Twenty-three unsolved problems in hydrology (UPH) – a community perspective

This paper is the outcome of a community initiative to identify major unsolved scientific problems in hydrology motivated by a need for stronger harmonisation of research efforts. The procedure involved a public consultation through on-line media, followed by two workshops through which a large number of potential science questions were collated, prioritised, and synthesised. In spite of the diversity of the participants (230 scientists in total), the process revealed much about community priorities and the state of our science: a preference for continuity in research questions rather than radical departures or redirections from past and current work. Questions remain focussed on process-based understanding of hydrological variability and causality at all space and time scales. Increased attention to environmental change drives a new emphasis on understanding how change propagates across interfaces within the hydrological system and across disciplinary boundaries. In particular, the expansion of the human footprint raises a new set of questions related to human interactions with nature and water cycle feedbacks in the context of complex water management problems. We hope that this reflection and synthesis of the 23 unsolved problems in hydrology will help guide research efforts for some years to come

A Drop in the Ocean. On Writing Histories of Water Resources Management

This text builds on the shared focus of historians and engineers to understand how particular circumstances came to be. In their endeavours, engineers regularly turn attention to the past, many times with the explicit aim to build on the past. In this chapter, it is discussed why these water histories written by engineers are vulnerable to being less correct. Using a range of scholarship on water history and shared experiences within the International Water History Association, we discuss the core of any historical scholarship: a drive to demonstrate and understand the complexity of the past. As such, this chapter wants to warn against the engineering drive to use (water) history as a guide towards the future. Instead, we propose a perspective of history as a way of reading and understanding the complex paths we have travelled until now