Research projects now rely on an array of different channels to increase impact, including high-level scientific output, tools, and equipment, but also communication, outreach, and educational activities. This paper focuses on education for children aged 5–12 years and presents activities that aim to help them (and their teachers) grasp some of the complex underlying issues in environmental science. More generally, it helps children to become familiarized with science and scientists, with the aim to enhance scientific culture and promote careers in this field. The activities developed are focused on rainfall: (a) designing and using a disdrometer to observe the variety of drop sizes; (b) careful recording of successive dry and rainy days and reproducing patterns using a simple model based on fractal random multiplicative cascades; and (c) collaboratively writing a children's book about rainfall. These activities are discussed in the context of current state-of-the-art pedagogical practices and goals set by project funders, especially in a European Union framework.
Research projects now rely on an array of different channels to
increase impact. This obviously includes high-level scientific output,
tools, and instrumentation, but also communication, outreach, and
educational activities. This paper focuses on education for young
children (5–12 years old) and presents a number of activities and a
science book with the aim of assisting them (and their teachers and
parents) to grasp some of the complex underlying issues in the field
of environmental science, with a focus on rainfall. More generally, it
helps children to become familiarized with science and the role of
scientists, with the aim of enhancing scientific culture and promoting
careers in this field. The classroom activities presented form part of
the dissemination effort of the NEW Interreg IV RainGain project
( design and implementation of a drop measurement device; recording and modeling of the succession of dry and rainy days; collaborative writing of a scientific book about rainfall.
The activities will be discussed in the context of current pedagogical practice and goals set by project
funders, especially in a European Union framework.
Good science education is essential in early childhood, not only for social and cognitive development but also for engaging young (3–5 years old) learners with science (Sackes et al., 2009). However, science is often perceived as unappealing to young learners (Koren and Bar, 2009; Sjøberg and Schreiner, 2005; Stefansson, 2006; Muller et al., 2013). Many studies have highlighted the need to engage and enthuse learners at a young age: Tai et al. (2006) found that American students reporting an interest in science careers at the age of 13–14 were more likely to obtain a university degree in a science field than those with no interest; the Royal Society (2004) found that 63 % of their UK study participants had first considered a career in a science and engineering field by the age of 14; Maltese and Tai (2010) found 30 % of participants having an interest in middle school or high school.
A positive attitude towards science in school will often lead to a positive commitment and lifelong interest in the subject (Simpson et al., 1994). Bennett and Hogarth (2009) showed that positive attitudes to school science declined significantly between the ages of 11 and 14, whilst Lyons (2006) found that students are often not engaged by the “autocratic” way science is represented in their classes, finding that it is often disconnected from the natural world they experience on a day-to-day basis. Maltese and Tai (2010) found that early interest in science was provoked by specific memorable activities (specifically school-based experiences related to demonstrations) or an exceptional teacher.
Previous work has also found that the key to students' understanding of science is activities which actively involve the student. As such, numerous studies (e.g., Muller et al., 2013; Alrutz, 2004; Buncick et al., 2001; Cleaves, 2005; Dorion, 2007, 2009; Ellington et al., 1981; Harvard-Project-Zero, 2001; Lyons, 2006; Maltese and Tai, 2010; Odegaard, 2003; Royal Society, 2004; Osborne et al., 2003; SATIS, 1986; Sloman and Thompson, 2010; Tai et al., 2006; Tobias and Hake, 1988; Wagner, 1998) have found that including a variety of activities and methods to engage students with different interests and experiences, providing an engaging classroom environment and allowing students to feel comfortable asking questions are important factors that can invoke interest in science and foster retention.
Using hands-on activities is clearly a popular and successful method to engage students. However, many teachers find science challenging to teach and, as such, turn to picture books and children's science literature for assistance. Sackes et al. (2009) explored the benefits and limitations of using children's literature to introduce science concepts. The authors found that although some books are poorly written and can spread misconception, those written under the guidance of science consultants were great learning tools, offering unique opportunities for introducing science concepts in the early years, fostering interest, curiosity, and positive attitudes, as well as integrating literacy and science (Broemmel and Rearden, 2006; Castle and Needham, 2007; Coskie, 2006; Monhardt and Monhardt, 2006). Pringle and Lamme (2005) found that picture books in particular were very useful for communicating concepts in a welcome and familiar format, and demonstrating logical connections that exist between classroom learning and the natural worlds outside the classroom. Thus children's books – when produced and used accurately and effectively (Ford, 2006) – are a key part of supporting children's development of scientific concepts (Zeece, 1999).
