Dr. Ronald van Nooyen

Research Interests

Water management involves systems at many different scales. They range from gardens, streets and creeks to large rivers and their catchments. These systems contain many components. Just consider a garden: it contains many different plants, its soil may be a mix of new and old roots, sand and clay with the occasional stone, there may be drainage tubes and possibly a small pond. Its soil contains small cracks and is constantly perturbed by earthworms. While we can study and describe such details, any attempt to take all of them into account when trying to predict whether or not puddles will form on the surface after heavy rain is a lost cause for two reasons. The first is that any attempt to do so will probably end up needing a computer the size of the garden itself. The second is that it is impossible to put all those details into the computer in the first place. Therefore part of the art of water management is the art of leaving things out of your model.

An extreme example of the art of leaving things out is the study of peak discharges in rivers through extreme value theory. In this case entire river system is reduced to a set of numbers, the yearly peak discharges. Extreme value theory provides rules that, under certain conditions, allow us take the peak discharges over the last fifty years and from those to estimate the largest peak discharge to be expected in the next two or three hundred years.

Once we have a model we can hopefully predict events of interest. However, the term water management strongly suggests a wish or need to control what will happen. Suppose there is a reservoir. Such a reservoir may be a "boezem" (see also Polder-Boezem systems elsewhere on this site), an artificial lake through which a river flows, or the available storage in a sewer system. Suppose furthermore that its storage capacity will be needed at some point in the future to temporarily store a large inflow because our ability to transport that inflow beyond this reservoir is limited. Such limits might be imposed by maximum safe water levels in the boezem, risk of flooding in the system beyond the reservoir or the level at which water starts to flow from the sewer into the streets. The question of interest is: how to manage this storage? Our ability to predict the future is limited, low and high water levels may be linked to different disadvantages, use of the system to drain the reservoir quickly may be costly or may have varying cost depending on time of day or the day of the week or even on the number of times that system is switched.
As you can imagine the rules for comparing costs, advantages and disadvantages for such a reservoir may not be clear-cut. More importantly, their translation into an algorithm (read computer program) may not always produce a system behavior that seems "reasonable" to the people directly affected by the system and those who operate the system.

A major part of creating the models needed and building the control systems that will implement our wishes with regard to system behavior is finding the right tools and using them correctly. These tools can often be found in mathematics. As a mathematician working in the field of water management I try to find these tools and adapt them to the job at hand.

Publications

Articles

Shatyrko, A., van Nooijen R.R.P., Kolechkina A. & Khusainov, D. (2015). Stabilization of neutral type indirect control systems to absolute stability state. Advances in Difference Equations, 64, pp. 1-18.

van Nooijen, R.R. & Kolechkina, A. (2013). Speed of discrete optimization solvers for real time sewer control. Urban Water Journal, 10(5), pp.354-363.

van Nooijen, R.R.P. & Kolechkina, A.G. (2012). A problem in hydrological model calibration in the case of averaged flux input and flux output. Environmental Modelling & Software, 37, pp.167-178.

Weijs, S.V., van Nooijen, R. & van de Giesen, N. (2010). Kullback-Leibler divergence as a forecast skill score with classic reliability-resolution-uncertainty decomposition. Monthly Weather Review, 138 (9), pp.3387-3399.

Breur, K.J., van Nooyen, R.R.P. & van Leeuwen, P.E.R.M. (2009). Computerized generation of operational strategies for the management of temporary storage of drainage water from several polders in a network of small lakes and canals. Applied Mathematical Modelling, 33, pp. 3330-3342.

Ertsen, M. W. & van Nooijen, R. (2009). The man swimming against the stream knows the strength of it: Hydraulics and social relations in an Argentinean irrigation system. Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Parts A/B/C, 34(3), pp.200 - 208.

Gartsman, B., van Nooyen, R. & Kolechkina, A. (2009). Implementation issues for total risk calculation for groups of sites. Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Parts A/B/C, 34(10-12), pp.619 - 625.

Spaan, G.B.H., van Nooyen, R.R.P., de Graaff, B.J.A. & Brouwer, R. (2003). Discharge Formulas of Crump-de Gruyter Gate-Weir for Computer Simulation. Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering, ASCE, 129(4), pp.270-277.

