
3rd International Electronic Conference on Water Sciences (ECWS-3)
Part of the International Electronic Conference on Water Sciences series
15–30 Nov 2018
Welcome from the Chair
Conference Title: Hydrological Extremes and Related Risk and Uncertainty
We are pleased to welcome you to the 3rd International Electronic Conference on Water Sciences (ECWS-3), which will be held online, promoted by the open access journal Water https://www.mdpi.com/journal/water.
After the first two International Electronic Conferences on Water Sciences (ECWS-1 and ECWS-2) successfully addressed this vitally important subject, we recognized the need for hosting a third conference, aiming at deepen the discussion on the issues of hydrological extremes, i.e., floods and droughts and the associated risk and uncertainty.
Global climate change and variability is probable to affect the frequency and severity of extreme hydrological events (e.g. floods and droughts). It is necessary to develop models and methodologies for better understanding, forecasting, hazard prevention of weather induced extreme hydrological events and assessment of disaster risk. The ECWS-3 considers extreme hydrological events that lead to hydrological hazards induced by severe weather and climate change and the related risk and uncertainty. Assessing the risk and uncertainty of hydrological extremes is a crucial step towards decision making. Decision makers are interested in determining and quantifying risk and uncertainty of existing and proposed hydrotechnical projects.
The ECWS-3 welcomes contributions that develop novel methodologies to model the hydrological processes within the context of risk and uncertainty analysis in the following topics/sections (Responsible Conference Committee member):
- Advances in flood estimation and modeling (Prof. J. Szolgay)
- Hydrological drought methods and modeling approaches (Prof. A. Cancelliere)
- Uncertainty and hydrological extremes (Prof. G. Di Baldassarre and Prof. G. Aronica)
- Risk and engineering design of hydrotechnical structures and projects (Prof. Luis Garrote)
- Impacts of climate change on hydrological extremes (Prof. K. Banasik)
- Applications of geoinformation systems in hydrological extremes (Dr. L. Vasiliades)
- Socio-economic assessment of hydrological extremes (Prof. M.-C. Llasat-Botija)
Conference Chair
Prof. Dr. Athanasios G. Loukas Hydrology and Water Resources, Laboratory of Hydrology and Aquatic Systems Analysis, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Thessaly, Pedion Areos, 38334 Volos, Greece |
![]() |
Call for Contribution
The 3rd International Electronic Conference on Water Sciences (ECWS-3) will be held from 15 to 30 November 2018 online . This event enables the researchers of research field to present their research and exchange ideas with their colleagues without the need to travel. All proceedings will be published on the conference homepage in open access format.
Through this event, we aim to cover the following topics:
- Advances in flood estimation and modeling
- Hydrological drought methods and modeling approaches
- Uncertainty and hydrological extremes
- Risk and engineering design of hydrotechnical structures and projects
- Impacts of climate change on hydrological extremes
- Applications of geoinformation systems in hydrological extremes
- Socio-economic assessment of hydrological extremes
The conference will be completely free of charge—both to attend and for scholars to upload and present their latest work on the conference platform. Selected papers presented in ECWS-3 will be published in a Special Issue of journal Water undergone a full peer-review (ISSN 2073-4441; Impact Factor: 2.069 (2017) with a 20% discount on the APCs; ECWS-3 offers you the opportunity to participate in this international, scholarly conference without having the concern or expenditure of travel — all you need is your computer and access to the Internet. We would like to invite you to “attend” this conference and present your latest work.
Abstracts (in English) should be submitted by 15 October 2018 online at https://www.sciforum.net/login. For accepted abstracts, the full paper can be submitted by 31 January 2019. The conference itself will be held 15-30 November 2018.
We hope you will be able to join this exciting event and support us in making it a success. ECWS-3 is organized and sponsored by MDPI, a scholarly open access publisher based in Basel, Switzerland.
Paper Submission Guidelines
For information about the submission procedure and preparation of a full presentation, please refer to the "Instructions for Authors".
Conference Chairs

