The analysis of water resources in both natural and artificial settings, reveals that certain factors (climatic fluctuations, changes in land use or vegetation cover, construction of dams or reservoirs) affect the amount and quality of the water resources of a given territory. This includes the temporal distribution of wáter discharges and the possible generation of floods, which represents a key problem in predicting the future evolution of such resources and, therefore, in scheduling their management according to future climate and land use scenarios.
Numerical simulation models of hydrological, hydraulic and morphological processes are the basis of decision support systems, essential for environmental risk assessment and mitigation. This line of research aims at developing high-performance calculation tools for the simulation of hydraulic, hydrological and geomorphological processes of interest for the prevention of natural and artificial disasters such as floods, landslides, dam breaks or spills of pollutant substances. These tools can also be used for the efficient management of rivers or basins, both in the mountains and in an urban environment. In this context, this type of computational models, together with various optimization algorithms, constitute indispensable tools because they are cheaper than physical models and because they avoid field measurement campaigns, which are impossible in many cases.