Abstract:

Engineering professors and students face a recurrent problem when carrying out exercises or projects requiring real observed data. This involves that data sources are very diverse (i.e., different public institutions) and generally scattered. Precipitation is the key variable to carry out numerous hydrological studies. In Spain, the precipitation series data are generally supplied by the Spanish Meteorological Agency (AEMET), where each piece of data requested has an economic cost. In specific cases, for educational purposes, it is possible to obtain the data at a discount and even free of charge, but the processing is complex and slow. This study consists of developing a computer tool in a GUI environment (called PLUGEN) that allows to obtain automatically, instantly and free of charge the basic information for the formulation of undergraduate and postgraduate hydrological educational exercises and projects (flood studies, hydrological safety of dams, hydrological design of hydraulic infrastructures, among others). Moreover, each student work group (within the same course) can choose any existing dam (from more than 1200 in Spain) or even new locations to conduct their activities, and therefore, achieving a great variety of projects and outputs to be discussed in class. First, studies and techniques for the estimation of precipitation series in Spain were evaluated. Subsequently, computational routines were developed in Matlab language that allow the generation of annual maximum daily rainfall series at any point in Spain. Although these series are generated stochastically and therefore synthetically, they capture the statistical values of the observed data adjustments presented in studies carried out by the Administration (CEDEX, AEMET, among others) and used in professional practice. Therefore, the generated series are plausible and adjust to the observed rainfall regime of the different geographical points of the territory. Subsequently, a GUI environment was developed for use by students. Likewise, the tool was tested in several points of the Spanish geography for its validation. Finally, an application example is presented in the context of a complete hydrological project for educational purposes. The tool has been registered with the No. 16 / 2018 / 5073 in the Spanish Industrial Property Registry and has been successfully applied since 2015 by hundreds of students of the civil engineering career at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain.

Keywords:

Software, rainfall, civil engineering, hydrology, automatic data generation, free, undergraduate, projects.