Forms of instruction

In this unit we will use a problem-based teaching approach. At each week we will provide theoretical material in form of lectures that will later be used in hands-on tutorials and exercises. You are expected to use the concepts practiced during the tutorials and exercises in your final group project.

Each week we will have a 4 hours workshop where we will cover basic theory (~1h), work on a guided tutorial (~1h) and work on exercises with applications of interest (~2h). In addition, we will have a 2h walk-in feedback session every week.

Lecture and study materials

This course/unit will use the following materials: Lecture slides, lecture notes, papers and chapters from relevant literature.

We will use the Computational Modelling in Civil Engineering and Geosciences book as a reference (link also available on the top-right corner of this page).

In the Calender section of this page you will find the links to the material for each week.

For each week you will have the description of the theory, with links to the pre-recorded videos, some solved exercises applying the concepts given in the theory and tutorials with applications to examples relevant to the modules. You will also find a set of exercises to be developed in the workshop sessions. Other than the Python notebooks some comparisons are made using other programs and laguages suchs as Maple and Julia. If the installation of additional software is required, we will provide instructions on how to do it.

A note on the course structure

The course is built up of a series of theory pages, as well as tutorial notebooks. It is advised for students to look into the theory pages first. Here a series of texts and videos explains the course material. After that the tutorial pages show ways of implementing the theory lectures. Tutorials are either example-only, with the full example and implementation shown, or they are exercise-solution based. This is indicated in the title. While all exercises have an example solution directly availible at the bottom of the page, it is advised to try it yourself first. In coding there are always different possible paths, so discuss your approach with fellow students or your lecturers. The correctness and efficiency of the solution is key, and even the provided solutions have room for improvement.