Vuik, C., van Nooyen, R.R.P. &Wesseling, P. (1998). Parallelism in ILU-preconditioned GMRES. Parallel Computing. Systems & Applications, 24(14), pp.1927-1946.

van Beek, P., van Nooyen, R.R.P. & Wesseling, P. (1995). Accurate Discretization of Gradients on Non-Uniform Curvilinear Staggered Grids. Journal of Computational Physics, Academic Press, 117(2), pp.364-367.

van Nooyen, R.R.P. (1995). A Petrov-Galerkin mixed finite element method with exponential fitting. Numerical Methods for Partial Differential Equations, 11(5), pp. 501-524.

van Nooyen, R.R.P. (1993). An improved accuracy version of the mixed finite-element method for a second-order elliptic equation. Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics, 47(1), pp.11-33.

Ph.D. thesis

van Nooyen, R.R.P. (1992). Some aspects of mixed finite element methods for semiconductor simulation, Amsterdam, pp. 136.

International Conference Papers and Contributions

van Nooijen, R. & Kolechkina, A. G. (2015). Stability of a series of controlled channels with uncertain parameters, Vol. 17, EGU2015-6877, European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly, April 12 - 17, 2015, Vienna, Austria.

van Nooijen, R. & Kolechkina, A. G. (2015). Stability of a series of identical controlled channels. Geophysical Research Abstracts, Vol. 17, EGU2015-6861, European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly, April 12 - 17, 2015, Vienna, Austria.

Pesquer, L., Jirka, S., van de Giesen, N.C., Maso, J ., Stasch, C. , van Nooijen, R.R.P. , Prat, E. & Pons, X. (2015). Applying standards to ICT models, tools and data in Europe to improve river basin networks and spread innovation on water sector, Vol. 17, EGU2015-4011, European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly, April 12 - 17, 2015, Vienna, Austria.

van Nooijen, R.R.P., Ertsen, M., Kolechkina, A. (2015). Drowning by numbers: excess water distribution in the Gezira irrigation scheme. Proceedings of the 26th General Assembly of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG), June 22 –July 2, 2015, Prague, Czech Republic.

van Nooijen, R.R.P., Kolechkina, A.G. (2015). Maximum Likelihood and Interval Arithmetic. Proceedings of the 60th World Statistics Congress – ISI2015, 26-31 July, 2015, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil.

van Nooijen, R.R.P., Kolechkina, A.G. (2014). Room for automatic control in combined sewer systems. Proceedings of the 19th IFAC World Congress, August 24 - 29, 2014, Cape Town, South Africa, p.p.5315 - 5320.

van Nooijen, R.R.P., Hrachowitz, M. & Kolechkina, A.G. (2014). Feedback versus uncertainty. In: Ames, D.P., Quinn, N.W.T., Rizzoli, A.E. (Eds.) Proceedings of the 7th International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software, "Bold Visions for Environmental Modelling", June 15 - 19, San Diego, California, USA. pp.1-8.

van Nooijen, R., Havers, B., Bakker, T., Schroder, J., van de Giesen, N. & Kolechkina, A. . Standards and the Dutch Digital Delta. The 7th International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software, June 15-19, San Diego, California, USA, 2014.

van Nooijen, R.R.P. & Kolechkina, A.G. (2014). Exploring hydrological model sensitivity to change by automatic differentiation. The 6th IAHS-EGU International Symposium on Integrated Water Resources Management "Evolving Water Resources Systems - Understanding, Predicting and Managing Water-Society Interactions", June 4-6, 2014, Bologna, p.2.

van Nooijen, R. & Kolechkina, A. (2014). Trajectory bounds for a hydrological system with threshold behaviour when only cumulative precipitation sums are known. Geophysical Research Abstracts, Vol. 16, EGU2014-15416, European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly, April 27- May 2, 2014, Vienna, Austria.

