Pages 63-73 A Multi-facetted Approach to Teaching Modelling, via Hydrologic Routing

There are many ways to try to model engineering phenomenon. Three well-known modelling categories or methods are (i) the building of physical models, followed by laboratory measurements during system operation, (ii) via deterministic modelling using analytical solutions of, or numerical approximations to, the governing differential equations, (iii) via non-deterministic modelling using ‘best-fit ’ equations to mimic the observed processes (without seeking a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanics). Numerical solutions themselves represent a large number of possible approaches and much is known about the magnitude of the errors that may be expected for a given method. All these approaches are interesting and useful in their own ways, but it is still a challenge to make this material seem interesting to engineering students. Today’s engineering professor is also confronted with a large array of ever-changing software that purports to ‘skin the cat ’ of process modelling in new and better ways. This paper describes how the phenomenon of level-pool hydrologic routing was used in a civil engineering course as a vehicle to introduce students to all of these approaches, including a powerful simulation software that writes computer-code based on the user’s intuitive understanding of the processes being observed