Matteo Rubinato

Aston University · College of Engineering & Physical Sciences Infrastructure & Sustainable Eng

Effective forecasting and response to meteorological hazards are crucial for safeguarding life, property, and supporting sustainable socioeconomic development. With the rising frequency and severity of meteorological hazards worldwide, this study proposes an enhanced risk assessment framework for urban infrastructure exposed to extreme weather even...

In the Ugandan curriculum, theoretical teaching predominates in conveying water-related topics due to its efficiency and low resource requirements. However, this teacher-centred approach limits student interaction and collaborative learning. Conversely, game-based learning can enhance social skills, critical thinking, and engagement, yet it remains...

Nutrients are essential for the growth of aquatic life; however, in excess, they can result in a decline in water quality, posing serious risks to both human and aquatic organisms. Human activities, such as urbanisation, industry, and farming, can increase the amount of nutrients and other elements that reach receiving waterbodies like Lake Victori...

Efficient vegetation planting is essential in highway construction to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prevent ecological degradation. However, carbon sequestration has rarely been considered in previous optimization models for planting strategies in these environments. To address this gap, this study focuses on selecting five predominant shrub...

The effect of vegetation distribution patterns, coverage, and raindrop impact on the overland flow velocity is highly intricate. To quantify these effects, a rigorous experimental campaign was conducted involving five rainfall intensities (ranging between 60 and 120 mm h−1), six vegetation patterns (diamond pattern - DP, random pattern - RP, checke...

The ability of a small and micro enterprise (SME) to recovery after a pandemic outbreak can directly affect national economic growth and sustainable development (Sustainable Development Goal 11). Thus, the current study quantitatively identifies, based on the spatial probit model, effective measures that enhance the performance and survival of SMEs...

Deterioration of buried water and sewer pipes is a significant concern among utilities around the world. Cured-In-Place-Pipe (CIPP) is one of the techniques commonly adopted to rehabilitate pipes. The main purpose of this paper is to provide a brief, but comprehensive, summary of information needed by researchers, engineers and municipalities to re...

Transport phenomena are crucial components of the biological and chemical processes that govern fluvial environments. The presence of vegetation along rivers plays a significant role in affecting the flow velocity, which becomes unevenly distributed, and consequently is an important factor that can affect longitudinal and transversal dispersion and...

Flooding in urban areas is expected to increase its magnitude and frequency in the future. Therefore, there is a strong need to better model sewer-surface flow interactions. Existing numerical methods are commonly based on simplified representations of sewer/surface mass exchange, and mainly validated in steady flow conditions. Current methodologie...

In the Loess Plateau of China, the presence of gravel mulching is widespread, and investigating the dynamic changes in hydrodynamic properties induced by gravel coverage is crucial for optimizing soil and water conservation in this region. In this study, the effect of gravel coverage on the hydrodynamic parameters characterizing the overland flow w...

This study aims to develop a robust sediment transport model focusing on the vertical two-dimensional water–sediment two-phase flow in which sediments are constantly interacting, hitting each other, gradually becoming smoother and smaller, and accumulating when velocities decrease. The grid-based models currently available can be cumbersome when de...

Increased urbanisation coupled with inadequate awareness of the public on the issue of freshwater resource management has affected the use and the availability of freshwater resources in urban areas of Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania. Lake Victoria has been the clearest example, with the water level decreasing 0.005 m/year from 1993 to 2016 causing an...

Due to climate change and increased urbanisation, the current level of freshwater withdrawals and corresponding water usage in Uganda has increased, affecting the availability of these resources and becoming a concern. Education can play a crucial role in providing support to and training students on sustainable water use, both at home and in relat...

The 2021 flooding events in The Netherlands, Belgium and Germany have sensitized many municipalities across Europe and especially in Germany, the federal states of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and Rhineland-Palatinate, having been particularly affected, have formulated more extensive requirements for the municipalities to be able to manage these dr...

