This book provides a review of advanced topics relating to the theory, research, analysis and implementation in the context of big data platforms and their applications, with a focus on methods, techniques, and performance evaluation. The explosive growth in the volume, speed, and variety of data being produced every day requires a continuous increase in the processing speeds of servers and of entire network infrastructures, as well as new resource management models. This poses significant challenges (and provides striking development opportunities) for data intensive and high-performance computing, i.e., how to efficiently turn extremely large datasets into valuable information and meaningful knowledge. The task of context data management is further complicated by the variety of sources such data derives from, resulting in different data formats, with varying storage, transformation, delivery, and archiving requirements. At the same time rapid responses are needed for real-time applications. With the emergence of cloud infrastructures, achieving highly scalable data management in such contexts is a critical problem, as the overall application performance is highly dependent on the properties of the data management service.

This volume is an outcome of a symposium organized by the IAHS International Commissions on Water Quality (ICWQ), Continental Erosion (ICCE), and Groundwater (ICGW), and the Predictions in Ungauged Basins (PUB) Working Group, with the objective of bringing together experts to provide a state-of-the-art review of our current understanding of how water quality and sediment behaviour might alter as a result of climate and land-use change during the 21st century.