Hydrology and Water Resources, Laboratory of Hydrology and Aquatic Systems Analysis, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Thessaly, Pedion Areos, 38334 Volos, Greece; and Hydrology and Water Resources, Laboratory of Hydraulic Works and Environmental Management, Department of Rural and Surveying Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Dr. Athanasios G. Loukas is Professor of Hydrology and Water Resources, Laboratory of Hydrology and Aquatic Systems Analysis, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Thessaly, Pedion Areos, 38334 Volos, Greece and Hydrology and Water Resources, Laboratory of Hydraulic Works and Environmental Management, Department of Rural and Surveying Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 541 21 Thessaloniki, Greece
[email protected]
Conference Committee

River Basin Management and Hydraulic Works, Civil Engineering Department, Engineering University of Messina, Contrada Di Dio, 98166 Villaggio S. Agata, Messina, Italy
[email protected]

Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile e Architettura, Università di Catania, Via S. Sofia 64, 95123 Catania, Italy
[email protected]

Centre of Natural Hazards and Disaster Science, Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University, Villav. 16, 75236 Uppsala, Sweden
[email protected]

Hydrology and Water Resources Management, Department of Land and Water Resources, Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava Bratislava, Slovakia
[email protected]

Department of Civil Engineering Hydraulics and Energy, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
[email protected]

[email protected]

Department of Applied Physics, University of Barcelona, Avda. Diagonal 647, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
[email protected]

Dept. of Civil Engineering, University of Thessaly , 38334 Volos, Greece
[email protected]
Invited Speakers

Department of Civil Engineering, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
Dr. Luis Mediero is a professor on Hydraulic Engineering at the ‘ETSI de Caminos, Canales y Puertos’ of ‘Universidad Politécnica de Madrid’. He teaches subjects related to Hydraulic Engineering at the ‘Graduate on Civil Engineering’, ‘MsC on Civil Engineering’ and ‘MsC on Civil Engineering Systems’. In addition, he also gives lectures in the ‘International MsC on dam management and safety’, organized by the Spanish Committee on Large Dams, and in the ‘MsC on Water Resource Management’ organized by Aqualogy. He belongs to the UPM consolidated research group on ‘Hydroinformatics and water management’. His main research lines are on statistical hydrology, non-stationarity time series, rainfall-runoff modelling, climate change, dam safety, reservoir management and water resources. He has been the principal investigator (PI) of one national project (POSEIDON) and one European project (SAFERPLACES). He has been also involved in various national projects (MODEX and E-Virtual) and European projects (DRIHM, FLASH and BASE).
[email protected]

