HIC 2018: Editor's Preface

This volume contains almost all the papers presented at the "13th International Conference on Hydroinformatics - HIC 2018" held on July 1-6, 2018 in Palermo (Italy). At the beginning of this journey, more than 400 abstracts were presented and 339 submissions were finally accepted and presented at the conference. Among them, 300 papers were finally included in this volume to be published online in the EasyChair Epic Series on Engineering in open access format. The texts have been reviewed by the International Scientific Committee made up of more than 60 scientists among the most reputable worldwide researchers in the field of Hydroinformatics today. The conference is organised every two years in different continents by the IWA/IAHR Joint Committee on Hydroinformatics. It was succesfully organised in Incheon (South Korea) in 2016 and it will be held in Mexico City (Mexico) in 2020. The participation at the conference is constatingly growing in years involving reseachers from universities, water industry and governamental bodies. This time, more than 400 attendees came to Palermo from more than 50 countries in the world (with the largest delegations from China, UK, Italy and South Korea). Apart from the two supporting organizations, the Conference received the valuable sponsorship of: FLO-2D, ELDES, AMAP, CAE, XYLEM, E.LAB.

Hydroinformatics is a branch of informatics which concentrates on the application of information and communications technologies (ICTs) in addressing the increasingly serious problems of the equitable and efficient use of water for many different purposes. Hydroinformatics scientific community interests are widening from numerical modelling to the development of new sensors and tools, the interpretation of increasing amounts of data, the analysis and management of complex systems, the integration of models, data and controls for practical applications. Today, multi-disciplinarity is the key for the sustainable management of water resources. The work of the IAHR/IWA Joint Committee on Hydroinformatics and of several International Water Association Specialist Groups has demonstrated the importance of knowledge integration among scientists, practitioners and technology experts in order to tackle the complex challenges of water management in a changing world. HIC 2018 aimed to create a forum for exchanging ideas, for promoting ground-breaking technologies, for proposing new extensive collaborations, for finding new solutions for water management and environment preservation.

Papers were divided in 6 main topics: Technologies for water managment and monitoring, Remote Sensing, Big-data, knowledge and water data management, Hydraulic and hydrologic modelling, Climate change impacts, Environmental and Costal Hydroinformatics. The International Scientific Committee also proposed 12 special sessions on specific topics:

 S1. Data Assimilation of spatial information for hydrologic and hydraulic models

 S2. Complex Network Theory and Applications to Water Systems

 S3. Climate change impacts on urban water systems: flooding forecasting and warning

 S4. Integrated use of the water reservoirs

 S5. IA techniques for Smart Water Systems: Smart Sensors, Smart networks and Serious Gaming

 S6. Model predictive control for water management

 S7. Development and application of the next generation of shallow flow models

 S9. Long-term resilience of water systems:  input data analysis

 S10. Monitoring network optimization and model choice: information for predictions and value for decisions

 S13. Simulation of fluvial eco-hydraulic and morphodynamic processes

 S14. Advance in uncertainty estimation of hydro-science in changing environment

 S16. Time series analysis for climate change detection

An important contribution to the success of the event was given by the keynote lecturers: Dragan Savic (UK), Hydroinformatics so far: a story of motivation, inspiration and success; Vladan Babovic (SINGAPORE), Augmented Reality and Extended Intelligence: Reboot for the Hydroinformatics revolution; Rafael L. Bras (USA), So Much Data and So few ways to Use It: The Era of Data Rich Hydrology; Ezio Todini (ITALY), Revisiting water distribution modeling under an uncertainty perspective; Demetris Koutsoyiannis (GREECE), Climate change impacts on hydrological science: How the climate change agenda has lowered the scientific level of hydrology.

They gave brilliant, state-of-the-art lectures on some of the most important branches of Hydroinformatics activating interesting discussions along the whole confernce.

More than 40% of the partecipants were early-career researchers and students showing that the community largely relies on fresh contributions from young generations. Their contribution was remarkable and the Best Student Paper Award competition was very hard-fought by more than 60 participants and six winners (one per each of the main conference themes): Jure Zevinik, Sofia Fellini, Chen Chen, Zara Visanji, Maria Sambito and Troung-Huy Nguyen.

We cannot overlook our debt of gratitude to our colleagues and friends: Orazio Giustolisi, Former Chair of the Joint Committee, Joon Hoong Kim, Chair of the past 12th HIC, and Adrian Pedrozo-Acuna, Chair of the next 14th HIC.  They helped sharing toughts and proposals along the organisation of this conference. Before handing over to the papers themselves, something about their editing. We tried to maintaing a high scientific level in the selection of contributions and we hope you will find reading enjoyble and thought-provoking. We greatly look forward to seeing you all in Mexico City for the 14th edition of the Hydroinformatics International Conference in 2020.