Water and people in a changing world

1. Water and people in a changing world WAT-E2090; Spring 2018 https://mycourses.aalto.fi/course/view.php?id=18421

2. Content Introduction Thematic lecture Group discussion Practicalities Break 15 min Hands-on training Wrap up & intro to home assignment

3. Personnel Matti Kummu – assistant professor at Water and environmental engineering research group (lectures) Pekka Kinnunen & Hafsa Munia – doctoral candidates at Water and environmental engineering research group (hands-on training) Who are you?

4. Setting the scene… [click image to access to prezi presentation]

5. Intended learning outcomes • analyse and assess how global water resources are distributed in relation to human population and how this has changed over time • recognise the connection between food production and use of water • analyse the water stress and water scarcity in various scales by using spatial datasets and estimate their impact on human society • apply Matlab on global water challenges • use different kind of spatial datasets as a part of scientific research • recognise the basics of visual scientific communication, and create informative maps and graphs

6. What are your expectations? • Group discussions in small groups (3-4 people) • 10 min discussion based on pre-assignment • Share 3 main points / group Focus on following questions: • What are my main expectation from the course? • What would I like to learn? • Which topics in global water resources are most interesting ones?

7. Feedback from last year • In overall good feedback + excellent suggestions to improve • Lectures: • Somewhat exhausting set-up of lecture + hands-on • Too superficial • Exercises and home assignments: • Steep learning curve with Matlab  high workload • Similar form of home assignment for each week • General: • More information about the project work at the beginning

8. Course schedule

9. Lectures+hands-on Contains normally following parts: • Introduction (10 min) • Discussion of home assignment (10 min) • Motivation lecture to the theme (40 min) • Group work (30 min) • Break (15 min) • Hands-on research on day’s theme (120 min; small break after one hour) Mandatory – to pass the course, you need to be present at least in 5/6 lectures Optimally very interactive; learning together!

10. Home assignments • Based on day’s theme • You have free hands to explore the theme • Aim to be research based assignment, i.e. you explore the most interesting parts of the theme for you • We’ll give some example research questions to foster the work • From second week on, we’ll give you a large river basin in the world on which your home assignments and project work will focus • Feedback to each assignment

11. Specs for home assignments • Main emphasis on graphics and illustrations • BUT do not forget short reflection and interpretation of results • 1-page (strict!) poster type presentation • DL Monday evenings – if delayed, you’ll get only half of the points (if delayed over a week, no points at all) Are you ok to share your home assignment with others after DL?

12. Workshops • Starts normally with short lecture on Adobe Illustrator • No fixed structure • Teachers available for the whole time • Aim to support your home assignments and project work • Discuss about the assignments with your peer-learners • Optional, but potentially very useful

13. Project work • Each student will select a large river basin (or other geographical area) and make a small research project related to the themes of the course • Individual project work, but supported by peer-learners • Builds on home assignments • Need to be presented to the peer-group at final week Kick-off in the second lecture…

14. Content

15. Content – themes of each week 10.4. Global water resources; + Introduction to the course 17.4. Population dynamics; + Kick-off of the project work 24.4. Land cover change and food production 2.5. Water use (note: on Wednesday!!) 8.5. Water scarcity 15.5. Socio-economics of water and food 22.5. Presentations of the project works (~3 hrs/group)

16. Content – methods and tools • Each week we have specific • Thematic contents within the theme • Datasets and data types • Matlab tools • Graph types • Together these give a good understanding of the global water issues and give you a comprehensive set of spatial tools to work with in the future

17. Tools • Matlab + powerful for raster calculations, easy to run analysis with multiple timesteps, relatively good reporting results, very easy to repeat calculations – coding, take a while to learn the logic and basics You can download to own computer: download.aalto.fi • Adobe Illustrator + great software to put the final touch on the graphs and maps – takes some effort to learn the basics – licenses only in few computer rooms (list in MyCourses) Alternatives for own computer: Affinity Designer (55 eur), Inkscape (free)

18. Research-based learning Course is largely based on research based learning, meaning: • Information is not given ready chewed, but students will construct that themselves based on their findings – with the help of others and supported by teachers • Close to scientific research –the passion of discovering new things • Foster ability to create research questions – it is often more important to be able to discover what is the problem than to solve it “If I had an hour to save the world, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute finding solutions.” – Albert Einstein

19. Practicalities

20. Workload Weaim to reduce the workloadby: • Motivatingwhythesethemesareimportant • Planning togetherrealisticaims for the projectwork • Veryappliedassignments and projectwork (no need to learnbyheart) + ownresearchquestions • Giving supervision and instructions in weeklyworkshops • Immediate feedback to each home assignment

21. Grading Grading thresholds: 1-50% of total points (i.e. 75p) 2-60%(90p) 3-70%(105p)4-80%(120p) 5-90%(135p)

22. Communication • MyCourses -page (https://mycourses.aalto.fi/course/view.php?id=18421) • Basic information of the lectures • Lecture material available after the lecture • Demo code and data • Instructions for home assignments • Submission of home assignments & grades • Additional material • Communicating • Whole course: MyCourses & email • Within the peers: please work and communicate with your co-learners!

23. Contact information:matti.kummu@aalto.fipekka.kinnunen@aalto.fi hafsa.munia@aalto.fi