Kolechkina, A. & van Nooijen, R. (2014). Graph algorithms and central control of sewer systems. Geophysical Research Abstracts, Vol. 16, EGU2014-15433, European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly, April 27- May 2, 2014, Vienna, Austria.

van Nooijen, R.R.P. & Kolechkina, A.G. (2014). A question of priorities: Operating pumping stations in the Netherlands. CoProD'14, v2.014 - Constraint Programming and Decision Making Workshop, September 21, 2014, Wuerzburg, Germany, pp.1-5.

van Nooijen, R.R.P. & Kolechkina, A.G. (2014). Two applications of interval analysis to parameter estimation in hydrology. SCAN2014 - 16th GAMM-IMACS International Symposium on Scientific Computing, Computer Arithmetic and Validated Numerics, September 21-26, 2014, Wuerzburg, Germany, p.61.

van Nooijen, R. & Kolechkina, A. (2014) Confidence in our distributions. The 5th STAHY international workshop, November 10-11, 2014, Abu Dhabi, UAE.

van Nooijen, R. & Kolechkina, A. (2013). Balancing prediction horizon versus prediction accuracy: simulation results for a simple model system. The 6th International Conference on Water Resources and Environment Research (ICWRER) "Water & Environmental Dynamics", June 3-7, 2013, Koblenz, p.408.

van Nooijen, R.R., Gargouri-Ellouze, E. & Kolechkina, A.G. (2013). Modeling the distribution of intensity and duration of rainfall data with a polynomial copula. The 59th World Statistics Congress (WSC), August 25-30, Hong Kong.

Kolechkina, A.,van Nooijen, R. & Shatyrko, A. (2013). Stabilization of nonlinear Lyrie-type control processes of neutral type in scalar case. In: Khusainov D.Ya. (Ed.) Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Dynamical System Modelling and Stability Investigation, May 29-31, 2013, Kiev, Ukraine, p.335.

van Nooijen, R.R.P., Kolechkina, A.G. & Castelletti, A. (2013). Recent developments in dynamic network flow optimization. IAHS-IAPSO-IASPEI Scientific Assembly, July 22-26, 2013, Gothenburg.

van Nooijen, R.R.P., Baart, A., Bernhard, P., Feron, R., van de Giesen, N.C., de Haan, J.,Kolechkina, A.G. & Schiferli, D. (2013). Public-private research on water information systems. IAHS-IAPSO-IASPEI Scientific Assembly, July 22-26, 2013, Gothenburg.

van Nooijen, R.R. & Kolechkina, A. (2013). Interval output of a {SISO} linear system with known impulse response for incompletely described input. SIAM Conference on Mathematical and Computational Issues in the Geosciences, June 17- 20, 2013, Padua.

van Nooijen, R. & Kolechkina, A. (2013). Time scales and uncertainty. The 4th STAHY international workshop "Facets of Uncertainty", October 17-19, 2013, Kos Island.

van Nooijen, R.R.P., Kolechkina, A.G. & Mol, B. (2013). Model adaptation in a central controller for a sewer system. Geophysical Research Abstracts, Vol. 15, EGU2013-11504, European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly, April 7-12, 2013, Vienna, Austria.

Kolechkina, A.G. & van Nooijen, R.R.P. (2013). Central control, sewers and (0,1) quadratic programming. Geophysical Research Abstracts, Vol. 15, EGU2013-11573, European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly, April 7-12, 2013, Vienna, Austria.

van Heeringen, K.-J., van Loenen, A., van Leeuwen, E., van Nooyen, R. & van Velzen, E. (2013). Getting the max out of past investments in sewer systems by using RTC. Geophysical Research Abstracts, Vol. 15, EGU2013-5818-2 , European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly, April 7-12, 2013, Vienna, Austria.

van Nooijen, R.R.P., Kolechkina, A.G., van Velzen, E. & van Leeuwen, P. (2012). Tuning of a central controller for a sewer network using multiple simplified models. In: Prodanović, D., Plavšić, J. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Urban Drainage Modelling (UDM), September 4-6, 2012, Belgrade, Serbia, pp. 1-9.

van Nooijen, R.R.P., Kolechkina, A.G. & Campisano, A. (2012). Stability of digital discrete time controllers for water systems. In: Seppelt, R., Voinov, A.A., Lange, S. & Bankamp, D. (Eds.), Proceeding of the 6th International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software (iEMSs) "Managing Resources of a Limited Planet: Pathways and Visions under Uncertainty", July 1-5, 2012, Leipzig, Germany, pp. 1-8.

