Create smart solutions for water management, combining technical knowledge with management skills.
What measures can you take to prevent flooding and what cross-border cooperation is needed for this? How can you predict river water levels and prevent ships from becoming wedged? And can you map the amount of water being used for the production of certain products, such as coffee or jeans, in order to understand and diminish (over)exploitation of water resources? Water is an essential part of our lives and the environment we live in. The Water, River and Coastal Engineering & Management specialisation focuses on the engineering and management of water systems, such as river basins and coastal seas. Apart from the essential physics, you learn how to capture these systems in quantitative models and/or observational data, and then how to apply the results in integrated water management. To this end, you acquire state-of-the-art knowledge and skills in hydrology, hydraulics, morphology, water resource management, and ecology. Specific topics include flood and drought risk, coastal defense, sediment transport, climate change impact and adaptation, data analysis, and nature-based solutions.
What is Water, river and coastal Engineering & Management?
The key question in this specialisation is: how can we design our living environment in such a way that we can benefit from water, but do not suffer from it? Especially in view of climate change, which is causing floods but also droughts to become more frequent. How can you deal with the seeming contradiction of the need for quick water drainage in case of heavy rainfall and the need for retaining water in periods of drought? This specialisation will familiarise you with a variety of tools for analysing the long-term behaviour of water systems (like catchments, rivers, coastal zones, and seas) and for evaluating the impact of human interventions on these systems.
Within this specialisation, you will work on solutions for interesting, real-life cases that sometimes stem directly from the field. From making a city more resilient to flooding to the construction of offshore wind farms and from building erosion-proof sea dikes to water policy-making in view of climate change: there is a great variety of challenges you can learn to deal with using knowledge and skills in a variety of domains. It is exactly this diversity that makes students of this specialisation – and this Master’s in general – stand out on the job market!
What will you learn?
As a graduate of this Master's and this specialisation, you have acquired specific, scientific knowledge, skills and values, which you can put to good use in your future job.
Other master’s and specialisations
Is this specialisation not exactly what you’re looking for? Maybe one of the other specialisations suits you better. Or find out more about these other master's: