[1] Data collection is a critical activity in the management of water systems because it supports informed decision making. Data are collected by means of monitoring networks in which water level gauges are of particular interest because of their implications for flood management. This paper introduces a number of modifications to previously published methods that use information theory to design hydrological monitoring networks in order to make the methods applicable to the design of water level monitors for highly controlled polder systems. The new contributions include the use of a hydrodynamic model for entropy analysis, the introduction of the quantization concept to filter out noisy time series, and the use of total correlation to evaluate the performance of three different pairwise dependence criteria. The resulting approach, water level monitoring design in polders (WMP), is applied to a polder in the Pijnacker region, Netherlands. Results show that relatively few monitors are adequate to collect the information of a polder area in spite of its large number of target water levels. It is found, in addition, that the directional information transfer DIT YX is more effective in finding independent monitors, whereas DIT XY is better for locating sets of monitors with high joint information content. WMP proves to be a suitable and simple method as part of the design of monitoring networks for polder systems.Citation: Alfonso, L., A. Lobbrecht, and R. Price (2010), Information theory-based approach for location of monitoring water level gauges in polders, Water Resour. Res., 46, W03528,

[1] A method for siting water level monitors based on information theory measurements is presented. The first measurement is joint entropy, which evaluates the amount of information content that a monitoring set is able to collect, and the second measurement is total correlation, which evaluates the level of dependency or redundancy among monitors in the set. In order to find the most convenient set of places to put monitors from a large number of potential sites, a multiobjective optimization problem is posed under two different considerations: (1) taking into account the costs of placing new monitors and (2) considering the cost of placing monitors too close to hydraulic structures. In both cases, the joint entropy of the set is maximized and its total correlation is minimized. The costs are considered in terms of information theory units, for which additional terms affecting the objective functions are introduced. The proposed method is applied in a case study of the Delfland region, Netherlands. Results show that total correlation is an effective way to measure multivariate independency and that it must be combined with joint entropy to get results that cover a significant proportion of the total information content of the system. The maximization of joint entropy gives results that cover between 82% and 85% of the total information content.Citation: Alfonso, L., A. Lobbrecht, and R. Price (2010), Optimization of water level monitoring network in polder systems using information theory, Water Resour. Res., 46, W12553,

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Disaster management for urban areas is a growing priority owing to factors such as the relentless migration to cities, unplanned development, changing climate, and increasing operational and maintenance costs. New information and communication technologies offer improved opportunities to address these factors. This paper presents and describes the digital city concept as a means of capturing, analysing and applying (digital) information about the city area, its services, and their design and operation. In particular, the functionality of the digital city can be adapted for managing urban flood disasters. The paper highlights the need to manage the urban stormwater cycle integrated with urban planning. Urban flooding should be mitigated by having a judicious mix of both structural and nonstructural strategies, which are selected with the full participation of all stakeholders. The management of urban flooding is illustrated with application to the tropical island of St Maarten.

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The acquisition of good hydroiogic information is an important issue in water management since it is the basis of decisions concerning the allocation of water resources to different users. However, sufficient data are often not avaiiable to describe the behaviour of such systems, especiaiiy in developing countries, where monitoring networi