Welcome to HydroLatinAmerica
HydroLatinAmerica is an academic activity organized by the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), in collaboration with South American universities, aiming to improve young students skills in the domain of hydrology, hydraulic and water resources in South America.
Beside HydroEurope and HydroAsia, HydroLatinAmerica has become one of the most innovative programme in teaching, aiming to tackle different challenges arising in the domain of water. The program take into consideration that futures challenges and their effects will need well-trained young engineers capable to apply new, knowledge, skills and tools under a wide range of circumstances.
The event has been organized by the UPC since 2009 and being held by different universities in South America. Over the last 12 years the event has been organized in 9 countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay) contributing to spread the objectives of the program under and South American vision, adding the local experience through the collaboration of the universities and academics involved in the event.
The objective of HydroLatinAmerica is to promote, in a global Latin American vision, the key concepts, methodologies, tools and good practices which are essential for a sustainable water management. Today, problems related to water have become more and more complex and the analysis requires global and holistic approaches. Hydro – Latin American collaborates closely with HydroEurope managed by the EuroAquae consortium, running the joint master of sciences on “Hydroinformatics and Water Management” operated jointly by 6 European universities, Université Côte d’Azur (France), Brandenburg University of Technology at Cottbus (Germany), Warsaw University of Technology (Poland), Polytechnic University of Catalonia (Spain) and the Newcastle University upon Tyne (UK).
Today, modern Information and Communication Technology (ICT) offer vast opportunities to explore and promote a new dimension in the engineering activity: a collaborative work of team-partners residing at different locations and working at different times using the internet as a common working and communication platform. Collaboration in this environment demands for new skills and a new ‘technological culture’. This is a challenge for the Latin-American dimension where in the future, more and more experts and engineers from different countries with different languages, different cultures and mentalities as well as different specializations and professional experiences will have to collaborate in research, teaching and practice.
Training of collaborations in such new environment is one of the great challenges of this endeavour/concept which, by collaboration of the Hydro Latin-American partners, will help to establish high quality university teaching courses and links between students from the partner institutions.
The partners of HydroLatinAmerica program have decided to introduce this new concept, wherever possible, into each individual university program. They complement academic teaching and collaboration on pre-defined project objectives through the internet; these activities will be concluded in a 5-day face-to-face meeting of all participating students and teachers at one place. At the face-to-face meeting, teaching of new technologies on urban drainage processes will be emphasized by related professors and works resulting from the participating students and internet interaction will be presented and discussed. During this time gained experience will be exchanged, and personal contacts will be established and deepened.