Floods in urban areas which feature interactions between piped and surface networks are hydraulically complex. Further, obtaining in situ calibration data, although necessary for robust simulations, can be very challenging. The aim of this research is to evaluate the performance of a commonly used deterministic 1D-2D flood model, calibrated using l...

The long-term viability of small businesses in the aftermath of multiple pandemics and consequent lockdowns has a crucial impact on the sustainable economic and social development of any region across the world. Thus, in order to investigate what has been the major impact of COVID-19 pandemic within local small businesses and to identify which main...

Accurate prediction of the mean velocity of overland flow is the premise and foundation for establishing a soil erosion model, but it is difficult to accurately estimate the mean flow velocity with the presence of vegetation. To explore the variation law of the mean velocity of overland flow under the influence of gramineous plants typical in the L...

Airflow behavior and outdoor PM2.5 dispersion depend significantly on the building‑tree layouts and orientation towards the prevailing wind conditions. To investigate this issue, the present work evaluates the aerodynamic effect of different building‑tree layouts on the outdoor PM2.5 dispersions in the urban communities of Shijiazhuang City, China....

Vegetation plays a significant role in preventing desertification, conservation of soil and water. However, nowadays, there is still uncertainty regarding the mechanisms of flow resistance caused by dissimilar vegetation covers. To address this gap, a series of these was conducted in this study to investigate the influence of synthetic grass and st...

In this study, a three-dimensional (3D) numerical model based on the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) approach was developed to simulate the near-shore current flows over a rough topographic surface in the coastal area, where the flows are shallow and demonstrate strong turbulent characteristics. The numerical program is based on the open-sour...

Unpredictable freak waves can reach up to 30 m and pose constantly a significant threat to shipping and oil/gas platforms. To provide further insights into the effects of freak waves on oceanic floating platforms, the present study conducts an experimental campaign focusing on two air-gap conditions (i.e. 0.35Hc and 0.2Hc, where Hc is the height of...

Urbanisation and the replacement of previously vegetated areas with impermeable surfaces reduces the lag times of overland flow and increases peak flows to receiving watercourses; the magnitude of this will increase as a result of climate change. Tree planting is gaining momentum as a potential method of natural flood management (NFM) due to its ab...

Flooding events are becoming more frequent and the negative impacts that they are causing globally are very significant. Current predictions have confirmed that conditions linked with future climate scenarios are worsening; therefore, there is a strong need to improve flood risk modeling and to develop innovative approaches to tackle this issue. Ho...

Due to the increased frequency and magnitude of urban flooding events, there is a pressing need to improve the accuracy of numerical tools to better assess the hydraulic performance of new drainage systems. Nowadays, such models are inherently difficult to verify due to the difficulty of acquiring reliable data during the flood event, meaning that...

Woodland planting is gaining momentum as a potential method of natural flood management (NFM), due to its ability to break up soil and increase infiltration and water storage. In this study, a 2.2 km2 area in Warwickshire, England, planted with woodland every year from 2006 to 2012, was sampled using a Mini Disk infiltrometer (MDI). Infiltration me...

Citation: Shu, A.; Rubinato, M.; Qin, J.; Zhu, J.; Sun, T.; Yang, W.; Wang, M.; Zhang, Z. The Hydrodynamic Abstract: Artificial reefs are effective measures to improve the marine ecological environment and increase fishery production. However, there are several geometries being investigated nowadays and their setup, including the spacing between gr...

In 2021, heavy precipitation events in Germany have confirmed once again that pluvial flooding can cause catastrophic damage in large, medium, and small cities. However, despite several hazard-oriented strategies already in place, to date there is still a lack of integrated approaches to actually preventing negative consequences induced by heavy ra...

The accurate modelling of urban flooding constitutes an integral part of flood risk assessment and management in residential and industrial areas. Interactions between drainage networks and surface runoff flows are commonly modelled based on weir/orifice equations; however, this approach has not been satisfactorily validated in unsteady flow condit...

