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During May 11-13 the Hohai University in Nanjing (China) hosted the International IAHS Workshop “Towards the IAHS Scientific Decade 2013-2022”. On behalf of the all the participants, I would like to thank the Hohai University for hosting the meeting. In particular, I would like to thank the President of the Hohai University Prof. Wang Cheng, the local organiser and IAHS vice-President Prof. Liliang Ren, and all the individuals who have excellently contributed to organising this very successful and highly inspiring meeting. The Workshop was attended by numerous members of the IAHS Bureau, including the President Prof. Gordon Young, the President-elect Prof. Hubert Savenije, the vice-President Prof. Denis Hughes and the Secretary General Prof. Christophe Cudennec, as well as numerous representatives from the IAHS Commissions and the task force.
Here below I am briefly describing the development of the workshop agenda as well as the main points of the interesting two-day discussions that was characterised by a vivid enthusiasm and productivity. In fact, as I anticipated above, I am happy to report that I personally consider the Nanjing meeting a very fruitful experience not only for the development of the next IAHS decade, but also for my personal growth.
The description below is essentially a report, that aims to making the information available. A scientific synthesis of the workshop will be published soon on the blog.
May 11, 2012 – Morning Session
The Opening Ceremony of the workshop was chaired by Prof. Liliang Ren and hosted the speeches by Prof. Wang Cheng, President of the Hohai University, Prof. Zhang Jianyun, President of the National Hydraulic Research Institute and President of the Chinese National Committee for IAHS, Prof. Gordon Young, President of IAHS, and Prof. Wang Jiyang, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. A group photo of the workshop Participants was taken that can be downloaded by clicking on the low resolution version that is shown here below.
The first session of the workshop was dedicated to a discussion of the brainstorming process so far on the scientific challenges for the new decade and the new science initiative. After my summary talk (my powerpoint presentation, in the finalform resulting from the discussion that is briefly summarised below, can be downloaded here) brief inputs from workshop participants were presented. An interesting open discussion followed, that can be summarised by the following main items.
- The idea of setting up a blog has proven to be very successful to involve a large part of the community in the discussion. It is hoped that many more comments will come.
- The new decade should be effectively addressed to investigate the links between hydrology and society and to solve societal problems. After the PUB decade, that was purely scientific, it would be appropriate to put together science with practice. Hydrology should be effectively combined with water resources management, including policy development and implementation.
- In a context where interaction with society will be put on the centre stage, it will be of fundamental importance to maintain and promote the profound identity of hydrology, as a fundamental science for human development and health.
- The new decade should focus on change in hydrological systems as a result of interaction with society. Understanding and modelling change will be the fascinating challenge for hydrology in the next 10 years and IAHS will play a leading role in this process. To understand change it is extremely important to inspect limiting behaviours, tipping points and shocks.
- Uncertainty plays a relevant role in the study of the interaction between hydrology and society. Uncertainty must be reduced as much as possible, by improving understanding. And, above all, there is the need to devise new perspectives for better communicating uncertainty and its practical and theoretical meaning. Currently, uncertainty is frequently interpreted as the consequence of a lack of understanding, which is not correct. There is the need to clarify that uncertainty is an attribute of information and is inherently originated by indeterminacy (or stochasticity), imperfect observation and model structural inadequacy. Addressing uncertainty means to improve our capability to predict.
- Advanced monitoring techniques will play a central role in the next 10 years and will open new perspectives.
- The successful planning of the next hydrological decade must be based on a vision that we need to develop on hydrology and hydrologists in 2022. If we look back at 2002, we realise that hydrology was much different. A successful vision for the future requires a visionary effort: what the monitoring techniques, models and computing capabilities will be?
May 11, 2012 – Afternoon Session
The afternoon session was dedicated to drawing a first roadmap towards the Science Plan for the new IAHS Decade. The session was opened by a brief presentation by me to introduce the main points of the Science Plan, which should be (the list is not final):
- Title, acronym, logo.
- Premise, motivations and rationale.
- Definitions.
- Subject of the Science Plan and keywords.
- Targets.
- Science questions.
- Description of enabling research.
- Organisational structure.
- Milestones.
I also presented a first list of targets and science questions. A very stimulating discussion followed, that brought us to better define them. Three main targets have been identified, which are: 1) understanding, 2) prediction with uncertainty, 3) science in practice (a post will be published soon on the blog).
At the end of the discussion, my powerpoint presentation with which the afternoon session was opened was modified accordingly. The final version can be downloaded at the link indicated above.
It was decided to present the synthesis of the above discussion in a new post of the blog that will be published soon, and to which I kindly address you for more details and for posting your comments, which we strongly need. Please comment!
During the above discussion I presented the cartoon below to summarise the topic of the new initiative. The cartoon is still far from being exhaustive, but has the purpose to invite all of you to provide suggestions to me for sketches that will be needed for effectively presenting and summarising the new initiative.
I am passionate of drawing programmes but I do not have a profound artistic inspiration, and therefore I need your help. Please draw on a piece of paper any scheme that you think might be useful for conveying the ideas we are developing, pass it in the scanner and send it to me. I appreciate your help very much.
May 12, 2012 – Morning Session
A synthesis of the previous’ day discussion was drawn after I prepared a modified version of targets and science questions. Then, ample space was given to the input from Commissions. Suggestions were provided by the International Commission (IC) on Surface Water, IC on Ground Water, IC on Remote Sensing, IC on Snow and Ice Hydrology, IC on Water Quality, IC on Continental Erosion, IC on Coupled Land-Atmosphere Systems, IC on Water Resources Systems, IC on Tracers, IC on Statistical Hydrology. The above inputs were very useful and proved that the IAHS community is giving a lot of thoughts on the next scientific decade.
May 12, 2012 – Afternoon Session
The afternoon session was dedicated to the next steps towards the new science decade. In my introductory presentation I planned to keep the blog activity open for inputs during the whole summer, in order to collect suggestion for the preparation of the first draft of the Science Plan, to be presented at the meeting to be held in Delft on October 23-25, 2012 (please see here). Comments will be considered to be included in the draft if posted before than Aug 31, 2012.
The third day of the Delft meeting will be explicitly dedicated to the new decade. A set of invited presentations will be delivered to introduce ideas for the research activity addressing the science questions. Additional idea for science subquestions may be collected during the meeting in Delft.
Moreover, the EGU Leonardo Conference to be held in Turin during November 14-16, 2012 (please see here) will host a subsequent discussion on the Science Plan, mainly with the purpose to inform the EGU community.
Finally, the Science Plan will be presented, and the new decade launched, at the IAHS Scientific Assembly to be held in Gothenburg during July 22-26, 2013 (please see here).
The workshop was closed with an exciting discussion on the title and acronym of the new initiative. I am not providing any anticipation on the outcome on purpose because it was decided that a blog page be opened to collect more proposals from the community. A special prize will be given for the most important contribution to identifying the final acronym!
May 13, 2012 – Field Trip
May 13 was dedicated to a trip to the village of Zhou Zhuang, which is called “The Venice of the East”!
Once again, I would like to thank the Hohai University and all the participants for this very stimulating workshop and I invite all of you to visit the synthesis post that will be published soon for more details on Science Plan preparation and for posting your comments!
Alberto Montanari