Waterpoint management system in central district with ArcView GIS

In Botswana water is the most precious natural resource and the government, through various institutions, is making an attempt to control the development and usage of this resource which is critical in all future development planning. Virtually all water used in rural areas is extracted from groundwater by means of wells and boreholes. Information on these water points, together with other surface sources, play an important role in regional economic development. An attempt, using the available water points data and Arc View GIS software, has been made to build a Water Point Management System in Central District (WPMSCD), which has already been used by the local authorities to answer day-to-day inquiries related to water points in the District.

Assessing Water Resources Access of Nouhao Sub-Basin, Burkina Faso

Water resource access in the Nouhao sub-basin, assessed based on the availability of drinking water mobilization facilities, the availability of water for uses and the quality of drinking water, revealed that in 2017 the basin was covered by 1249 modern water point, main drinking water sources. On average, the sub-basin shows a ratio of 271 users per drinking water point. Communal level shows some disparity with Bittou recording the highest number of people per drinking water point, i.e., around 537. Water that can be captured in the entire sub-basin meets only 42% of the total water needs from the three mains uses: irrigation, domestic consumption and livestock. The highest demander among these uses is Irrigation with 75% of the need, i.e., approximately 12,859,995 m3. Water in 33% drinking sources of this sub basin is of poor quality. Arsenic, one of the quality parameters studied, is found in some communes of the sub-basin. 11% of the water points in Bissiga are arsenic polluted making this commune the most arsenic contaminated location. The vulnerability maps deducted from lack of water for uses;lack of drinking water works and poor water quality shows so, the exposure level of the sub-basin’ communes to some potential risks related to low water resources access.

Morphological basis for the waterproof characteristic of bird plumage

A surface variable, density of water-feather touching points （Dp） was proposed in this paper to express surface property of water repellency of contour feather. Tests in 29 species using breast contour feathers indicated that Dp was small in tericolous species, medium in wading and diving species, large in swimming species, with only a few exceptions. This implied that birds achieve appropriate Dp by optimizing the microstructure of feather to meet the requirement of water repellency. Therefore, Dp was a morphological marker linking structure and function of feather in studies of adaptive evolution of birds.

Modelling large deformation and soil–water–structure interaction with material point method:Briefing on MPM2017 conference

The 1st International Conference on the Material Point Method for ＂Modelling Large Deformation and Soil–Water–Structure Interaction＂（MPM2017）was held in Delft,The Netherlands on 10-13 January 2017.This is the first conference organised by the Anura3D MPM Research Community,following a series of international workshops and symposia previously held in The Netherlands,UK,Spain and Italy,as part of the European Commission FP7 Marie-Curie project MPM-DREDGE.We are delighted to present seven contributions in this Special Column of the Journal of Hydrodynamics,and take this opportunity to announce that the 2nd conference,MPM2019,will be held in Cambridge,UK in January 2019.

MPM simulations of dam-break floods

Owing to its ability of modelling large deformations and the ease of dealing with moving boundary conditions,the material point method is gaining popularity in geotechnical engineering applications.In this paper,this promising Lagrangian method is applied to hydrodynamic problems to further explore its potential.The collapse of water columns with different initial aspect ratios is simulated by the material point method.In order to test the accuracy and stability of the material point method,simulations are first validated using experimental data and results of mature numerical models.Then,the model is used to ascertain the critical aspect ratio for the widely-used shallow water equations to give satisfactory approximation.From the comparisons between the simulations based on the material point method and the shallow water equations,the critical aspect ratio for the suitable use of the shallow water equations is found to be 1.