Description
In the project implementation the partners will work out a curriculum of a 5-day-long field course including pilot studies both in Hungary and Norway. The partners will collect and merge the most advanced measurement methodologies and techniques in their specialization area considering river flow and morphology, bed material, bed-load and suspended solids sampling methods, their laboratory analysis, data processing and evaluation. A pilot measurement campaign will be carried out both in Hungarian and in Norwegian case study site. The course experience will be discussed at a joint workshop in order to tune the course program and its implementation. The new field course in its finalized form is going to be inserted in the Masters programs of the partner institutes, offered at the same time to international students, too. In doing so, the elaborated field course can expend to an international one announced for practicing engineers and geophysicists on a regular basis. The participating universities are the most recognized research institutes in the field of river hydromorphology in the two countries. BME and ELTE have a great knowledge and experience in different field measurement methodologies to be applied within the project implementation. The two Hungarian institutes are responsible for developing pilot study in a suitable Hungarian location. The donor partner, NTNU, is responsible for developing their own field laboratory in a Norwegian site. Through a continuous discussion among the partner institutes together with joint field measurements, both in Hungary and in Norway, the curriculum of the new field course will be finalised jointly. During the project implementation progress reports, lecture notes as well as a project webpage will be prepared.
Summary of project results
Despite the fact that the partner institutes are acknowledged research groups in the field of river engineering and river morphology sciences, no practical courses were available so far for students in the master’s programme, which provide state-of-the-art knowledge. Within the EEA HydroCourse project we developed the curriculum for a new field course for civil engineer and geophysicist students both in Hungary and in Norway. The students will gain knowledge about the hydromorphological characterization of river reaches performing own measurement of river flows, river bed geometry, sediment transport, river bed stratification and laboratory analysis. Several individual and joint field campaigns were performed in both countries at carefully chosen study sites, involving students, to develop and test new field measurement methods. Furthermore, the measurement infrastructure was improved and created a suitable environment (with e.g. preparing a laboratory room) for the future field course. The results of the field campaigns were assessed in technical reports, moreover, new scientific results have been reached and published at an international conference. The sustainability of the results is ensured by including the new field course in the master’s programmes of the partner institutes and by preparing a bilingual lecture notes for the courses. The project results were disseminated at seminars at the partner institutes, posters were published, a project webpage was set up (
www.hydroucourse.bme.hu), digital articles were published (
http://epito.bme.hu/node/14766) and a new web-based map was published (
http://mapire.eu/hu/map/norway/). The strengthening of the scientific relationships of the partner institutes has also been achieved. Joint scientific publications have been and will be performed and new research topics have been outlined.
Summary of bilateral results
NTNU organized the kick-off meeting of the project. Within the meeting the potential study sites for the future field course were visited and the most important characteristics of the sites were discussed. NTNU performed field testing of the different hydro-morphological measurements with a main focus on smaller rivers. Acoustic flow measurements and laser based sediment measurements were primarily carried out. The experiences gained at the field tests contributed to the choosing of the most suitable measurement methods for the field course. The project played an important role in strengthening the cooperation between the partner institutes, especially with the lead partner. There are both new short-term and new long-term joint research topics which ensure the strong interinstitutional relationship. ELTE participated at the kick-off meeting at NTNU and contributed to the selection of the Hungarian study site. An overview of the existing geophysical river bed measurement methods was carried out and the field testing of the seismic survey method was performed. The field survey was carried out at the chosen study site of the Danube at Göd. It was shown that the applied method is capable to reveal the morphology and the stratification of the riverbed and thus directly contributes to the hydro-morphological characterization of river reaches. The surveys were repeated during the second Hungarian field campaign in 2016. Besides the geophysical measurements, ELTE contributed to the project with the large-scale river morphological analysis methods, which became a relevant part of the lecture notes and the theoretical background or the river characterization methods. As a tangible result, ELTE set up a new, web-based historical map system for Norway, through which the long-term changes of the river platforms can be detected. The map system has been published and freely available here:
http://mapire.eu/hu/map/norway/. This outcome plays a key role both in the sustainability and the dissemination of the project results as the webpage is widely accepted and can easily be referenced. It is important to note that before this project, no such freely available historical maps were available for the Norwegian community, which supports not only river engineering research but every kind of civil and even military engineering purposes.