Master Projects

Possible topics include:

Hydrological modeling and solute transport.

Our research in the field of hydrological modeling is focused on the question of how to improve the representation of dominant hydrological and transport processes, for example for flood prediction in Alpine environments or for estimating solute transport to a river network. This projects make use of a number of tools, which can include: hydrologic measurements, stream flow and quality modeling, GIS mapping, sampling and chemical analysis of stream water samples.

• Effects of urbanization on water quality and quantity in the Panke watershed, Berlin
• Exploring the water quality of Lake Geneva
  through long-term profiles of electrical conductivity ( pdf )
• Sensitivity analysis of a species distribution model to different formulations of the fitness function. ( pdf )
• Modeling the age of water across a range of Swiss catchments ( pdf )
• Hydrology and trees: water uptake by vegetation during a highly monitored experiment (pdf)
• Assessing the effectiveness of environmental DNA sampling design strategies in river networks (joint EPFL-Eawag MSc project) (pdf)

Sustainability.

• Evaluation and prediction of world population dynamics

Waterborne disease.

River networks and hydrological conditions constitute crucial controls of the spread of waterborne diseases of humans and aquatic fauna. Spatially explicit models of waterborne diseases that include hydrological and environmental drivers can give important insight into the dynamics of disease transmission, and thus provide a tool for comparing and optimizing alternative control strategies. More particularly we study the spread of epidemic cholera and the transmission of schistosomaisis and of salmonoid proliferative kidney disease by the means of mathematical modeling strongly based on remote sensing and spatial data.

• Transmission of mosquitoes-born diseases along mobility pathways ( pdf )
• Identification and modeling of the link between climatic and hydrologic drivers and the epidemiology of diarrheal diseases in the Amazon (pdf)
• Identification and modeling of the link between water turbidity and the epidemiology of diarrheal diseases in Burkina Faso(pdf)
• Analysis of human mobility patterns for the modelling of infectious diseases(pdf)
• Analysis of water-contacts survey data for the modelling schistosomiasis transmission dynamics(pdf)

Master Projects abroad.

USA:

• When do tragedies of the commons occur over shared groundwater?  ( pdf )
• Streamflow frequency prediction in extreme data-scarce regions.  ( pdf )