Hydroinformatics: Information Technology and the Aquatic Environment

The nascent science of Hydroinformatics comprises the application of information technology to the understanding and control of the waters of the world, the very arteries and viens of the biosphere. This book explains how information technology is already being used to realise a new solicitude towards nature and it provides a philosophical framework for these new ideas. It signposts further developments in this directions, and is illustrated by carefully chosen examples taken from current hydraulic engineering projects. The approach taken can perhaps best be described as "post modern" in that it insists that every effort has to be made to draw upon the knowledge and experience of the past in present-day planning for the future. Accordingly, this work not only draws on modern scientific achievements, such as those of numerical simulation, data modelling and artifical intelligence, but it also draws upon a long philosophical and theological tradition. The author shows how, without this background, advances in hydraulic engineering and indeed technology as a whole, will only accelerate the approach of environmental cataclysm rather than prevent it. The readership includes those who are genuinely concerned about the natural environment; engineers and applied scientists working in or for the water industry, water boards and river authorities; legislators on water affairs and those involved in water related litigation. It also has a braod philosophical and theological interest.

Table of Contents:
The nature and origins of hydroinformatics - towards a characterization of hydroinformatics - the first cycle; further towards a characterization of of hydroinformatics - the second cycle; from computational hydraulics to hydroinformatics; towards the specification of a hydroinformatics system; the commitment to abstraction; the social dimensions of hydroinformatics - hydroinformatics and the natural environment; the ecological dimension of hydroinformatics; the Third-World dimension of hydroinformatics; the European dimension of technology, and thus of hydroinformatics also; the market realization of hydroinformatics; the logics of hydroinformatics - the logic of hydroinformatics in the positivistic and empirical sense and the sense of dogmatic science; a-logics and b-logics; symbolic and sub-symbolic paradigms; logics and numerics - the third cycle in the characterization of hydroinformatics. Appendix: the logics of numerical instability and undecidability; concluding unscientific postscript.