Hydroinformatics has emerged over the last decade to become a recognised and established field of independent research within the hydrological sciences. Hydroinformatics is concerned with the development and hydrological application of mathematical modelling, information technology, systems science and computational intelligence tools. It provides the computer-based decision-support systems that are now entering more and more into the offices of consulting engineers, water authorities and government agencies.

The aim of this session is to provide an active forum in which to demonstrate and discuss the integration and appropriate application of emergent computational technologies in a hydrological modelling context. Topics of interest are expected to cover a broad spectrum of theoretical and practical activities that would be of interest to hydro-scientists and water-engineers. The main topics will address the following classes of methods and technologies:
• Predictive models based on the methods of computational intelligence: neural networks, fuzzy systems, support vector machines, genetic programming, cellular automata, chaos theory, etc.
• Methods for the analysis of complex data sets: principal and independent component analysis, feature extraction, data-infilling, information theory, etc.
• Optimization methods associated with heuristic search procedures: various types of genetic and evolutionary algorithms, randomized and adaptive search, ant colony and particle swarm optimization, etc.
• Hybrid modelling involving different types of models – both process-based and data-driven;
• Novel methods of analysing model uncertainty;
• Appropriate software architectures for linking different types of models.

Applications could belong to any area of hydrology or water resources: rainfall-runoff modelling, flow forecasting, sedimentation modelling, analysis of meteorological and hydrologic data sets, linkages between numerical weather prediction and hydrologic models, model calibration, model uncertainty, optimization of water resources, etc.

This is the fifth session on Hydroinformatics at EGU Assemblies and each of them was a success. On the basis of the best papers an edited volume and several Special Issues of peer-reviewed journals were initiated.