Mardi 1 décembre 2009

Work undertaken from German partners in the Rur sub-basin

Maïté FOURNIER (EPAMA) | Règle de gestion des barrages-réservoirs du bassin de Rur

Work at the Institute of Hydraulic Engineering and Water Resources Management at RWTH Aachen University will focus on the hydraulic modelling of the Rur tributary and the development of methods to assess the changes in water related risks due to climate evolution. In preparation of these tasks we collected all needed data and decided upon which software to use. A hydraulic model will be set up for the part of the Rur downstream of the reservoirs using SOBEK 1D/2D. The output of this model will give information on inundation during floods. That information together with data on land use can be used to calculate the impact of different floods, today and for future scenarios of climate change.

During a two day field trip we had a good look at the 88 km long river section downstream of the last Rur reservoir, with focus on crucial points for modelling. Along with collecting data on the Rur basin, such as maps, gauging records, etc. and visiting the important sites, we also gathered relevant publications on the Rur, the Meuse and the topics relevant to our research and added them into the Transnational Online References Database (TORD) for our partners to see.

Besides the participation in filling the TORD with contents, LFI mainly worked on producing the hydrological scenarios for Rur and Niers catchments. Here the rainfall runoff models for the Niers, all in all 14 submodels, and the Rur, consisting of submodels for the upper and lower Wurm, Inde and middle and lower Rur, have been adapted. These models need to be driven with the E-OBS data for the daily simulations and the measured data with higher temporal resolution for the high-flow calculations. For the scenario-runs the driving data needed to be produced first.

In the framework of Workpackage 3 rainfall runoff models for the area upstream the Rur reservoirs need to be set up. The data acquisition and transfer has made great progress.
To ensure a good progress in the project, meetings with the other German participants of AMICE have taken place in regular intervals.