van Nooijen, R.R.P., Kolechkina, A.G. & van Loenen, A. (2012). Coping with communications delays and different time scales when applying central automatic control. In:Seppelt, R., Voinov, A.A., Lange, S. & Bankamp, D. (Eds.), Proceeding of the 6th International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software (iEMSs) "Managing Resources of a Limited Planet: Pathways and Visions under Uncertainty", July 1-5, 2012, Leipzig, Germany, pp. 1-8.

van Nooijen, R.R.P., Kolechkina, A.G. (2012). Goodness of fit from a Bayesian point of view. Proceedings of the 3rd STAHY International Workshop "Statistical Methods for Hydrology and Water Resources Management", Oktober 1-2, 2012, Tunis, Tunisia, pp.1-8.

van Nooijen, R.R.P., Kolechkina, A.G. (2012). Estimates of extremes in the best of all possible worlds. Proceedings of the 3rd STAHY International Workshop "Statistical Methods for Hydrology and Water Resources Management", Oktober 1-2, 2012, Tunis, Tunisia, pp.1-10.

van Nooijen, R.R.P., Kolechkina, A.G. (2012). The Effect of practical Considerations on the Control of a Dutch Water System. Geophysical Research Abstracts, Vol. 14, EGU2012-14173, European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly, April 22- 27, 2012, Vienna, Austria.

van Loenen, A., van Heeringen, K-J., van Nooyen, R. & van Velzen, E. (2012). Leveraging existing infrastructure for central automatic control of multiple sewer systems. In Hinkelmann,R., Nasermoaddeli,M.H., Liong,S.Y., Savic,D., Fröhle,P., Daemrich,K.F. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Hydroinformatics - HIC 2012 "Understanding Changing Climate and Environment and Finding Solutions", July 14-18, 2012, Hamburg, Germany, pp.1-9.

van Nooijen, R.R.P., Kolechkina, A.G., van Leeuwen, P.E.R.M. & van Velzen, E. (2011). Agile design of sewer system control. In Bittanti, S., Cenedese, A. & Zampieri, S.(Eds.), Proceedings of the 18th IFAC World Congress, August 28-September 2, 2011, Milaan, Italy, pp.14176-14182.

van Nooijen, R.R.P., Kolechkina, A.G., van Heeringen, K-J. & van Velzen, E. (2011). Implementation of central control for multiple sewer systems. Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Urban Drainage, September 10-15, 2011, Porto Alegre, Brasil, pp. 1-8.

van Nooijen, R., Hoes, O.A.C. & Kolechkina, A.G. (2011). Exploring the derivatives of a noisy distributed temperature signal. XXY IUGG General Assembly "Earth on the Edge: Science for a Sustainable Planet", June 28 - July 7, 2011, Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre, Melbourn, Australia, #4137.

van Nooijen, R., Ellouze-Gargouri, E. & Kolechkina, A.G. (2011). The Maximum Likelihood Method for the Burr XII implemented in interval analysis. XXY IUGG General Assembly "Earth on the Edge: Science for a Sustainable Planet", June 28 - July 7, 2011, Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre, Melbourn, Australia, #4126.

van Nooijen, R., Hrachowitz, M.& Kolechkina, A.G. (2011). Analysis of tracer experiments with an interval arithmetic implementation of the convolution integral. XXY IUGG General Assembly " Earth on the Edge: Science for a Sustainable Planet", June 28 - July 7, 2011, Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre, Melbourn, Australia, #4134.

van Nooijen, R., Kolechkina, A.G.& Hrachowitz, M. (2011). Interval arithmetic is a tool in hydrological parameter estimation based on tracer experiments. ICIAM 2011 - 7th International Congress on Industrial and Applied Mathematics, July 18-22,2011, Vancouver, VC, Canada.

van Nooijen, R. & Kolechkina, A. (2010). A comparison of fitting methods and tests for several distributions on computer generated samples. Proceedings of the 2nd STAHY International Workshop "Advances in statistical hydrology", May 23-25, 2010, Taormina, Italy, pp.1-10.

van Nooijen, R. & Kolechkina, A. (2010). A comparison of fitting methods and tests for several distributions on hydrological data. Proceedings of the 2nd STAHY International Workshop "Advances in statistical hydrology", May 23-25, 2010, Taormina, Italy, pp.1-9.