Centre for the Assessment of Natural Hazards and Proactive Planning of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA),
Laboratory of Reclamation Works and Water Resources Management, School of Rural and Surveying Engineering of NTUA
Prof. George Tsakiris is the director of the Centre for the Assessment of Natural Hazards and Proactive Planning of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) and director of the Laboratory of Reclamation Works and Water Resources Management, School of Rural and Surveying Engineering of NTUA. He has PhD from the Civil Engineering Dept. of Southampton University, U.K. He is a full Professor since 1988 teaching engineering hydrology, hydraulic works and water resources management. His research interests (among others) include topics of hydro-meteorological extremes (droughts and floods), non-stationary hydrological processes, and adaptive water resources management under uncertainty. He has completed more than 50 European and national research projects, most of which as scientific coordinator. He has published more than 100 peer reviewed papers in international scientific journals and a large number of papers in Proceedings of international and national conferences. He is the author/co-author of five textbooks in Greek and one
[email protected]
Instructions for Authors
Submissions should be done by the authors online by registering with www.sciforum.net, and using the "Submit New Abstract" function once logged into system.
- Scholars interested in participating with the conference can submit their abstract (about 200-300 words covering the areas of manuscripts for the proceedings issue) online on this website until 15 October 2018.
- The Conference Committee will pre-evaluate, based on the submitted abstract, whether a contribution from the authors of the abstract will be welcome for the 3rd International Electronic Conference on Water Science. All authors will be notified by 19 October 2018 about the acceptance of their abstract.
- If the abstract is accepted for this conference, the author is asked to submit his/her manuscript, optionally along with a PowerPoint and/or video presentation of his/her paper (only PDF), until the submission deadline of 31 October 2018.
- The manuscripts and presentations will be available on https://ecws-3.sciforum.net/ for discussion and rating during the time of the conference 15-30 November 2018.
- After the conference, the Conference Committee will select papers that may be included for publication in the Special Issue "Selected Papers from the 3rd International Electronic Conference on Water Science" by the Open Access Journals Water (ISSN 2073-4441; IF=2.069; CODEN: WATEGH) with a 20% discount off the Article Processing Charge(APC).
Manuscripts for the proceedings issue must have the following organization:
- Title
- Full author names
- Affiliations (including full postal address) and authors' e-mail addresses
- Abstract
- Keywords
- Introduction
- Methods
- Results and Discussion
- Conclusions
- (Acknowledgements)
- References
Manuscripts should be prepared in MS Word or any other word processor and should be converted to the PDF format before submission. The publication format will be PDF. The manuscript should count at least 3 pages (incl. figures, tables and references). There is no page limit on the length, although authors are asked to keep their papers as concise as possible.
Authors are encouraged to prepare a presentation in PowerPoint or similar software, to be displayed online along with the Manuscript. Slides, if available, will be displayed directly in the website using Sciforum.net's proprietary slides viewer. Slides can be prepared in exactly the same way as for any traditional conference where research results can be presented. Slides should be converted to the PDF format before submission so that our process can easily and automatically convert them for online displaying.
Besides their active participation within the forum, authors are also encouraged to submit video presentations. If you are interested in submitting, please contact the conference organizer at [email protected] to get to know more about the procedure. This is an unique way of presenting your paper and discuss it with peers from all over the world. Make a difference and join us for this project!
Submission: Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.sciforum.net/login by registering and logging in to this website.
Accepted File Formats
- MS Word: Manuscript prepared in MS Word must be converted into a single file before submission. When preparing manuscripts in MS Word, the Electronic Conference on Materials Science Microsoft Word template file (see download below) must be used. Please do not insert any graphics (schemes, figures, etc.) into a movable frame which can superimpose the text and make the layout very difficult.
- Electronic Conference on Water Science MS Word Template File
- References: References must be numbered in order of appearance in the text (including tables and legends) and listed individually at the end of the manuscript. We recommend preparing the references with a bibliography software package, such as EndNote, ReferenceManager or Zotero to avoid typing mistakes and duplicated references. Citations and References in Supplementary files are permitted provided that they also appear in the main text and in the reference list. In the text, reference numbers should be placed in square brackets [ ], and placed before the punctuation; for example [1], [1–3] or [1,3]. For embedded citations in the text with pagination, use both parentheses and brackets to indicate the reference number and page numbers; for example [5] (p. 10). or [6] (pp. 101–105). The Reference list should include the full title as recommended by the ACS style guide. The style file for endnote, MDPI.ens, can be found at https://endnote.com/downloads/style/mdpi
- Author List and Affiliations: Authors' full first and last names must be provided. The initials of any middle names can be added. The PubMed/MEDLINE standard format is used for affiliations: complete address information including city, zip code, state/province, country, and all email addresses. At least one author should be designated as corresponding author, and his or her email address and other details should be included at the end of the affiliation section. Please read the criteria to qualify for authorship.
