COLLABORATIVE ENGINEERING AND HYDROINFORMATICS: THE HYDROASIA EXPERIENCE Philippe Gourbesville 1 , ShiYui Liong 2 , Gye Woon Choi 3 , Toshiaru Kojiri 4 , Eiichi Nakakita 4 , Yuwen Zhou 5 , Muskand Babel 6 1 Professor, Polytech’Nice-Sophia / University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis, 930 route des Colles- Sophia Antipolis- France, email: gourbesv@unice.fr 2 Professor, Tropical Marine Science Institute – National University of Singapore 14 Kent Ridge Road, Singapore,email: tmslsy@nus.edu.sg 3 Professor, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering - University of Incheon, 177, Do Hwa Dong, Nam Gu, Incheon City, 402-749, Korea, email: gyewoon@incheon.ac.kr 4 Professor, Water Resources Research Center - DPRI, Kyoto University Gokasho, Uji, Kyoto, Japan, 611-0011, email: tkojiri@wrcs.dpri.kyoto-u.ac.jp 5 Professor, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing, China, email: zhouyw688@gmail.com 6 Professor, Water Engineering and Management (WEM) - School of Engineering and Technology Asian Institute of Technology - Pathumthani 12120 – Thailand, email: msbabel@ait.ac.th ABSTRACT The HydroAsia program is jointly developed by EuroAquae consortium, Tropical Marine Science Institute Singapore, Incheon University, DPRI-Kyoto University, Beijing University of Technology and Asian Institute of Technology. HydroAsia is dedicated to the students involved in several master degrees specialized on the water management and the hydro-technologies. Following the HydroEurope example [www.hydroeurope.org ], the objectives of HydroAsia is to promote, in a global vision, the key concepts, the methodologies, the tools and the good practices which are today essential for a sustainable water management. Modern Information and Communication Technology (ICT) offers today the opportunity to explore and to promote a new dimension in the engineering activity: the collaborative work of team-partners residing at different locations and working at different time using the Internet as common working and communication platform. The HydroAsia is focused on a real case study – urban flooding - based in Incheon, Korea and is promoting the use of a collaborative platform where the most advanced modelling technology is made available for all participants [www.hydroasia.org ]. Keywords: collaborative engineering, hydroinformatics, modelling, ICT, training, Asia. 1. INTRODUCTION Modern Information and Communication Technology (ICT) offers today the opportunity to explore and to promote a new dimension in the engineering activity: the collaborative work of team-partners residing at different locations and working at different time using the Internet as common working and communication platform (Gourbesville, 2004 & 2006). Collaboration in this environment demands for new skills and a new “technological culture” to be generated just by doing. This is a worldwide challenge where in future experts and engineers from different countries with different languages, different mentalities as well as different specialization and professional experience have to collaborate in research, teaching and practice. To promote the methods and the tools of the collaborative engineering in the hydroinformatics field, it is essential to implement this approach in the educational and