The masters program in environmental engineering and water resources is a 30 credit program that features 12 credits of required coursework (list I), 0-6 credits of guided research (list II), and a remainder of credits in elective coursework (list III).
I. Required Courses (12 credits):
1. CE H1000 Analytical Methods in Civil Engineering
Survey of analytical methods encountered in Civil Engineering: ordinary differential equations (first and second order), linear algebra (inverse matrices, eigenvectors), differential equations systems, partial differential equations, Laplace transforms, Fourier Analysis, vector analysis (line and surface integrals, Green, Stokes and Gauss theorems), probability and statistics (probability distributions, sampling distributions of mean and standard deviation), and optimization (gradient search, simplex method). Applications in Structural, Geotechnical, Environmental, Water Resources, and Transportation Engineering.
2. Three of the following four courses:
CE H0700 Advanced Hydraulics
Open channel hydraulics of artificial and natural water-courses, including roughness and shape characteristics; surface curve calculation by step methods and by integration methods. Delivery of canals. Hydraulics of spillways and stilling basins, including chute spillways, drop structures, gate and side channel spillways. Prereq: CE365.
CE H6600/CE 566 Engineering Hydrology
Elements of hydrometeorology including climate teleconnections. Analysis of precipitation and use of statistical methods. Design storm determination. Basin characteristics, runoffs, and losses. Streamflow data, extension of data, overland flow, and design floods. Routing and unit hydrograph method. Sediments, their transport, and deposition. Application of hydrologic design. Estimating evaporation. Groundwater flow modeling. This course is cross-listed with CE 56600 Engineering Hydrology, and therefore is not available to students who have already completed CE 56600. Prereq: CE264, CE 365.
CE H8300/CE 583 Air Pollution and Control
Effects of air pollution on humans and on the environment. Clean Air Act and its Amendments. Mobile and industrial sources of air pollution and emission inventories of pollutants across the US and in NY. Pollution prevention vs. pollution control. Air pollution control from industrial, mobile and area sources, to meet needed removal efficiency, with an emphasis on control of gaseous and particulate air pollution from industrial sources. This course is crosslisted with CE 58300 Air Pollution and Control, and therefore is not available to students who have already completed CE 58300. Prereq: Math 391. Coreq: CE 474.
CE H7200 Principles of Water and Waste Water Quality
Principles of water chemistry, homogeneous reaction kinetics, ideal reactor analysis, non-ideal reactor analysis, residence time distribution functions, tracer studies, water microbiology, physical and chemical water quality, physical chemical and microbiological water quality parameters, water quality management strategies, surface water versus groundwater quality, introduction to drinking water and domestic wastewater purification, the multi-barrier concept, development of process treatment trains, the surface water treatment rule and its amendments, the CT concept, suspended versus attached growth biological waste water treatment systems. Prereq: CE 474.
II. Required Research (0 to 6 credits):
One of the following three options:
CE I9700 Report (0 Credit)
CE I9800 Project (3 credits)
CE I9901 Research for the Master's Thesis (6 credits)
III. Elective Courses (12 to 18 credits):
Air Quality Management
CE H8100 Air Quality Modeling
Air pollutants, their sources, and their properties that dictate how they can be modeled. Atmospheric diffusion equation, and key mechanisms for pollutant transport and transformation, including radiation, gas and aqueous phase chemical reactions, convection, dispersion, and wet and dry deposition. Mathematical derivation and computer modeling of the transport and transformation of pollutants using specific receptor (CMB, PMF, HYSPLIT), dispersion (AERMOD, CALQ3HC) and transport (CMAQ, UAM/CAMx) models. Prereq: CE H1000 Analytical Methods in CE, Prereq: CE 474 Environmental Engineering.
CE H8200 Air Pollution Measurement
Air pollutants and their properties that dictate how they can be measured. Principles of operation, and strengths and weaknesses of approaches used to measure air pollutants, with a focus on approaches to measure criteria pollutants and their precursors. Design of air pollution measurement campaigns per EPA guidelines, including measurement siting and placement, maintenance, quality assurance, record keeping, and data validation and reporting. Prereq: CE 474 Environmental Engineering.