The following chapters outline a number of hands-on activities and a scientific book that have been developed to support the teaching and learning of complex topics at a young age. The presentation of each activity is preceded by a historical and scientific background section and followed by a “going further” section. The purpose of these sections is to provide teachers and educators with sufficient material so that they feel comfortable when implementing the activity. According to the age of the children, they may or may not use this additional information. The activities were initially implemented in a classroom with children aged 5–6 years. This was a practical choice driven by the fact that the son of the first author was in that class, which facilitated the first contact with the teacher! Since then other implementations have been carried out. The target audience of the collection to which the book belongs is 8–12 years. Hence, the collaborative shaping of the book was achieved with a classroom of children aged 8–9, i.e., the youngest of the age range targeted. This was to make sure to make sure that it is understandable for the whole age range targeted.
Illustration of the fact that water and oil are not miscible.
This activity consists of designing and testing disdrometers made from paper plates containing a few millimeters of flour or oil to observe rain drops individually.
The aim of the activity is 2-fold:
learning how to design and test two instruments, as well as compare their
pros and cons in “laboratory” and “actual” conditions; unveiling the unknown diversity of rain drop sizes and providing some
basic explanations.
The activity was implemented in October 2013 in a classroom with children
aged 5–6, in Sceaux (south of Paris, France).
The idea of this activity is to reproduce in a more “artisanal” way
a famous experiment by Marshall and Palmer (1948) who used dyed filter
paper to get an estimate of the drop size distribution (DSD). In the
same paper, they used these observations to calibrate the famous
relation
The disdrometer is made of few millimeters of flour or oil in a plate (or any
similar sort of medium). To understand the functioning of the oil
disdrometer, children first need to notice that oil and water are not
miscible. This is demonstrated using glasses containing either milk or
oil, to which a drop of water is added using a pipette
(Fig. 1a). Following a suggestion of the teacher, the water within the
pipette is colored to increase the visibility of the output. The
behavior within the two glasses is very different (Fig. 1b); in the
milk, everything gets mixed, whereas in the oil, the drops remain
independent of the oil and sink. In order to help children interpret
and analyze the experiment, they are asked to illustrate their
observations (Fig. 1c). This use of personal drawings is one of the
basic ideas underlying the pedagogy promoted by the “La main à la
Patte” foundation
(
The disdrometers are constructed by placing a few millimeters of flour or oil onto a plate. Artificial drops of colored water are dropped onto the disdrometer using a pipette. Half of the children test the flour device, while the other half test the oil disdrometer (Fig. 2). The children were all able to create their own device without wasting or spilling oil or flour, and only three of them needed significant help in the process. The use of a deep container as suggested by the teacher also helped! The basic premise of the session is for it to be interactive, allowing the children, the scientist, and the teacher to discuss, understand, and compare the functionality of the devices. Children started by comparing their device with their neighbor's one since he/she had made the other type of device. The teacher was helpful in starting the discussion, because the scientist was not used to this at the beginning.
Designing and testing disdrometers (either with oil or flour) in a classroom with artificial drops of tinted water.
The main learning concepts are
Once a droplet falls onto the flour disdrometer, it creates a small wet
crater that remains visible. Once a droplet falls on the oil disdrometer, it does not mix with oil and
remains visible where it landed. The flour device can be easily transported while the oil one cannot.
Indeed, as soon as the device is not completely horizontal, droplets begin
to move and merge when they reach the lowest part of the plate/container.
This does not occur with the flour device which tolerates being slightly
tilted. The oil disdrometer retains a better imprint of drop size. Indeed with the
flour device, the water slightly spreads around the small crater. Hence,
the actual size is lost, and only the relative sizes are accurate. With the oil
device, the shape of droplets are lost as they become spherical, however the
volume remains accurate since the water of the drop and oil do not mix.
Being very visual, the first three items were easily grasped by
children, whereas the fourth one was a bit trickier and required more
detailed explanations and illustrations for few of them. The size
differences between imprints in flour and in oil while drops were
created using the same pipette was initially noted only by a few
children.