- Figures, Schemes and Tables: All figure files should be separately uploaded during submission. Figures and schemes must be provided at a sufficiently high resolution (minimum 1000 pixels width/height, or a resolution of 300 dpi or higher). All Figure file formats are accepted. However, TIFF, JPEG, EPS and PDF files are preferred. Materials can publish multimedia files in articles or as supplementary materials. Please get in touch with the Editorial office for further information. All Figures, Schemes and Tables should also be inserted into the main text close to their first citation and must be numbered following their number of appearance (Figure 1, Scheme I, Figure 2, Scheme II, Table 1, etc.). All Figures, Schemes and Tables should have a short explanatory title and a caption. All table columns should have an explanatory heading. To facilitate the copy-editing of larger tables, smaller fonts may be used, but in no less than 8 pt. in size. Authors should use the Table option of Microsoft Word to create tables. For multi-panel figures, the file must contain all data in one file. For tips on creating multi-panel figures, please read the helpful advice provided by L2 Molecule. Authors are encouraged to prepare figures and schemes in color (RGB at 8-bit per channel). Full color graphics will be published free of charge.
For further enquiries please contact ECWS-3 2018 Secretary at [email protected].
Authors wishing to publish their papers are asked to abide to the following rules:
- Any facts that might be perceived as a possible conflict of interest of the author(s) must be disclosed in the paper prior to submission.
- Authors should accurately present their research findings and include an objective discussion of the significance of their findings.
- Data and methods used in the research need to be presented in sufficient detail in the paper, so that other researchers can replicate the work.
- Raw data should preferably be publicly deposited by the authors before submission of their manuscript. Authors need to at least have the raw data readily available for presentation to the referees and the editors of the journal, if requested. Authors need to ensure appropriate measures are taken so that raw data is retained in full for a reasonable time after publication.
- Simultaneous submission of manuscripts to more than one journal is not tolerated.
- Republishing content that is not novel is not tolerated (for example, an English translation of a paper that is already published in another language will not be accepted).
- If errors and inaccuracies are found by the authors after publication of their paper, they need to be promptly communicated to the editors of this journal so that appropriate actions can be taken. Please refer to our policy regarding publication of publishing addenda and corrections.
- Your manuscript should not contain any information that has already been published. If you include already published figures or images, please obtain the necessary permission from the copyright holder to publish under the CC-BY license.
- Plagiarism, data fabrication and image manipulation are not tolerated.
MDPI, the publisher of the Sciforum.net platform, is an open access publisher. We believe that authors should retain the copyright to their scholarly works. Hence, by submitting a Communication paper to this conference, you retain the copyright of your paper, but you grant MDPI the non-exclusive right to publish this paper online on the Sciforum.net platform. This means you can easily submit your paper to any scientific journal at a later stage and transfer the copyright to its publisher (if required by that publisher).
List of accepted submissions (31)
Id | Title | Authors | Presentation Video | Presentation Pdf | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
sciforum-022277 | A regional sensitivity analysis of a multi-variable hydrological model: A case study of a Greek catchment | , , , | N/A |
![]() |
Show Abstract |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The importance of climate data in hydrological process simulation is widely recognized. The evaluation of the hydrological budget response to climate variability is required especially in water resource management. The present paper illustrates a case study of sensitivity analysis for the hydrological model SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool) using climate data from the Havrias river basin in north Greece. The ERA-Interim reanalysis daily climate data, were used as input data to drive the SWAT model. The SWAT model was calibrated for the period from 1981 to 2000. The sensitivity of the hydrological parameters to the alteration of the climate data was analyzed by using eleven hypothetical scenarios. These scenarios regard different combinations of temperature, wind speed, precipitation and relative humidity. The results show that the changes of precipitation temperature and relative humidity have significant influence in evapotranspiration and percolation (and consequently recharge) in the study region. On the contrary, the wind speed negligibly affects on the hydrological components. Overall, the Havrias river basin hydrological budget is sensitive to shifts in climate data and the utilization of reliable and accurate climate models outputs is necessary in order water managers to be able to build scenarios providing sustainability against the potential future climate change impacts. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
sciforum-022306 | Multi-Index Drought Assessment in Europe | , , | N/A |
![]() |