Data Analytics
CE H1100 Advanced Data Analysis
Exploratory data analysis, Analysis and modeling of engineering data that includes detecting trends, seasonality and distributional properties, recognizing spatio-temporal variability in data using machine learning techniques, dependence measures, Building generalized linear and non-linear cross-validated predictive models, Introduction to hierarchical Bayesian modeling. Prereq: CE 264 CE Data Analysis.
CE H6100 Water Resources System Analysis
Integrated water management and systems analysis. Design of regulatory system for water allocation. Tools for conservation incentives and insurance system design. Planning and operation for competing objectives. Benefit-cost analysis for water projects. Climate variability and change analysis for infrastructure planning. Probabilistic risk assessment. Prereq: CE 316 System and Decisions Analysis.
Drinking Water and Wastewater Treatment
CE H7100/CE 571 Water Quality Analysis
Acid-base titration curves and acid-base indicators, alkalinity and the carbonate system, buffer intensity and design, optical methods of analysis, the spectrophotometer and Beer’s law, colorimetric analysis of phosphate, colorimetric analysis of ammonia, chelation analysis of iron, calcium carbonate equilibria, solubility product determination, Chemical Oxygen Demand, determination of forms of aqueous chlorine, reactions of aqueous chlorine with ammonia, adsorption on activated carbon, kinetics of ferrous iron oxidation. This course is crosslisted with CE 57100 Water Quality Analysis, and therefore is not available to students who have already completed CE 57100. Prereq: CE 474 Environmental Engineering.
CE H7500 Drinking Water Treatment
Unit operations and processes used in drinking water treatment. Characterization of surface and ground water supplies, national primary and secondary drinking water standards. Theory and applications of enhanced coagulation and floculation, gravity separation versus dissolved air flotation, slow sand, rapid sand and multimedia gravity filtration, membrane filtration (microfiltration, ultrafiltration, nanoflitration), reverse osmosis, primary disinfection (ozonation, UV irradiation) and secondary disinfection (chlorination, chloramination), disinfection by-products formation potential of treated water, THM, HAA and NHM formation in distribution systems. The concepts of SUVA and CT. Comparison of bottled water and tap water quality. Prereq: CE 571 Water Quality Analysis.
CE H7600 Biological Wastewater Treatment
The course emphasizes biological treatment processes applicable to municipal wastewaters for the removal of BOD, COD, and nutrients in compliance to current regulations. Processes include suspended growth, fixed film, as well as hybrid systems. Biomass growth kinetics, respiration and aeration needs, and nutrient requirements under aerobic, anaerobic, and facultative conditions will be covered. Design criteria for the activated sludge processes, MBBR and MBR processes, biological nitrogen removal and enhanced phosphorus removal. Sludge stabilization under anaerobic and aerobic conditions. Resource recovery in terms of biogas for energy and phosphates as struvite. Prereq: CE 474 Environmental Engineering.
CE H7700 Biological Systems in EE
Procaryotic and eukaryotic cell structure, origin and evolution of modern eukaryotes, microbial diversity and classification. Energy sources, chemolithotrophs, photolithotrophs, chemoorganotrophs, fermentation, respiration. Culture of microorganisms, types of culture media, enumeration of microbes in natural populations. Effects of environmental factors on growth. Virus structure, quantification, replication lysogeny, microbial genetics, mutations, recombinations, transformations, eukaryotic microbial genetics. Biogeochemical mineral cycling, detritus, wastewater microbiology, eutrophication. Prereq: CE 474 Environmental Engineering.
Modern Tools and Perspectives
CE G0800 Graphical Information Systems (GIS) in WREE
Review of the basic concepts of GIS, such as the use coordinate systems, projections, data concepts, and geographic references. Apply concepts to typical hydrologic tasks, such as terrain modeling, watershed delineation, computation and extraction of river and watershed networks including spatial analysis computations. Modeling concepts and integration of time series and geospatial data. Hydrologic CyberInfrastructure (CUAHSI Hydrologic Information Systems) nationwide hydrological science information system and remote sensing data products and their analysis within the GIS environment. Challenges that remain for geospatial information systems, such as data heterogeneity, metadata and data searches. Prereq: none although introductory hydrology and GIS courses are helpful.
CE G9500 Remote Sensing in WREE
Techniques and instruments used for collecting information for civil engineering applications. Radiative emission and transfer principles. Satellite Instrument and orbit considerations. Spectral signatures from Earth's surface and atmosphere (optical, thermal infrared, microwave). Remote sensing applications for land cover and vegetation mapping, soil and snow sensing, water resources, aerosols and air quality. Processing, analyzing, classifying, and applying satellite-based information for applications. Prereq: ENGR 301 Intro to Remote Sensing.
