A central issue of teaching within the hydroinformatics paradigm

International Institute for Hydraulic and Environmental Engineering, P.O. Box 3015, 2601 DA Delft, The Netherlands

Abstract

The principal task of the hydraulics of the next millennium is to save our planet from environmental cataclysm; and, quite consentaneously, the worel "cataclysm" itself derives from "a rush of water". Hydraulics can only succeed in this task when it avails itself of all that modern information technology provides, and so, in the first place, when it makes proper use of digital computers. Hydraulics can obly avail itself of modern information technology, however, when it has a proper understanding of this technology and the relation of such technology to the aquatic environment. The name of this area of understanding is hydroinformatics. It follows that the teaching of hydroinformatics will be essential to hydraulic engineering education in the next millenium. One central issue that arises in this teaching is discussed here.