Thirteenth IAHR-APD Congress - Singapore, 6-8 August 2002

The 13th IAHR-APD Congress was hosted by Department of Civil Engineering, National University of Singapore in Singapore between 6 and 8 August 2002. More than 300 engineers and scholars from 25 countries participated in the Congress. Among them 92 percent were international delegates. The Congress was opened by Mr. Tan Gee Paw, Chairman of Public Utilities Board of Singapore. Welcome addresses were made by Dr. John Junke Guo, Chairman of the Local Organizing Committee, Prof. Ng Wun-Jern, Dean of Engineering of National University of Singapore, and Prof. Sri Harto, Chairman of the APD Committee.

The technical sessions started with Dr. Christopher George’s keynote lecture of “The Global Water Community – What is the Role of Scientists and Engineers?” and concluded with Prof. Mike Abbott’s keynote lecture of “Hydroinformatics: Working for People, Working for Nature.” Prof. Iheisa Nezu of Tokyo University, Prof. Pierre Julien of Colorado State University, Prof. Ashim Das Gupta of Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand, Prof. Zhaoyin Wang and Prof. Guangqian Wang from Tsinghua University – Beijing also delivered keynote speeches on various aspects of hydraulics and water engineering. About 140 papers were presented in four parallel sessions covering hydraulics and open-channel flow; hydrology, water resources and hydroinformatics; maritime hydraulics; and eco-hydraulics and water quality modeling.

After three days of intensive technical sessions, the Awards Committee consisting of 7 members and chaired by Prof. Hin-Fatt Cheong selected four best papers, two from the host country and two from other countries. The awards for papers from other countries went to Taro Oka and Hironori Higashi for their paper of “Measurement and modeling of evapo-transpiration during plant growth”, and to K. Sugawara, T. Abe, A. Aihara and T. Takahashi for their paper on “A study on hydraulic characteristics of vegetative groins”. The host country awards were presented to S.Y. Liong and N. Muttil for their paper on “SEA: A robust evolutionary algorithm for rainfall-runoff model calibration”, and to Shuqing Yang for his work on open-channel turbulence entitled “1st and 2nd order approximate solutions of Reynolds equations in 3-D channels”.

During the event, an ice breaking reception and a congress banquet were held at the Congress site, Marina Mandarin Hotel. In particular, according to the APD bylaws, the APD Committee elected Prof. Joseph H. W. Lee of The University of Hong Kong and Prof. Ashim Das Gupta of Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok as the new Chairman and Vice-Chairman respectively. After discussing three proposal bids for the 14th IAHR-APD Congress in 2004, the Committee agreed that the 14th IAHR-APD Congress be hosted by The University of Hong Kong and co-organized by Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Joseph H.W. Lee
Chairman, IAHR-APD Executive Committee