The second part of the activity consists of testing the disdrometers under actual rainfall. For this a volunteer needs to go outside with the disdrometer, uncover it for a few seconds, and return inside for analysis (Fig. 3a). Typical results are displayed on Fig. 3b. We were lucky that it was actually raining the day of the experiment. In case it had not been, some pictures were ready in order to continue the discussion anyway and the teacher would have done the actual test once some rain appeared.
Use of the flour disdrometer in rainy conditions.
At this stage it should be noted that the oil disdrometer is unsatisfactory under real conditions because when a droplet impacts – or more precisely, crashes into – the oil surface, it breaks up into several droplets, thus biasing the results. However, the fact that a device which seemed effective during inside lab testing failed under “real” conditions is an interesting lesson for children. In order to help children notice the various sizes of drops and their inhomogeneous distribution, they are also asked to draw their observations (Fig. 3c). The variety of drop sizes was visible on about 2/3 of the children's drawings. Let us mention here that the children were not asked to measure the drops' sizes because they were too young to achieve this, which is why we used the drawing. With older children it is possible to include measurement in the activity, as done recently by Mazon and Viñas (2013) who implemented a similar low-cost “flour” disdrometer experiment with high school students. Before going on, it should be mentioned that the actual skill involved in doing a measurement is a learning goal as well. Indeed, it is an empowering notion that one can know something by measuring it oneself, instead of trusting the knowledge passed on to one by others.
Representation of drop by drop data collected by a
2-D video disdrometer during an event that occurred on
24 September 2012 in Ardèche, France. Each plot corresponds to
1 s and the corresponding time is indicated above it. The size of
the sampling area is 11 cm
Once they have observed the variety of drop sizes, the children are
given some insights into the formation and development of
rainfall. The main elements for such a young audience are
Water vapor evaporates from the Earth's surface and moves
up through the atmosphere until it reaches a colder height, where it
starts to condense around a small particle (known as a
“condensation nuclei”, e.g., dust, soot, pollutants). Droplets grow by further condensation or merging with other
droplets after a random collision. An area with numerous droplets
forms a cloud. Once a droplet becomes too heavy to be held in the
atmosphere, it begins to fall. As the droplets fall, there are further collisions and
breakups leading to a range of droplet sizes (equivolumic diameter)
typically between 0.2 and 5–6 mm at ground level, the more
numerous ones being of size 1–2 mm.
For this part of the activity, no dedicated tools were used and it was
only based on a discussion. To illustrate the first point, the
standard example of the condensation around a bottle taken out of a
refrigerator was used and some children recognized this effect. Some
specific activities should be developed to address these issues in
future works.
Similar images can be obtained using a 2-D video disdrometer which
estimates the features (size, fall velocity, and position) of the
drops falling within a sampling area of approximately
11 cm
This activity consists of recording a daily time series of rainfall occurrences over 2 months, in order for children to understand the complexity of succession of dry and wet days, and of implementing a stochastic cascade model to reproduce patterns similar to the observed ones. The activity was tested in the same classroom as for the disdrometer experiment, with children aged 5–6 years in January 2014 in Sceaux.
The aim of the activity is 2-fold:
assisting children to understand the difficulty of carefully recording
data over a long period of time; introducing the notion of a “model”, as well as
“randomness”, with which they are not familiar. The idea is for
the learners to become involved in the concepts rather than to
formalize the complexities of them, which would be difficult for
them to grasp.
Rainfall occurrence patterns are tricky to characterize, model, and simulate at all scales and they still remain an open issue. See, for example, Gires et al. (2013) or Schleiss et al. (2014) for recent papers on cascade-based or geostatistics-based approaches. However, it is a relevant concept, given the importance of the rain/no rain intermittence. An illustration of this is the number of zeros recorded in rainfall time series. For instance Hoang et al. (2012) reported typically about 96–98 % of zeros for a long (many years), high-resolution (5 min) rain gauge time series over France. For practical reasons, and due to the necessary implementation of the experiment in classrooms, the activity was conducted at daily resolution, similar to Hubert and Carbonnel (1988) who analyzed a 45-year daily rainfall time series of Dédougou, Burkina Faso.