van Nooijen, R., Kolechkina, A.& van Leeuwen, E. (2010). Input Selection for Sewer Network Flow Controller Evaluation. Proceedings of the 12th WSEAS International Conference on Automatic Control, Modelling & Simulation (ASMOS'10), May 29-31, Catania, Italy, EUROPMENT Press, 2010, pp. 53-58.

van Nooijen, R., & Kolechkina, A. (2010). An envelope for errors in hydrological model output caused by sampling and averaging. SCAN 2010 - 14th GAMM-IMACS International Symposium on Scientific Computing, Computer Arithmetic and Validated Numerics, September 27-30, 2010, ENS de Lyon, France.

van Nooijen, R.R.P. & Kolechkina, A.G. (2009). Interval Analysis as a tool to reliably find the global Maximum of the Log Likelihood. Geophysical Research Abstracts, Vol. 11, EGU2009-4562 , European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly, April 19-24, 2009, Vienna, Austria.

Besseling, N.C., Bokhove, O., Kolechkina, A., Molenaar, J., van Nooyen, R., Rottschäfer, V., Stein, A. & Stoorvogel, A.A. (2008). Maths fights flooding. Proceedings of the 63rd European Study Group Mathematics with Industry, January 28 - February 1, 2008, Enschede, The Netherlands, CWI Syllabi 63, pp.47-63.

van Nooijen, R., Gubareva, T., Kolechkina, A. & Gartsman, B. (2008). Interval Analysis and the Search for local Maxima of the Log Likelihood for the Pearson III Distribution. Geophysical Research Abstracts, Vol. 10, EGU2008-A-05006, European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly, April 13-18, 2008, Vienna, Austria.

Gubareva, T., van Nooijen, R., Kolechkina, A., Gartsman, B. & Blöschl, G. (2008). Extreme flood estimation by different probability distribution laws in different climatic conditions. Geophysical Research Abstracts, Vol. 10, EGU2008-A-04997, European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly, April 13-18, 2008, Vienna, Austria.

van Nooijen, R., Gubareva, T. & Kolechkina, A. (2008). An algorithm to fit given sites into intuitively determined maximum run-off categories. The 1st STAHY workshop "New statistical tools in hydrology", October 13-14, 2008, Capri, Italy.

Gartsman, B., van Nooijen, R., & Kolechkina, A. (2008). Implementation issues for total risk calculation for groups of sites. The 1st STAHY workshop "New statistical tools in hydrology", October 13-14, 2008, Capri, Italy.

van Nooyen, R.R.P. (2006). A Model to determine desirable properties of precipitation predictions for operational use in polder-boezem systems in the Netherlands. Geophysical Research Abstracts, Vol. 8, EGU06-A-03406, European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly, April 02-07, 2008, Vienna, Austria.

van Nooijen, R.R.P., Ankum, P. (2005). Transition time from lower to higher flow between steady flow states in a finite length prismatic channel. Geophysical Research Abstracts, Vol.7, EGU05-A-07848, European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly, April 24-29, 2005, Vienna, Austria.

Hof, A., Schuurmans, W., van Nooyen, R.R.P. & Brouwer, R. (2000). Salinity Control in Open-Channels. In: Hotchkiss, R. H. & Glade, M. (Eds.), Building Partnerships. Proceedings of the Joint Conference on Water Resources Engineering and Water Resources Planning & Management, July 30-August 2, 2000, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Water Resources 2000, ASCE, 2000, pp. 1-9.

Vuik, K. & van Nooyen, R.R. (1997). A parallel ILU-preconditioner. In: Wang, J., Allen M.B, Chen, B.M. & Mathew, T. (Eds.) Iterative Methods in Scientific Computation, Proceeding of the Third IMACS International Symposium on Iterative Methods in Scientific Computation, July 9-12, 1997, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, USA, IMACS, 4(1998), pp. 399-405.

Wesseling, P., van Beek, P. & van Nooyen, R. (1994). Aspects of non-smoothness in flow computations. In: Peters, A., Wittum, G., Herrling, B., Meissner, U., Brebbia, C., Gray, W. & Pinder, G. (Eds.), Computational Methods in Water Resources X. Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Computational Methods in Water Resources, Springer, 1994, pp. 1263 - 1271