EAEE E4350: Planning and Management of Urban Hydrologic Systems

Course Overview

This course teaches the fundamentals of urban hydrology from an engineering perspective, with a focus on stormwater and flood control. It will expose you to current events in hydrology while incorporating contemporary concepts such as climate change, cloudburst management, and green infrastructure.

The semester is divided into sections on hydrology, the principles for estimating runoff from rainfall and hydraulics as well as the principles for storing and conveying runoff to protect life and property. Emphasis is placed on skills and methods for approaching engineering problems from a practical perspective. You will learn to solve engineering problems by applying laws of conservation of mass and energy to both gravity-fed and pumped systems. Examples will include real-life projects that the instructor has worked on over the course of their career. This in-depth insight bridges the gap between classroom learning and industry practice, exposing you to the types of questions you might encounter on a Professional Engineer examination. 

You will also learn the basics of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and rainfall-runoff modeling using EPA’s Storm Water Management Model (SWMM). For your final project, you will identify and recommend solutions for a flood control problem adapted from ongoing work at the New York City Department of Environmental Protection.  By the end of the course, you will have the requisite technical background to design a storm sewer system. Students who take this course have gone on to careers in government, consulting, and other sectors of stormwater management, playing important roles in addressing one of the greatest challenges of our time. 

To take this course, you must complete ENME E3161 Fluid Mechanics.

Course Instructor

Eric Rosenberg

Senior Associate at Hazen and Sawyer

Eric Rosenberg is a Senior Associate at Hazen and Sawyer, an environmental engineering firm in New York City. He has spent much of his career working on stormwater issues throughout the five boroughs, most recently as Project Manager for the Citywide Bluebelt, a nature-based program integrating wetlands and streams within the drainage infrastructure. He has experience in every facet of project delivery, from modeling and planning to design and construction. He is an expert in climate change analysis, having developed extreme rainfall projections that formed the basis for the forward-looking design storm intensities in NYC’s Climate Resiliency Design Guidelines.

Rosenberg is a licensed Professional Engineer in New York State and holds a PhD in civil and environmental engineering from the University of Washington. His dissertation focused on seasonal streamflow prediction in the western United States, adapting simulated snowpack and satellite data for operational forecasts at the California Department of Water Resources and the Natural Resources Conservation Service. He has worked on a range of water resources problems, including stream restoration, reservoir modeling, septic-to-sewer studies, saltwater intrusion prediction and mitigation, safe yield analysis for surface water availability, and long-term water supply planning for municipalities from Fort Dodge, Iowa to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.