A possible solution to model observed rainfall occurrences patterns is
to rely on a scale-invariant multiplicative cascade framework (Lovejoy
and Mandelbrot, 1985; Lovejoy and Schertzer, 1990; Hubert,
1988; Schertzer and Lovejoy, 1985). Cascade models were initially developed to tackle atmospheric
wind turbulence and explain how energy is transferred from scale to
scale down to the dissipation scale. It was later used for rainfall,
assuming that the unknown equations governing rainfall inherit the
scale-invariant properties of the Navier–Stokes equations (Hubert,
2001). They remain the same after scale contraction, suggesting that
similar structure will be visible at all scales. The cascade concept,
formalized by Kolomogorov in 1941 and refined in 1962
(Kolomogorov, 1941, 1962) was first hinted at by the so-called father
of weather prediction Richardson (1922) in a foot note: Big whorls have little whorls that feed on their velocity,
and little whorls have smaller whorls and so on to viscosity – in the molecular sense.
To illustrate these cascade models, let us introduce the pedagogical discrete case, where scales are discretized (see Fig. 5a for an illustration in 1-D). At the beginning we have a structure with a given uniform level of intensity (typically a rain rate). The goal is to distribute this intensity over the domain (in time here). At each step of the cascade process, a structure is divided into two substructures and the intensity given to a substructure is the one of the parent structure multiplied by a random multiplicative increment. Repeating this process yields the desired variable field. A mathematical presentation can be found in Appendix A.
The first step of the experiment consists of recording rainy days over a long period of time and plotting the data. Over a 2-month period, the recording of rainy and dry days was undertaken at the start of the day, during the teacher's introduction to the day's schedule. If rainfall was noticed between 09:00 LT (local time) on the previous day and 09:00 LT that morning, then it is considered as a rainy day. To determine whether it had rained during the night the children checked whether the ground was wet while coming to school. At the time of the experiment, the children did not attend school on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays, thus they alternatively volunteered to be responsible for recording this information on each of these days. If the teacher resides near to the school, they can also record the observations during holiday period (during which children obviously do not attend school), otherwise it is simply considered as “missing data”. A bar time series was used to graphically represent the data, with each bar representing a day. The time series obtained that year is displayed Fig. 6. Black bars correspond to rainy days and white ones to dry days.
It is important to use this time to raise the children's awareness of the time and effort needed to collect and properly record data over a long period. This is often difficult and not really gratifying (or at least recognized) work. Yet it is essential to scientific research and the quality and robustness of the obtained results rely on its proper realization. This is a practical way for learners to understand and comprehend what scientific research consists of, and the role of the research scientist. They are essentially acting as researchers for the duration of this activity.
The second stage of this activity consists of implementing the cascade model that will enable the children to reproduce patterns similar to those they observed on their own recorded time series. It is a way to smoothly introduce the notion of a model. The word “model” itself is actually not mentioned in the class since it is too abstract for them to understand. The idea is simply to have them notice that while implementing a “recipe”, they are able to generate time series that look like their observations. It also enables us to introduce the notion of randomness.
Daily time series of rainfall occurrence recorded by a class of 5–6-year-old children in Sceaux, France in October–November 2013.
The suggested model is displayed Fig. 5b. It is actually an activity
designed to imitate a Filling the boxes. Each child is given a die with either
four or five black sides; the remaining side(s) are white. For each
box, the child throws the die; if a black side is obtained, they
color the box black, otherwise it remains white (see Fig. 7). This
mimics the generation of the random multiplicative
increments Generation of the time series. For each box of the time
series (bottom part of Fig. 5b) which correspond to a day, the child
follows the line up to the upper box at the top of the scheme. If
they encounter a white box, then they leave it white as a dry
day. If all the boxes are black, then the day is denoted rainy and
it is colored black. This process actually mimics the multiplicative
process Eq. (A2) taking advantage of the fact that a multiplication
by zero yields zero as output anyway. It means that a
Figure 8 displays examples of time series generated by children with
either four or five black sides on their die. As expected, this
activity was trickier to implement than the disdrometer one which is
more “hands-on”. On the one hand, the first part, i.e., throwing
dice and coloring boxes in black or white, went smoothly. On the other
hand, the generation of the time series turned out to be more
complicated. Most children did not understand the process of how the
time series should be filled from the black and white boxes with the
group explanation. Hence, a one-to-one explanation using supporting
examples (doing the first time steps with them) was needed before
they were able to do it. For future implementations a group
explanation might be tried but with an example done thoroughly. It
also appeared that the activity was too long for the limited
concentration capacity children have at this age. Hence, it would be a
good idea to use a three-level model rather a four-level model so that
the activity is shorter.
