Preface

From a scientific point of view in the general field of hydraulics, the study of natural and artificial water systems is the most widespread approach for the correct management of such a vital resource for the human species as water. However, it is very difficult to give a holistic view of the different reference areas of this kind of study. Indeed, a "holistic ap‐ proach" means an "integrated" intervention, able to exploit the strengths of different disci‐ plines: physical, biological, chemical, oceanographic, etc. It is an approach that is by nature flexible as it uses different techniques and methodologies, and it is utilized in an extremely wide application field. The difficulty experienced by the operators in studying a process with water as its object is therefore considerable and it requires undoubtedly the collabora‐ tion of several figures with different specializations.

This multidisciplinary book has the ambition of bringing together various studies on different water systems to demonstrate the vastness of the topic. In this way, the reader, researcher or professional, can range from one field to another, always having in mind as a guiding thread the matter "water," with the aim to better comprehend water body modeling techniques and the solution of the most varied problems. It is designed for those working in the field of envi‐ ronmental engineering and environmental sciences to integrate their knowledge on different scientific and practical approaches to water systems, all through practical experience.

**Daniela Malcangio, PhD**

Department of Civil, Environmental, Land, Building Engineering and Chemistry (DICATECh) Polytechnic University of Bari, Italy

**Chapter 1**

**Provisional chapter**

**Introductory Chapter: Applications in Water Systems**

Water is, without doubt, an essential and basic resource for the existence of life on the planet, as it is the primary component of the ecosystem and is used for many purposes, three of which are of main importance, that is, irrigation, industry, and domestic application. Therefore, water security challenges may affect the environmental, economic, and social stability of the world. The seriousness of these conditions highlights the need to examine the impact of climate change acting at the planetary level on water security and people movement. This topic is addressed in Chapter 1, which investigates the effect of rainfall and temperature, which are climate change variables, on water security and people movement in three Sub-Saharan African countries. The study reveals increasing rural-urban migrations in the next decade in the selected countries due to high rainfall variabilities and increasing temperatures, using VAR and granger causality tests. There will be a large number of rural communities leaving from their villages to urban areas due to water availability conditions and poor agricultural production levels, with all that follows. With the evolution of urbanization, industrialization, and intensive agricultural practices, one of the most damaged natural elements is water, and then the aquatic environment. Therefore, the need to pay more attention to the quality of all types of water bodies including river reaches, lakes, reservoirs, estuaries, and coastal waters, to analyze the effects and locate the causes of their pollution and to manage it, has led to the development of water quality models. Since pollutants, which flow into the water bodies are transferred by both advection and diffusion and react chemically and biologically, the priority is to configure the hydrodynamic processes that occur in the target area. Thus, hydrodynamic models able to simulate circulation and currents are jointly needed. Two different applications of hydrodynamic modeling in similar water bodies, i.e. lakes, are presented in this book. Chapter 2 concerns the study of the effect of wind waves, when the probability of occurrence of the wind direction is given by a circular or elliptic distribution, on the shape of shallow water bodies, initially rectangular or triangular. The segmentation of these water bodies into circular or elliptic lakes is predicted

**Introductory Chapter: Applications in Water Systems**

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use,

distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.76639

Daniela Malcangio

Daniela Malcangio

**1. Introduction**

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.76639

#### **Introductory Chapter: Applications in Water Systems Introductory Chapter: Applications in Water Systems**

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.76639

#### Daniela Malcangio Daniela Malcangio

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.76639
