
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 |
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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 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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sciforum-022281 | Copula bias correction for extreme precipitation in re-analysis data over a Greek catchment | , , , | N/A |
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The projection of extreme precipitation events with higher accuracy and reliability, which engender severe socioeconomic impacts more frequently, is considered a priority research topic in the scientific community. Although large scale initiatives for monitoring meteorological and hydrological variables exist, the lack of data is still evident particularly in regions with complex topographic characteristics. The latter results in the use of reanalysis data or data derived from Regional Climate Models, however both datasets are biased to the observations resulting in non-accurate results in hydrological studies. The current research presents a newly developed statistical method for the bias correction of the maximum rainfall amount at watershed scale. In particular, the proposed approach necessitates the coupling of a spatial distribution method, namely Thiessen polygons, with a multivariate probabilistic distribution method, namely copulas, for the bias correction of the maximum precipitation. The case study area is the Nestos river basin where the several extreme episodes that have been recorded have direct impacts to the regional agricultural economy. Thus, using daily data by three monitoring stations and daily reanalysis precipitation values from the grids closest to these stations, the results demonstrated that the bias corrected maximum precipitation totals (greater than 90%) is much closer to the real max precipitation totals, while the respective reanalysis value underestimates the real precipitation totals. The overall improvement of the outputs, shows that the proposed Thiessen-copula method could constitute a significant asset to hydrologic simulations. |
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sciforum-022314 | Evaluation of extreme dry and wet conditions using climate and hydrological indices in the upper part of the Gallikos River Basin | , , , , | N/A |
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Climate changes in the Mediterranean region especially those related to changes in rainfall distribution and occurrence of extreme events affect local economies. Agriculture is a sector strongly affected by climate conditions and concerns the majority of the Greek territory. The Gallikos river basin is an area of great interest regarding climate change impacts since it is an agricultural area depended on surface water resources and an area in which extreme events relatively often take place (e.g. floods). Long time series precipitation (27 years) and temperature data derived from measurement stations along with reanalysis data (ERA INTERIM) were used for the estimation of water availability and climate type over time in the area. The Standardized Precipitation Index and De Martonne aridity index was employed. The water flow measurements were correlated in order to investigate the interrelation between the different river branches and the extent of the meteorological changes effect in the basin. Descriptive statistics and cumulative curves were applied to check homogeneity of data. The results revealed that the climate type varies from semi arid to very wet and water availability ranges from moderately dry to extremely wet years. Reanalysis data overestimate precipitation. The meteorological changes affect at the same time the entire basin since the flow rate peaks occur simultaneously in the hydrographic network at different areas. |
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sciforum-022191 | Stochastic assessment of the influence of reservoir operation in hydrological dam safety through risk indexes | , , , | N/A |
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Hydrological dam safety assessment methods traditionally assume that the reservoir is full while it receives the design flood. In practice, reservoir management strategy determines the probability distribution of reservoir levels at the beginning of flood episodes. In this study we present a method to economically assess the influence of reservoir management strategy on hydrological dam safety and downstream flood risk. The method was applied to a gated-spillway dam located in the Tagus river basin. A set of 100000 inflow hydrographs was generated through a Monte Carlo procedure, reproducing the observed statistics of main hydrograph characteristics: peak flow, volume and duration. The set of 100000 hydrographs was routed through the reservoir applying the Volumetric Operation Method as flood control strategy. Three different scenarios were studied: initial reservoir level equal to maximum normal level, equal to a maximum conservation level and following the probability distribution of initial reservoir levels. In order to evaluate economically the influence of initial variable reservoir level and compare the three scenarios, a global risk index was applied. The index combines the hydrological risk for the dam, linked to the maximum water level experienced in the reservoir while the flood is routed, and the flood risk in the downstream river reach, linked to the discharge releases from the dam. The results highlighted the importance of considering the fluctuation of initial reservoir level for assessing the risk related to hydrological dam safety. Within the case study, the global risk index reduced its value up to 93 % if variable initial reservoir level is accounted, from 1445.6 x103 to 83 x103 euros. |
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sciforum-022268 | Temporal and elevation trend detection of rainfall erosivity density in Greece | , , | N/A |
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This paper presents certain characteristics of trends in rainfall erosivity density (ED), that have not been so far investigated in depth in the current literature. Global warming is expected to increase the intensity of rainfall in Europe and consequently to increase the soil erosion rates. This potential may have a significant impact, especially on Greece, which is inflicted by the phenomenon of desertification. Raw pluviograph data were acquired from the Greek National Bank of Hydrological and Meteorological Information for 108 stations. Precipitation time series values were cleared from noise and errors and the ratio of missing values was computed. Erosive rainfalls were identified, their return period was determined using Intensity–Duration–Frequency (IDF) curves and erosivity values were computed. A Monte Carlo method was utilized to assess the impact of missing values ratio to the computation of annual erosivity (R) and ED values. It was found that the R values are underestimated in a linear way, while ED is more robust against the presence of missing precipitation values. Indicatively, the R values are underestimated by 49%, when only 50% of the erosive rainfall events are used while at the same time the estimation error of ED is 20%. Using predefined quality criteria for coverage and time length a subset of 18 stations was selected. Their annual ED values, as well as the samples' autocorrelation and partial autocorrelation functions were computed, in order to investigate the presence of stochastic trends. Subsequently, Kendall's Tau was used in order to yield a measure of the monotonic relationship between annual ED values and time. Finally, the hypothesis that ED values are affected by elevation was tested. In conclusion: a) it is suggested to compute ED for the assessment of erosivity in Greece instead of the direct computation of R, b) stationarity of ED was found for the majority of the selected stations, in contrast to reported precipitation trends for the same time period and c) the hypothesis that ED values are not correlated to elevation could not be rejected. |
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sciforum-022299 | Quantification of the expected changes in annual maximum daily precipitation quantiles under climate change in the Iberian Peninsula | , | N/A |
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Climate model outputs can be used to assess the expected behaviour of extreme precipitations in the future due to climate change. In Europe, the EURO-CORDEX project provides precipitation projections in the future under various representative concentration pathways (RCP), proposed by the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the IPCC. The EURO-CORDEX project regionalised Global Climate Model (GCM) outputs in Europe through a set of Regional Climate Models (RCM). In this work, 12 combinations of GCM and RCM under two scenarios (RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5) supplied by the EURO-CORDEX programme are analysed in the Iberian Peninsula. Annual maximum daily precipitation series are considered. Precipitation quantiles for a set of probabilities of exceedance are estimated by using the three-parameter Generalized Extreme Value distribution and L-moments. Precipitation quantiles expected in the future are compared with the precipitation quantiles in the control period, for each climate model. Delta changes in precipitation quantiles are obtained as thresholds exceeded by a percentage of climate models: 50%, 68% and 90%. Three periods in the future are considered: 2011-2040, 2041-2070 and 2071-2100. An approach based on Monte Carlo simulations is developed, in order to assess the uncertainty from the climate model projections. Expected changes in the future are compared with the sampling uncertainty in the control period. Thus, statistical significant changes are identified. The higher the significance threshold, the fewer cells with significant changes are identified. Consequently, a set of maps are obtained for various thresholds, in order to assist the decision making process in subsequent climate change studies. The results of this study are currently being applied to implement the Floods Directive in Spain, regarding the preliminary assessment of flood risks. |
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.