The Complex Variable Boundary Element Method (CVBEM) has an important role to play in a number of technical engineering situations and can be a tremendous help to scholars and practitioners preoccupied with solving problems in areas such as heat transport, structural mechanics and river hydraulics. As well as describing the extremely useful applications of this method, the authors explain the mathematical background to the CVBEM, which is vital to understanding the subject as a whole. Advances in the Complex Variable Boundary Element Method is the most comprehensive of books on this subject, bringing together ten years of work and boasting the latest news in CVBEM technology. It will be of particular interest to those concerned with solving technical engineering problems - scientists, graduate students, computer programmers and those working in industry may all find the book helpful.

The subject of rainfall-runoff modeling involves a wide spectrum of topics. Fundamental to each topic is the problem of accurately computing runoff at a point given rainfall data at another point. The fact that there is currently no one universally accepted approach to computing runoff, given rainfall data, indicates that a purely deter ministic solution to the problem has not yet been found. The technology employed in the modern rainfall-runoff models has evolved substantially over the last two decades, with computer models becoming increasingly more complex in their detail of describing the hydrologic and hydraulic processes which occur in the catchment. But despite the advances in including this additional detail, the level of error in runoff estimates (given rainfall) does not seem to be significantly changed with increasing model complexity; in fact it is not uncommon for the model's level of accuracy to deteriorate with increasing complexity. In a latter section of this chapter, a literature review of the state-of-the-art in rainfall-runoff modeling is compiled which includes many of the concerns noted by rainfall-runoff modelers. The review indicates that there is still no deterministic solution to the rainfall-runoff modeling problem, and that the error in runoff estimates produced from rainfall-runoff models is of such magnitude that they should not be simply ignored."

The Complex Variable Boundary Element Method (CVBEM) has emerged as a new and effective modeling method in the field of computational mechanics and hydraulics. The CVBEM is a generalization of the Cauchy integral formula into a boundary integral equation method. The model ing approach by boundary integration, the use of complex variables for two-dimensional potential problems, and the adaptability to now-popular microcomputers are among the factors that make this technique easy to learn, simple to operate, practical for modeling, and efficient in simulating various physical processes. Many of the CVBEM concepts and notions may be derived from the Analytic Function Method (AFM) presented in van der Veer (1978). The AFM served as the starting point for the generalization of the CVBEM theory which was developed during the first author's research engagement (1979 through 1981) at the University of California, Irvine. The growth and expansion of the CVBEM were subsequently nurtured at the U. S. Geological Survey, where keen interest and much activity in numerical modeling and computational mechanics-and-hydraulics are prevalent. Inclusion of the CVBEM research program in Survey's computational-hydraulics projects, brings the modeling researcher more uniform aspects of numerical mathematics in engineering and scientific problems, not to mention its (CVBEM) practicality and usefulness in the hydrologic investigations. This book is intended to introduce the CVBEM to engineers and scientists with its basic theory, underlying mathematics, computer algorithm, error analysis schemes, model adjustment procedures, and application examples."

As well as describing the extremely useful applications of the CVBEM, the authors explain its mathematical background -- vital to understanding the subject as a whole. This is the most comprehensive book on the subject, bringing together ten years of work and can boast the latest news in CVBEM technology. It is thus of particular interest to those concerned with solving technical engineering problems -- while scientists, graduate students, computer programmers and those working in industry will all find the book helpful.