In this paper, an improved meshfree scheme based on radial basis functions (RBFs) is provided for solving incompressible viscous Navier‐Stokes equations and two enhancements are proposed to mitigate the typical numerical oscillations. The first one is the combination of the RBFs‐based finite difference (RBF‐FD) method with the semi‐Lagrangian RBFs...

Defining the infiltration characteristics of an area is beneficial for understanding soil compaction, determining soil health, and measuring the rate of surface water infiltration, which is needed for hydrological modelling. Single and double ring infiltrometers (SRI, DRI) are commonly used to determine infiltration characteristics in the field, ho...

Artificial reefs are considered to have the function of repairing and improving the coastal habitat and increasing the fishery production, which are mainly achieved by changing the regional hydrodynamic conditions. The characteristics of flow turbulence structure are an important part of the regional hydrodynamic characteristics. Different methods...

Building water-wise cities is a pressing need nowadays in both developed and developing countries. This is mainly due to the limitation of the available water resources and aging infrastructure to meet the needs of adapting to social and environmental changes and for urban liveability. This is the first book to provide comprehensive insights into t...

There is an emergent consensus that people living in cities, together with the existing infrastructure and ecology of these urban areas and global environments, are at risk from the impacts of climate change (e.g. heavy rainfall) and human activities (e.g. land use). There are multiple uncertainties linked with climate change scenarios: i) the firs...

Surcharging urban drainage systems are a potential source of pathogenic contamination of floodwater. While a number of previous studies have investigated net sewer to surface hydraulic flow rates through manholes and gullies during flood events, an understanding of how pollutants move from sewer networks to surface flood water is currently lacking....

Rising sea levels are causing more frequent flooding events in coastal areas and generate many issues for coastal communities such as loss of property or damages to infrastructures. To address this issue, this paper reviews measures currently in place and identifies possible control measures that can be implemented to aid preservation of coastlines...

Beavers have influenced the world's ecosystem for millions of years. Their dams create ponds and wetlands that provide a large range of hydraulic and ecological benefits to the natural world, including mitigation against flooding and improving water quality. As beavers are now being reintroduced to many parts of the world, it is important to fully...

The distribution of karst landscapes over the Earth’s surface, to a large extent, follows the distribution of carbonate (limestone and dolomite) and gypsum rocks and together these make up about 12% of the Earth’s land area, and the largest karst region in to world is in Southwestern China. Characterized by a unique set of landforms, these geograph...

Fast urbanization and industrialization have progressively caused severe impacts on mountainous, river, and coastal environments, and have increased the risks for people living in these areas. Human activities have changed ecosystems hence it is important to determine ways to predict these consequences to enable the preservation and restoration of...

Recent studies have sought to use Microsoft Kinect sensors to measure water surface shape in steady flows or transient flow processes. They have typically employed a white colourant, usually titanium dioxide (TiO 2), in order to make the surface opaque and visible to the infrared-based sensors. However, the ability of Kinect Version 1 (KV1) and Kin...

Due to its Lagrangian nature, Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) has been used to solve a variety of fluid-dynamic processes with highly nonlinear deformation such as debris flows, wave breaking and impact, multi-phase mixing processes, jet impact, flooding and tsunami inundation, and fluid-structure interactions. In this study, the SPH method i...

Dam-break flows may change into debris flows if certain conditions are satisfied, such as abundant loose material and steep slope. These debris flows are typically characterized by high density and can generate strong impact forces. Due to the complexity of the materials that they are made of, it has always been very challenging to numerically simu...

At the present time, one of the most relevant challenges in marine and ocean engineering and practice is the development of a mathematical modeling that can accurately replicate the interaction of water waves with porous coastal structures. Over the last 60 years, multiple techniques and solutions have been identified, from linearized solutions bas...

Vegetation plays a significant role in controlling soil erosion. However, the effects of each vegetation type on soil erosion have not been fully investigated. In order to explore the influence of multiple vegetation covers on soil erosion and surface runoff generation, 10 different vegetation types, typical of the Nverzhai small basin, have been s...

