hydropower advancements in the basin. A benefit sharing framework is applied to quantify the potential benefits. In the past, such analysis has assisted riparians to identify and explore the various trade-offs associated with different cooperative scenarios, thereby bringing clarity to the question of how they can and why they should cooperate. This will promote riparians to view the problem as positive-sum outcomes associated with optimizing benefits rather than the zero-sum outcomes associated with dividing water and also open up the concerned players for constructive interactions. The focus of this study is based on the approach of benefit sharing as the guiding principle for transboundary water management with win-win scenario for all riparians with emphasis on poverty alleviation ushering in all round peace and prosperity in South Asia. © 2016, Central Board of Irrigation and Power. All rights reseved.

Water and Energy International

Benefit sharing approach for the transboundary Brahmaputra river basin in South Asia - A case study

The protrusion of a hydraulic structure constructed in a river bed disturbs the flow and sediment transport. It is very important to investigate the changes on micro-flow behavior (turbulent) from sediment transport point of view. In this paper an attempt has been made to investigate the change in flow turbulent kinetic energy along the flow depth with and without Piano Key Weir (PKW; a type of labyrinth weirs) and try to establish a distribution pattern of turbulent kinetic energy with respect to relative depth. Here, relative depth is defined as ratio of depth of point of measurement and depth of flow. Flow resistance has been increased after introduction of PKW in channel. Turbulent kinetic energy has been fitted with Gaussian distribution of higher order as flow resistance increased. After introduction of PKW in channel, velocities slow down but shifting of centroid indicates relative ease of passing particles through sloping keys. © 2016, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals.

Arabian Journal for Science and Engineering

Turbulent kinetic energy in the upstream of Piano Key Weir

Water is required to ensure food security, feed livestock, and industrial production and to conserve the environment. Human population has always been dependent on the rivers for survival. Management of rivers has been attempted by humans since the ancient times as the civilizations developed in the vicinity of the rivers. As the world’s population grows, the demand for water mounts and pressure on finite water resources intensifies. But the importance of population is major factor to consider. However, the brutal challenge of climate change resulting in changes in rainfall regimes, threatening surface as well as groundwater, contributes to making water resource scarcity a reality. Changes in hydrological cycle will certainly alter the precipitation and evapo-transpiration patterns, resulting in significant changes in the discharge regime of rivers. Moreover, it may lead to greater unreliability of dry season flows that possess potentially serious risks to water and energy supplies in the lean season. Therefore, before planning and management of any long-term water resources, the assessment of climate change impacts on the hydrological resources is of prime importance. The two main policy responses to climate change are mitigation and adaptation which is necessary to deal with the impacts of climate change. Adaptation measures may be planned in advance or put in place spontaneously in response to a local pressure. Incidences of waterrelated disasters are showing an upward trend due to climate change impacts thereby increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather. These issues intensify the phenomenon of erosion, land-water degradation, and pollution which demand for river restoration and training, as rivers are the essential element for sediment transport from surface land to oceans. The complexity of implementing the Integrated Land and Water Resources Management (ILWRM) increases manifold when the river crosses political border, thus making it a transboundary in nature which are not regulated by ratified international laws. Hence the need for transboundary international water law is overwhelming, constant, and immediate. © 2017 Springer Science+Business Media Singapore.

Introduction

Water is a fundamental human need and key to economic development. Since the beginning of civilization, people have faced problems associated with river and freshwater sharing. To add on to the precarious situation, most of the freshwater rivers are transboundary rivers, i.e. they cross at least one political border, either a border within a nation or an international boundary. Water politics, commonly known as hydropolitics, are politics affected by the availability of water and water resources, which play an important role in transboundary water management. Hydropolitics relate to the ability of geopolitical institutions to manage shared water resources in a politically sustainable manner, i.e. without tensions or conflict between political entities. As the pressures of population and economic growth increase, water resources are under increasing stress. As the stress on water resources increases, the risks associated with the management of transboundary rivers increase exponentially given the hegemonic disparities of the riparians. This gives rise to risks of conflict while generating opportunities of cooperation which can be analysed with the help of risk-opportunity index developed using fuzzy synthetic evaluation technique proposed by Rai et al. (J Hydrol 519:1551-1559, 2014). It has been proposed to formulate a hydropolitical sustainability index (HypSI) keeping in view the circles of blue sustainability (blue indicates water in this chapter) which considers the social desirability, political legitimacy, economical viability, environmental sustainability and technical feasibility aspects of shared water resources. © 2017 Springer Science+Business Media Singapore.

