Systems Analysis, Surface Waters

The group „Systems Analysis and Surface Water Modelling“ contributes in the following areas to the development and improvement of methods and models and to the analysis of environmental systems:

• Development of methods for the improvement of models of environmental systems, to the estimation of the uncertainty of model predictions, and to the reduction of the predictive uncertainty of such models. The latter is achieved by improvement of the model structure and by the analysis of experiment layouts with respect to the expected gain of information from additional measurements. A major research focus is on Bayesian techniques.
  
  
• Construction of mechanistic and phenomenological models of biogeochemical and ecological processes in river and lake ecosystems. Use of these models for improving our understanding of processes in these systems and for the prediction of expected effects resulting from measures or changing exterior influence factors.
  
  
• Development of software to support model-based data analysis with an application focus to aquatic ecosystems (AQUASIM, UNCSIM).

The group is also active in the support of people from other Eawag departments in the application of systems analytical techniques and modelling and in teaching at ETH Zurich.

Contact persons: Peter Reichert, Carlo Albert, Emmannuelle Cohen-Sacham, Anne Dietzel, Mira Kattwinkel, Jacqueline Schlosser, Nele Schuwirth, Colombe Siegenthaler-Le Drian, David Machac

Projects

• Biogeochemical and ecological modelling of lakes (Anne Dietzel).
  
• Mechanistic modelling of the benthic community in rivers (Nele Schuwirth).
  
• Integrative modelling of the effects of river rehabilitation measures (Peter Reichert).
  
• Climatic change in river water temperatures. Health of brown trout populations in relation to their habitats. (Peter Reichert).
  
• Consideration of imprecise knowledge in decision support (Peter Reichert).
  
• Development and implementation of methods for the analysis of input uncertainty, model structure deficits and prediction uncertainty of enviromental models (Peter Reichert).
  
• Ecological river assessment (Peter Reichert).
  
• Mechanistic modelling of the fish densities in rivers (NN).
• Surface water assessment (Jacqueline Schlosser).