AIT Virtual Learning Environment

The course is aimed at providing students some fundamental knowledge of soil physics and soil-water-plant relationships, which are essential in irrigation and drainage engineering. Advanced and innovative concepts on irrigation and drainage planning and design are discussed; and theories are supported by fieldworks and laboratory exercises on soil characterization, soil water movement, crop-irrigation water requirements modeling, and design/evaluation of irrigation drainage systems.

This course provides the fundamental know-how on groundwater flow and transport processes, sources of pollution, techniques for groundwater resources assessment, environmental issues of overcharging and overexploitation of groundwater development, management of groundwater resources development and groundwater pollution

This is the moodle site of the Water Resource Economics part of the Integrated Water Resource Management class. 

The course will be divided into 2 main parts:

1. Water economics

This section will be dedicated to the basic concepts used in economics and how they apply to water resources. We will focus on allocation of water resources among different usages/users. For this we will need (a) to give a value to the different services provided by water resources and water ecosystems, and  (b) establish some rules to share these resources and services in an efficient manner.

2. Water Governance

The course aims to train students in planning, designing and conducting a field research and how to write research proposals and reports especially for water resource development projects. The course is also envisioned to enhance the students’ writing, communication and presentation skills. In addition, the course will provide the students hands-on experience on laboratory and in-situ measurements of hydraulic and soil hydrologic properties and processes as well as on sampling soil and water in the field and its analysis in the laboratory.

The aim of this course is to develop systems thinking as it relates to water resources planing and management and to provide deterministic systems approach for analysis through case studies.

This course aims to provide the knowledge and understandings of climate change and its impact on water availability, use and demand; environmental and socio-economic implications; modeling tools and methods for climate change projections and impact assessment in water sectors; vulnerability assessment and climate change adaptation strategies in managing water at regional, national and local level. Also current status of policies, laws and international climate change debates and negotiations, in particular to water resources management will be discussed.