Show Abstract |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Any attempt for the application of integrated drought management, requires identifying and characterizing the event per se. The questions of scale, boundary, and of geographic areal extend are of central concern for any efforts of drought assessment, impacts identification, and thus of drought mitigation implementation mechanisms. The use of drought indices, such as Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), has often lead to pragmatic realization of drought duration, magnitude and spatial extend. The current effort presents the implementation of SPI and SPEI on a Pan-European scale and it is evaluated using existing precipitation and temperature data. The E-OBS gridded dataset for precipitation, minimum temperature, and maximum temperature were used, covering the period 1969 – 2018. The two indices were estimated for time steps of 6, and 12 months. The results for the application period of recurrent droughts indicate the potential that both indices offer for an improvement on drought management, comparability, identification of critical areas, threshold definitions, towards better planning and mobilization of resources for mitigation efforts. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
sciforum-022303 | Improving the efficient and robust uncertainty quantification in real-time flood forecasting using Polynomial chaos expansions and ensemble Kalman filter | , | N/A |
![]() |
Show Abstract |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
no research has been done in case of real-time forecasting. Furthermore, many uncertainties are exist influencing to forecasting result. EnKF is the useful technique to address that issue by updating the model state and parameter during the real-time. The proposed framework significantly enhances the efficiency and accuracy of hydrological application in real-time forecasting, which plays an important role in the flood planning, management, and mitigating the flood risk during the golden time. In real-time process, the forecast rainfall and the flow at the current time are updated, the unified framework will be capable to automatically upgrade the ensemble model states and model parameters through Dual EnKF (dual states-parameters estimation); and the ensemble hydrologic predictions are estimated a seamlessly through PCE. Besides, to maximize the efficient in forecasting, the approach of GLUE (Generalized likelihood uncertainty estimation) is used to determine the ensemble size of model states and parameters sets, and the perturbed observation. The proposed approach is applied to the Vu Gia watershed in Vietnam to demonstrate its validity and applicability. A detailed comparison with the NAM hydrologic model shows that analyzing results with surrogate model are as good as those given by NAM model, while the forecasting results are significantly improved through automatic updating of states and parameters by EnKF; not only the good accuracy, but also the model can run nearly 10 times faster than the hydrologic model. Overall, the results indicate that the uncertainty propagation in real-time flood forecasting can be effectively characterized and robust through the proposed unified framework. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
sciforum-022740 | A web-based open-source geoinformation tool for regional water resources assessment | , , , | N/A |
![]() |
Show Abstract |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
To reduce the impact of droughts and increase the resilience of regional water systems, various demands, such as hydropower, supply and irrigation, need to be reconciled. In this perspective, designers and practitioners must be able to use information tools to define the hydrological constraints for a sustainable management of the resource. In this work, a web-based open-source geoinformation system is presented, that allows to estimate Flow Duration Curves (FDCs) in ungauged basins. The regional statistical model used, developed by Ganora et al., 2013 [1] in North-Western Italy, is based on the characterization of the FDC in a parametric framework where parameters depend on topographic, climatic, land use and vegetation descriptors computed at the basin scale. The software tool, accessible both by web browsers and GIS desktop (e.g. QGIS), pilots the estimations steps by computing the spatial descriptors and applying relations needed to estimate the full FDC via Burr distribution. The developed server-side scripting provides users with always updated data and procedures, being free from software client compatibility issues. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
sciforum-022292 | Hydrometeorological extremes in a warmer climate. A local scale assessment for the island of Crete | , | N/A |
![]() |
Show Abstract |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
A future warmer atmosphere indicates that precipitation will increase as a consequence of the higher humidity concentrations. According to the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship precipitation increase by a factor of 7% per degree of warming. However, recent studies have shown that increase in precipitation extremes can exceed this scaling rate. In this regard we focus on the flash flood prone area of Crete by analysing high resolution precipitation records form a dense network of meteorological stations to see if the relationship of precipitation and dew point temperature lies within the Clausius-Clapeyron theory. We then use simulation outputs of a “present day event” from a set of very high resolution (about 2 km grid spacing) convective permitting regional climate models (CPRCM) to see if the models are able to capture intense convection and thus accurately simulate extreme precipitation events over Crete. A second set of simulations for the present day event, but with a perturbation of +2oC, was used to examine intensity changes and to see what similar events might look like in a future weather. We finally focus on a high impact flash flood event occurred on 17 October 2006 and we study changes in hydrological impacts. The developed information can advance local scale knowledge in the context of climate change adaptation and appropriate risk management. |
List of Authors (80)
Conference Schedule
Deadline for Abstract Submission: 15 October 2018
Notification of Acceptance: 19 October 2018
Deadline for Submission of Full Paper/Poster/Power Point: 31 October 2018
Conference Open: 15-30 November 2018
ECWS-3. Submission
The 3rd International Electronic Conference on Water Sciences (ECWS-3) will be held from 15 to 30 November 2018 online . This event enables the researchers of research field to present their research and exchange ideas with their colleagues without the need to travel. All proceedings will be published on the conference homepage in open access format.