Karst regions are widely distributed in Southwest China and due to the complexity of their geologic structure, it is very challenging to collect data useful to provide a better understanding of surface, underground and fissure flows, needed to calibrate and validate numerical models. Without characterizing these features, it is very problematic to...

Increased urbanisation, economic growth, and long-term climate variability have made both the UK and China more susceptible to urban and river flooding, putting people and property at increased risk. This paper presents a review of the current flooding challenges that are affecting the UK and China and the actions that each country is undertaking t...

Non-homogeneous viscous debris flows are characterized by high density, impact force and destructiveness, and the complexity of the materials they are made of. This has always made these flows challenging to simulate numerically, and to reproduce experimentally debris flow processes. In this study, the formation-movement process of non-homogeneous...

Key Takeaways In many countries, regulations do not require the use of secondary disinfectants to ensure safe drinking water. The water industry may be overly reliant on secondary disinfectants to compensate for less‐than‐ideal treatment and distribution system management. The water industry should evaluate the use of secondary disinfectants to ens...

Qinghai Lake is the largest inland saline lake on the Tibetan Plateau. Climate change and catchment modifications induced by human activities are the main drivers playing a significant role in the dramatic variation of water levels in the lake (Δh); hence, it is crucial to provide a better understanding of the impacts caused by these phenomena. How...

A set of shallow-water equations (SWEs) based on a k^−ε^ Reynold stress model is established to simulate the turbulent flows over a complex roughness bed. The fundamental equations are discretized by the second-order finite-difference method (FDM), in which spatial and temporal discretization are conducted by staggered-grid and leap-frog schemes, r...

Riverbank erosion is a natural process in rivers that can become exacerbated by direct and indirect human impacts. Unfortunately, riverbank degradation can cause societal impacts such as property loss and sedimentation of in-stream structures, as well as environmental impacts such as water quality impact. The frequency, magnitude, and impact of riv...

In recent decades, rapid urbanization has resulted in a growing urban population, transformed into regions of exceptional socio-economic value. By removing vegetation and soil, grading the land surface and saturating soil air content, urban developments are more likely to be flooded, which will be further exacerbated by an anticipated increase in t...

Multi-Horizontal-Submerged Jets are successfully applied to dissipate energy within a large-scale hydropower station. However, notable near-field vibrations are generated when releasing high discharges through the gates, which is generally typical in a flooding case scenario. Under these conditions, the magnitude of the vibrations varies when apply...

This paper presents a cost-effective methodology to simultaneously measure mixing processes and surface velocity fields in shallow flows using low cost cameras and lighting. Velocity fields and depth averaged concentration of a soluble fluorescent tracer are obtained using the new techniques and the results verified against traditional point probe...

As one of the major sediment sources in rivers, bank collapse often occurs in the Ningxia–Inner Mongolia catchment and, to date, it caused substantial social, economic and environmental problems in both local areas and downstream locations. To provide a better understanding of this phenomenon, this study consisted of modifying the existing Bank Sta...

The accurate characterisation of flow from urban surfaces to sewer/stormwater systems is important for urban drainage design and flood modelling/risk identification. However, the geometrical complexity and large variety of drainage structures (linking elements) available makes model calibration and verification difficult. In this study an extensive...

Accurately quantifying the capacity of sewer inlets (such as manhole lids and gullies) to transfer water is important for many hydraulic flood modelling tools. The large range of inlet types and grate designs used in practice makes the representation of flow through and around such inlets challenging. This study uses a physical scale model to quant...

Non-homogeneous debris flows are characterized by a wide grain size gradation, high volumetric weight and sediments not uniformly distributed along the vertical direction of the flow depth. These flows usually occur in the southwestern mountainous area of China during the rainy season, causing tangible and non-tangible damages; therefore, it is cru...

Flows in manholes are complex and may include swirling and recirculation flow with significant turbulence and vorticity. However, how these complex 3D flow patterns could generate different energy losses and so affect flow quantity in the wider sewer network is unknown. In this work, 2D3C stereo Particle Image Velocimetry measurements are made in a...