Implementation of the activity mimicking the
Examples of daily time series generated by the children with the
Once completed, a discussion about whether the simulated time series exhibited patterns similar or not to the observed series took place (Fig. 6). It is important for them to understand that although the series they obtained are not the same – since the outcome of throwing a die and therefore their boxes' colors are random – the patterns are similar because the same underlying process was used. Although it is difficult to know how much they grasped of this, they all noted that time series produced with a four-black-sided die were much drier than for the other die. It was concluded that simulations looked like observations for the die with five black sides and much less for the four-black-sided die. This is in agreement with expectations (see Appendix for details). It is likely that the interpretation of this activity was too complicated for such young children and it should be tested with older ones.
Only rainfall occurrence was addressed in this activity, meaning the complex rainfall process was reduced to the oversimplifying binary question of rain or no rain. It is not the case in reality, since the intensities observed during rainy periods are extremely variable over a wide range of spatiotemporal scales.
Actually, the
These notions were not addressed with 5–6-year-old children, who were too young to grasp them. However, if a time series with amount is recorded with older children (using simple rain gauges), it is possible to introduce this. One should plot the rainfall occurrence pattern in a bar time series as done here, and repeat the exercise only with the day when rainfall exceeded a given threshold. If the threshold is carefully chosen, the series generated with the die with five black sides will be similar to the initial observations, whereas the ones obtained with a die with four black sides will be similar to the thresholded one.
This activity involves writing a scientific book for children aged 8–12 years, based on questions they raised themselves. It was tested in a class with children aged 8–9 years in Sceaux in October and November 2014. The book was published in February 2015 (Gires, 2015).
The process leading to this book was designed by the editor of the
“Minipomme” (Ed. Le Pommier) collection in which it was published. It is
split into three main successive steps:
A 1.5 h interactive session with the scientist and a class
of 8–9-year-old children. They were given the general topic (in
this case, rainfall) of the book a few hours prior to the session
and asked for any questions they had about the topic. The topic of a
book in this collection should be related to some aspects of the
children's curriculum, meaning that they are not completely unaware
of the topic. In the case of this book about rainfall, they had
recently studied the water cycle, and were already aware that water
can exist in its three states (solid, liquid, and gas) on Earth. This
facilitated the discussion. The session was designed as an
interactive session, meaning that it was more than a simple
questions-and-answers session. Indeed, the scientist did not directly
give the answers, but tried to encourage the children to think about
the process and suggest some answers themselves before providing a
more precise explanation. To illustrate this point, they were for
example asked what happens when a lot of droplets are in a cloud and
move randomly, and concluded themselves that if the droplets are too
numerous they start to collide and merge, which slowly gives rise to
drops that will ultimately fall. In the explanation, the scientist
also used a lot of images to connect the new knowledge to existing
knowledge or common experiences. What happens when you empty a
bottle of water on impervious ground when it is hot and sunny? The
water evaporates. The example of the cold bottle around which water
condenses was again used, and here all the children had already
noticed that, which was not the case for younger ones. To illustrate
how small droplets are maintained in the atmosphere because of the
small-scale turbulent wind, the dust visible in the air when a sun
ray is entering through a window was used. All children had already
seen that effect. Naturally some of the questions raised were
surprising and unexpected, in which case the scientist went on to research
the question in more detail before providing an answer during the second
session. The two most striking examples in this specific case were
“What is the taste of rain?” and “Should I walk or run under the rain to get less wet?”. The
latter was especially fun, and after a little research it turns out that
almost ten papers based on numerical or actual experiments can be found on
this topic in the scientific literature (see Bocci, 2012 for a recent study
with many references within). It appears that, in general, one should run as
fast as possible when it is raining, but in some windy conditions or for
certain body shapes, there exists an optimal velocity. The book is then written by the scientist, with the aim of answering (at least partially) all the questions
raised by children. It is made of two parts:
First, a lively story, involving discussions between a few
characters, which contains most of the scientific elements. The
story should be more than a simple dialogue; a genuine fiction
should take place so that children do not even notice they are
learning and grasping new concepts. As pointed out by Dahlstrom
(2014) and Hut et al. (2016), using narrative and storytelling can enhance
the efficiency of geoscience communication. The story developed was
based on the random and fortunate meeting of two young children with
a “rain explorer” who takes them onboard her “drop's vessel” for
a journey into the clouds. The story is structured around four main
questions: (a) How do you measure rainfall?, (b) Does it rain the
same everywhere and all the time?, (c) How are droplets formed?, and
(d) What happens when drops fall? In addition there are a few
sidebars for additional details on difficult topics or definitions
of complex words. Second, a section that includes some components for children as
well as their parents (here, three topics are addressed: rainfall
radar measurement, lightning and thunderstorms, three states for
water), and some suggestions of experiments so that children can put
in practice the newly acquired knowledge either at home or in
classrooms. The experiments consist of the design and testing of a
flour disdrometer (see Sect. 2), and the building of a simple rain
gauge out of a plastic bottle. A 1.5 h interactive feedback session: the draft of the
book was given to children for reading a few days before a feedback
session with the scientist was held. The main point was to ask them
if they had understood everything, and whether they had some
suggestions regarding to the characters. They were happy with the
characters and had only minor suggestions for the content. For
example the explanation of a rainbow effect was rewritten. Actually,
they had more questions on the process of book creation (How many
people worked on it? How long does it take? How is it printed?),
which the editor answered. After this session, the scientist
made some minor adjustments to improve the book. Finally, the book was illustrated by a
professional designer, with a scientist providing precise schemes
for drawings involving scientific content.
