The Department of Hydraulic, Maritime and Environmental Engineering (DEHMA) was set up as a structural unit of UPC in 1988, and has a staff of 30 lecturers, 19 postgraduate scholarship-holders, 20 undergraduate scholarship-holders, 5 laboratory technicians and 4 administrative workers (figures for 1998). The Department is divided into four sections: the Hydraulic and Hydrological Engineering Section, the Maritime Engineering Section/Labora-tory, the Sanitary and Environmental Engineering Section and the Hydraulic Machines and Systems Engineering Section. The Department's academic staff teach at the School of Civil Engineering (ETSECCPB) and the School of Industrial Engineering of Barcelona (ETSEIB). In addition, the Department is in charge of the doctorate programme in Sea Sciences and the master's programme in Harbour Engineering and Management. The Department's objective is to provide quality teaching and carry out high-level research in the field of water and environmental engineering.

The departmental offices are in Building D1 on the North Campus, together with the specialization lecture halls of the School of Civil Engineering and the facilities of the International Centre for Coastal Resources Research.

The Department of Hydraulic, Maritime and Environmental Engineering pursues a number of research lines combining the observation of nature at work, experimentation in the laboratory, the assessment of processes and systems, and numerical modelling. A considerable part of the economic resources that fund the Department's research activities and projects comes from grants awarded by the European Commission, the Spanish government's Interministerial Science and Technology Commission, and the Catalan government's Interdepartmental Research and Technology Commission.

The Department is involved in several agreements with government bodies (ministries, the Generalitat or Catalan government, and city councils) and private enterprise. Furthermore, the Department's academic staff habitually take part in the organization of technical working sessions and conferences of national and international scope.