Hydropolitics in transboundary water conflict and cooperation

This book advances the scientific understanding, development, and applicationof geospatial technologies related to water resource management. It presents recent developments and applications specifically by utilizing new earth observation datasets such as TRMM/GPM, AMSR E/2, SMOS, SMAP and GCOM in combination with GIS, artificial intelligence, and hybrid techniques. By linking geospatial techniques with new satellite missions for earth and environmental science, the book promotes the synergistic and multidisciplinary activities of scientists and users working in the field of hydrological sciences. © 2017 by Taylor & Francis Group.

Geospatial Technology for Water Resource Applications

Geospatial technology for water resource applications

Spatial Integration of Rice based Cropping Systems for Soil and Water Quality through Spatial Technique

ISH Journal of Hydraulic Engineering

Reply to the ‘Discussion by S.K. Mazumder on “Riverbank protection with Porcupine systems: development of rational design methodology” by M. Aamir and N. Sharma (2015)’

The amount of sediments transported by headwater rivers plays a crucial role in planning of water resources. Most widely used methods of estimating the sediment in rivers are the empirical methods, and in India, the rating curve technique is most popular. The present study is focused on the application of artificial neural network (ANN) technique for sediment-discharge modelling of a headwater river. For ANN development, daily discharge and suspended sediment concentration data of Subansiri River (an eastern Himalayan river) in India have been used. Rating curves have also been developed with similar data, and comparison of the two techniques has been carried out. It has been observed that the estimates of suspended sediment concentration obtained by ANNs compared to the rating curve technique were much closer to the observed values. © 2017 Springer Science+Business Media Singapore.

Sediment runoff modelling using ANNs in an eastern himalayan basin, India

Regional specific study of the most important climatic variables is essential to reduce the adverse effects of climate change in developing countries. In the present study, an attempt has been made to detect the trends in rainfall and temperature (past and future) time series and the possibility of any rational relationship between the trends and elevation over study region. The study was mainly focused on a part of Brahmaputra river basin in Northeast India, i.e., the Dikhow catchment (area = 3100 km2). The Dikhow catchment is a set of unique composite catchment topography comprising fairly higher altitude hills as well as alluvial plains at much lower elevation. Historically (from the year 1901 to 2002), annual precipitation and monsoon precipitation are decreasing significantly (5% level of significance), whereas significant rise was observed on annual and seasonal basis for both maximum and minimum temperature time series. Further, during the entire time series (1901-2002), significant negative correlation was obtained between precipitation (annual and monsoon) trend magnitude and elevation of the study region. Significant rise for future precipitation was identified over the region for both A2 and B2 SRES scenarios, and winter precipitation is likely to increase more (59.18-69.44% under A2 and 47.71-54.90% under B2 over the catchment) than summer and monsoon precipitation. The maximum temperature has higher rate of rise than the minimum temperature for annual, summer, and monsoon temperature time series, while winter season shows higher rate of rise rather than the maximum temperature (1.02 °C over 102 years). For diurnal temperature range (DTR), monsoon season shows the significant rising which varies from 0.0016 to 0.0021 °C/year. Extreme temperature indices (TXx, TXn, TNx, and TNn) also show the significant warming picture over the catchment. Trend magnitude of extreme temperature indices and elevation shows significant relationship, while trend magnitude of the average maximum and minimum temperature and DTR does not show the noticeable connection between warming rate and elevation of the study area. Future Tmax and Tmin are increasing sharply for both A2 and B2 scenarios. A2 scenario shows higher rate than the B2 scenario. © 2017 Springer Science+Business Media Singapore.