CE G9800 Sustainability in Engineering
Conceptual and mathematical tools for considering the sustainability and environmental impact of civil engineering projects. Topics studied include mass and energy balance, thermodynamic analysis (energy efficiency), life cycle analysis (ecological footprint, carbon footprint), global warming, and standards and certification programs, with applications and case studies in water, food, energy, building, and transport. Lectures, student presentations and discussions, guest speakers, and a term project. Prereq: CE 372 Environmental Impact Assessment.
Solid Waste Management
CE G7800 Solid Waste Reuse & Recycling
Characterization and generation of solid waste streams in municipal, commercial, and industrial sectors. Waste minimization by way of pollution prevention, reuse and recycling. Analysis of state-of-the-art reuse and recycling technologies and their implementation in major commercial and industrial sectors such as paper, glass, plastics, metals, wood, tires, electronics, and construction/demolition (concrete recycling). Local, state and national legislative trends and regulatory requirements. Environmental impact of reuse and recycling as reduction in CO2 emissions, conservation of energy, and global warming. Circular economy and implementation of zero waste strategies in urban systems. Examples of public and private reuse and recycling programs in New York City, the United States and Europe. Prereq: CE 474 Environmental Engineering.
CE H8400/CE584 Solid Waste Management
Generation of solid wastes. Municipal solid waste characterization, collection processing and disposal. Energy and resource recovery. Hazardous waste generation, collection, processing and disposal. Use of landfills and incinerators. Regulatory and economic aspects of urban solid waste issues. This course is crosslisted with CE 58400 Solid Waste Management, and therefore is not available to students who have already completed CE 58400. Coreq: CE 474 Environmental Engineering.
Water Resources
CE G8100 Macro-Scale Hydrology
Roles that water plays in the Earth System and how the water cycle has been altered by global change. Introduction to macro-scale hydrology, focusing on regional to global domains. Students will review the scientific literature and together with the instructor identify and execute a team-based, "fast-tack" analysis of a timely issue in macro-scale hydrology. Prereq: CE 365 Hydraulics or OR EAS 345 Hydrology.
CE G7300 Surface Water Quality Modeling
This course teaches basic techniques for modeling motions of contaminates in surface water problems and provides students with opportunity to learn and practice modeling programs. It introduces fundamental physical phenomena such as diffusion, advection, and chemical reaction kinetics, and presents their estimation using analytical approaches. The course discusses mathematical models for surface flow and pollution problems and their numerical methods, together with benefits and cautions of using numerical models. The students will simulate flow and water quality problems by running computer programs. Prereq: CE 372 Environmental Impact Assessment, CE 315 Numerical and Computational Methods in CE.
CE G9700 Numerical Methods and Simulation of Fluid Flow
This course is designed for students who seek to understand fundamental principles for numerical simulation and modeling of fluids as well as to become competent in operating commercial software for practical problems. It teaches basic concepts, numerical methods, and applications in solving partial differential equations arising from fluid flow problems. The course covers potential flow equation, convection equations, diffusion equations, and Navier-Stokes equations; numerical discretization and related concepts; basic and advanced numerical methods for fluid flows; programming to solve a model problem; and running existing software packages to simulate flows. The course will be delivered via theoretical analysis and hands-on computer lab approaches. Prereq: CE 315 Numerical and Computational Methods in CE.
CE H0800 Applied Hydraulics
Hydraulic principles utilized in design of structures, such as spillways, dams, drop structures, gate and side channel spillways, and water transport systems. Studies of erosion, sediments, their transport and deposition. Similarity, dimensional analysis, and modeling techniques as applied to hydraulic systems. Prereq: CE 365 Hydraulics.
NOTES:
* Required courses are offered once or twice per year and elective courses are on a 2 year rotation. Any Deviations from this list must be pre-approved in writing by the program advisor.
** Students who completed one or more of the required courses before starting the program will be permitted to substitute an elective course for a required course, pending pre-approval in writing by the program advisor.
* 500 level courses are available for both graduate and undergraduate students. Graduate students can take only up to two (2) graduate courses for credit and only if they score a B or better.
Last Updated: 02/05/2021 15:05