Hydrology and Floodplain Analysis

For undergraduate and graduate courses in Hydrology.

This text offers a clear and up-to-date presentation of fundamental concepts and design methods required to understand hydrology and floodplain analysis. It addresses the computational emphasis of modern hydrology and provides a balanced approach to important applications in watershed analysis, floodplain computation, flood control, urban hydrology, stormwater design, and computer modeling.

Philip B. Bedient is the Herman Brown Professor of Engineering, with the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Rice University, Houston, TX. He received the Ph.D. degree in environmental engineering sciences from the University of Florida. He is a registered professional engineer and teaches and performs research in surface hydrology, modeling, and flood prediction systems, and ground water hydrology. He has directed over 50 research projects over the past 31 years, and has written over 180 journal articles and conference proceedings over that time. He has also written four textbooks in the area of surface and groundwater hydrology. He received the Shell Distinguished Chair in environmental science (1988―92), the C.V. Theis award in 2007, and he was elected Fellow of ASCE in 2006. Dr. Bedient has worked on a variety of hydrologic problems, including river basin analyses, major floodplain studies, groundwater contamination models, and hydrologic/GIS models in water resources. He has been actively involved in developing computer systems for flood prediction and warning, and recently directed the development of a real-time flood alert system (FAS2) for the Texas Medical Center (TMC) in Houston. The FAS2 is based on converting NEXRAD radar data directly to rainfall in a GIS framework, which is then used to predict peak channel flows. Dr. Bedient is organizing the Houston test bed for the Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA), an NSF Engineering Research Center led by University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and Rice University is a strategic outreach partners. CASA’s revolutionary sensing technology is expected to increase the warning time for flash floods and other severe weather events with greater accuracy than existing systems. The first high technology radar was deployed in 2007 in the TMC in Houston as part of the on-going flood warning system developed for the Texas Medical Center. Dr. Bedient has overseen the monitoring, modeling, and remediation at numerous hazardous waste sites, including six Superfund sites, and U.S. Air Force bases in five states. He has extensive experience in contaminant transport at sites impacted with chlorinated solvents and fuels. He has served on two National Academy of Science committees relating to environmental remediation and technology, and has received research funding from NSF, the U.S. EPA, the U.S. Department of Defense, the State of Texas, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the City of Houston.

Wayne C. Huber is Professor of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering at Oregon State University, Corvallis. His doctoral work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology dealt with thermal stratification in reservoirs, for which he received the Lorenz G. Straub Award from the University of Minnesota and the Hilgard Hydraulic Prize from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). He is a member of several technical societies and has served several administrative functions within the ASCE. He is the author of over 120 reports and technical papers, is a registered professional engineer, and has served as a consultant on numerous studies done by public agencies and private engineering firms. Beginning at the University of Florida and continuing at Oregon State University, Dr. Huber’s research has included studies of urban hydrology, Storm water management, nonpoint source runoff, river basin hydrology, lake eutrophication, rainfall statistics, and hydrologic and water quality modeling. He is one of the original authors of the EPA Storm Water Management Model and has helped to maintain and improve the model continuously since 1971. Dr. Huber is an internationally recognized authority on runoff quantity and quality processes in urban areas.

Baxter E. Vieux is Director of the Natural Hazards and Disaster Research Center and Professor in the School of Civil Engineering and Environmental Science, University of Oklahoma, Norman where he teaches courses in hydrology, GIS, surveying, measurements, water quality management, and engineering graphics and design. Before joining OU in 1990, he held a professorship at Michigan State University teaching watershed management after earning his PhD there. Dr. Vieux was recently appointed as Adjunct Professor with the Department of Environmental Engineering and Science, Rice University, Houston, Prior to his academic career, he spent ten years with the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service serving as Acting State Engineer, and being responsible for statewide engineering design and construction programs in Michigan. He is a registered professional engineer in three states and is co-principal and founder of Vieux & Associates, Inc., an engineering technology company with clients in the US and internationally in radar rainfall, GIS, and hydrology. Dr. Vieux is the innovator and architect of the first commercially available physics-based distributed hydrologic model, Vflo™, which uses real-time radar inputs for hydrologic analysis and prediction. Span urban and rural hydrology, the model has worldwide applicability. A patent is held for a method of realtime distributed model calibration. Consultative services include major corporations and engineering companies, and domestic and international water agencies. Externally sponsored academic research has been funded by NASA, EPA, NWS, NOAA, Army Corps of Engineers, NSF, and state/local agencies. Internationally, he has conducted research and worked on projects in France, Japan, Poland, Niger, Nicaragua, Taiwan, Paraguay, Korea and Romania. He has authored over 110 publications in hydrology including a recent book in its second edition, Distributed Hydrologic Modeling Using GIS, Kluwer Academic Press,Vol. 48.