This book presents the major engineering achievements in underground aqueducts from around the world and throughout history. It provides valuable insights into water technologies and management with respect to durability, adaptability to the environment, and sustainability. Comparisons of the technological underground aqueduct developments from several regions are made. These technologies are the underpinning of modern achievements in water supply engineering and water management practices, and current issues of sustainability, cost-effectiveness, and decentralization have led engineers to consider combining older proven technologies with modern infrastructure advancements.

This volume includes over 30 chapters, written by experts from around the world. It examines the environmental aspects of drought such as groundwater and soil contamination, river low-flow, urban water quality, and desertification. It also examines the effects of climate change and variability on drought, and discusses the differences in groundwater, rainfall, and temperatures and their related effects. It presents analytical modeling for better understanding drought in uncertain and changing climates.

Qanats are ubiquitous, yet unseen, and a clever way to create streams where none exist in nature. For 3,000 years, they have made life possible in impossible places and still sustain life and livelihoods in many countries today. After 30 years of field research, Dale Lightfoot provides the first comprehensive study of the qanat and sheds new light on their unique locations and distribution, their origins and history, their ecology, current status and use. Qanats are remarkably engineered underground aqueducts, using gravity to bring water to villages and towns where reliable flowing surface water is scarce or absent. Although an ancient technology, more than 46,000 of them still flow around the world today, with their sustainable nature making them a focus of renewed interest. Richly illustrated with images and a series of original maps, this is the most complete record to date of the locations and distribution of qanats worldwide, including examples from the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, Central Asia, China, India, Mexico and South America.

Classic Soft-Computing Techniques is the first volume of the three, in the Handbook of HydroInformatics series.? Through this comprehensive, 34-chapters work, the contributors explore the difference between traditional computing, also known as hard computing, and soft computing, which is based on the importance given to issues like precision, certainty and rigor. The chapters go on to define fundamentally classic soft-computing techniques such as Artificial Neural Network, Fuzzy Logic, Genetic Algorithm, Supporting Vector Machine, Ant-Colony Based Simulation, Bat Algorithm, Decision Tree Algorithm, Firefly Algorithm, Fish Habitat Analysis, Game Theory, Hybrid Cuckoo–Harmony Search Algorithm, Honey-Bee Mating Optimization, Imperialist Competitive Algorithm, Relevance Vector Machine, etc.?It is a fully comprehensive handbook providing all the information needed around classic soft-computing techniques. This volume is a true interdisciplinary work, and the audience includes postgraduates and early career researchers interested in Computer Science, Mathematical Science, Applied Science, Earth and Geoscience, Geography, Civil Engineering, Engineering, Water Science, Atmospheric Science, Social Science, Environment Science, Natural Resources, and Chemical Engineering. - Key insights from global contributors in the fields of data management research, climate change and resilience, insufficient data problem, etc. - Offers applied examples and case studies in each chapter, providing the reader with real world scenarios for comparison. - Introduces classic soft-computing techniques, necessary for a range of disciplines.