Watershed Risk Management

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

• Apply structured risk‑based thinking to watershed management challenges

• Assess and interpret uncertainty in hydrological and flood risk analyses

• Incorporate climate change data and assumptions into watershed risk assessments

• Evaluate hydrological and hydraulic model outputs to support sound decisions

• Identify practical tools and strategies used in watershed and flood risk management

Description

Managing watersheds increasingly requires making technical decisions under uncertainty. Climate change, non‑stationary hydrologic conditions, data limitations, and complex system interactions all influence flood and watershed risks, yet professionals are often expected to develop defensible strategies with incomplete or evolving information.

This course provides a practical foundation in watershed risk management, focusing on how uncertainty affects hydrological analysis, flood risk assessment, and decision‑making. You will examine core risk concepts, explore how climate change assumptions propagate through models, and learn how hydrologic and hydraulic uncertainties influence risk outcomes, particularly in northern and cold‑region contexts.

Through structured frameworks and applied examples, this course equips you with tools to better interpret model results, communicate risk, and support resilient watershed management decisions. No specialized background in hydrology is required; the course is designed to make complex concepts accessible and directly applicable to professional practice.

Who Should Attend

This course is designed for:

• Water resources and river engineers

• Civil and environmental engineers

• Engineering technologists and technicians

• Environmental specialists and consultants

• Project managers involved in watershed or flood‑related projects

• Professionals responsible for risk assessment, mitigation, or planning in the water sector

Day 1 – Hydrology and Climate Change (Saman Razavi)

Risk Fundamentals

• Overview of climate-related risks

• Uncertainty sources and the notion of deep uncertainty

• Stationarity assumptions in a non-stationary world

Climate Change

• IPCC scenarios of socio-economic changes

• Insights through climate models

• Incorporating climate change data into hydrological calculations

Basin Hydrology

• Watershed parametrizations

• Hydrologic model calibration and uncertainty analysis

• Hydrologic uncertainties affecting risks

• Hydrological risk

Day 2 – Surface Waters (Karl-Erich Lindenschmidt)

Fluvial Floods

• Open-water floods

• Ice-jam floods

Hazard

• Flow frequency distributions

• Stage frequency distributions

• Shifts in distributions due to climate change

Risk

• Vulnerability

• Flood risk mapping and assessment

• Flood risk mitigation