The book is then made available to the public (bookshop, internet). Typically 2000–3000 copies are sold in this collection over the life of the book. It has not yet been translated to other languages. The authors did not receive very precise feedback from the teacher apart from the fact that they were satisfied with the experience. The two interactive sessions were dynamic, which shows the interest of the children in the activity.
In this paper, we have presented various hands-on activities for young children, designed to help them become familiarized with some complex notions associated with rainfall in a playful way. They designed a device whose main purpose was to record drop size, implemented it, and observed the variety of drop sizes. They also carefully recorded the succession of dry and rainy days over a period of 2 months before reproducing observed patterns with the help of a random fractal cascade model. Finally, they helped to shape the content of a scientific book about rainfall. The goal of these activities was not only for them to acquire knowledge on the specific topic of rainfall but also to become familiarized with science and the scientific approach; to become curious about their surroundings, to develop a willingness to observe more precisely their environment, to notice details, and ultimately to begin asking questions.
The development of these activities highlighted the importance of a genuine collaboration between scientists and school teachers, which turns out to be necessary for a successful implementation. The scientist brings the initial ideas and the expert knowledge for accurate science, and makes sure that simple explanations are not simplistic and biased ones. The school teacher helps in adapting the language for young children, and also in shaping the activity so that it fits into the classroom habits so the children are comfortable with it.
Finally, it should be mentioned that the activities done with children aged 5–6 years were reported on the class blog maintained by the teacher. This is a non-public blog accessible only to the parents because it contains pictures of their children while they are at school. Since the activities were implemented in the class of the first author's son, the publication triggered some unusual and pleasant discussions on drop size distribution at the end of the schoolday. Indeed parents were not aware of the variety of drop sizes and wanted to learn more on this issue. Some of them actually tested the experiment at home with their child. The first author used these short discussions to make parents aware of the extreme variability of rainfall as well as the difficulty of properly measuring it. This reflects nicely how an activity designed for young children actually ends up with parents learning new things as well.
Future work will involve the development of more activities on rainfall to ultimately create a whole activity kit on this topic. It will also be necessary to set up an appropriate protocol that enables a quantitative evaluation of the activities, both in terms of knowledge on the specific topic of rainfall and children's engagement with science. This will require collaboration with pedagogical experts as well.
The purpose of this appendix is to provide the interested reader with
some mathematical details about cascade processes and describe the
simple
Numerous models have been suggested in the literature and only the
simplest one will be discussed here since it will be implemented
within a classroom environment. It is often called the
For practical implementation in the children's activity, we typically
have
A. Gires would like to thank his two sons, Nathanaël and Nikita, for
always volunteering to test new scientific experiments and helping
to improve them! The authors would like to thank V. Rouelle and
D. Bourdin for opening their class at the Ecole des Clos
Saint-Marcel in Sceaux, France to scientific experiments and
fruitful discussions that helped improve the activities. The
authors from Ecole des Ponts ParisTech greatly acknowledge partial
financial support form the Chair “Hydrology for Resilient Cities”
(endowed by Veolia) of Ecole des Ponts ParisTech and EU
NEW-INTERREG IV RainGain Project (