- Concepts of Collaborative Engineering

Preface

Water is an essential pre-requisite of human life, a non increasable natural resource and central part of the natural processes on the earth. There is no human life without water. Water resource management is based on civil and environmental engineering activities dealing amongst others with water related artificial built infrastructure in the natural environment. This technical infrastructure has to be planed, designed, analyzed, constructed, managed and operated under ecological and economical conditions, defined by the society and ruled by the natural environment. Typical water related infrastructure are irrigation, drainage and sewer systems, river management and coastal engineering constructions including flood protection, harbours and navigation channels, hydropower stations as well as groundwater management facilities for drinking water supply, buildings sites, waste tips and mining areas.

The Internet and the World Wide Web open a new evolution step in Information and Communication Technology (ICT). The Internet as world wide network offers new opportunities to disseminate, exchange, store and share information. The World Wide Web as multi-media distributed information systems provides a new level of platform offering location and time independent information presentation and access. This technical progress influences wide areas of human life. The society changes towards the 'Information, Communication and Service Society'. Everybody can access over the net at any time and from any location information - the problem however is to find and select the right information at the right time. Everybody can communicate in the net with everybody at any time and from any location - the problem now is to find the right communication tools and ways, suitable for the partners and the relevant topics. Both aspects are influencing all sectors of the society. Traditional information exchange based on paper based documents is extended by electronic document exchange (email) and as new aspect by 'Information Sharing' in networks. These benefits of the technological progress can only be achieved by the development of a corresponding 'Technical Culture' in the society - a process which needs time to develop corresponding working methods and to gain experience in the application of the Web technology by education, training and application.

The academic education in water related disciplines taught in the time before 1985 is no longer sufficient to operate and compete on a global market and in the technological environment of high tech countries. This demands for life-long learning and continuous education/training to introduce and apply modern ICT application in practise. The technological progress and the changing society have to be reflected in water related disciplines by new research, education and training topics:

• Web based water related information systems
• Web based water related simulation and management systems
• Web based collaborative engineering in water related projects

This course material focuses on Web technology and application for collaborative engineering in hydroscience to operate in distributed project environments. Details on Web technology and application for water related information, simulation and management systems can be found in journals such as Journal of Hydroinformatics.

© FM April 2001