The course represents an introduction to mathematical models for environmental engineering and sciences which are written as partial differential equations (PDEs). Starting from some examples of environmental models, the corresponding partial differential equations are classified in an abstract unifying framework thus giving instruments for facing other real world applications.
The course describes differential equations in the context of applications, presents some techniques needed for model analysis and gives an introduction to numerical methods.
It teaches students how to formulate and valuate the correctness of a mathematical model, solve differential equations analytically and numerically, analyze them qualitatively, and interpret the results. The process from the physical phenomenon to its computed solution is carried out into the following steps:
1.description of the phenomenon,
2.collection of data and identification of the object;
3.formulation of the mathematical model;
4.design of numerical methods for the computational solution;
5.interpretation of the results;
validation of the model.