Credits and License#
You can refer to this book in its entirety as:
Lanzafame, R., van Woudenberg, T., Verhagen, S. (2024), Modelling, Uncertainty and Data for Engineers (MUDE) Textbook, Delft University of Technology. https://mude.citg.tudelft.nl/book/2024, CC BY 4.0. doi:10.5281/zenodo.16236358.
BibTeX Citation
If you would like to refer to the MUDE Textbook with BibTeX (e.g., in a TeachBook or Jupyter Book), the following entry can be used in a bib
file to get close to the reference shown above. Use the GitHub repository for this book as a reference for setting up APA citations (if desired).
@misc{mude2024,
title={Modelling, {U}ncertainty and {D}ata for {E}ngineers ({MUDE}) {T}extbook},
author={Lanzafame, Robert and van Woudenberg, Tom and Verhagen, Sandra},
year={2024},
note={Delft University of Technology. {https://mude.citg.tudelft.nl/book/2024} CC BY 4.0},
doi={10.5281/zenodo.16236358},
}
The text citation is Lanzafame et al. (2024)and the parenthetical citation is (Lanzafame et al., 2024).
The introduction, structure of the book and formatting of contents is done under direction of the Editors (Robert Lanzafame, Tom van Woudenberg and Sandra Verhagen), in collaboration with a large team of co-authors and student assistants. Some chapters and pages have additional primary authors who are identified within the book either at the bottom of the first page in a chapter, or at the bottom of an individual page, as necessary. If an author is not listed on a particular chapter or page, the editors may be attributed as the authors.
You can refer to individual chapters or pages within this book as:
<Primary Authors>
(2024)<Title of Chapter or Page>
. In Lanzafame et al. (Eds.), Modelling, Uncertainty and Data for Engineers (MUDE) Textbook. Delft University of Technology. https://mude.citg.tudelft.nl/book.
As contents of this book may change each academic year, we cannot guarantee that chapter titles and URL’s will remain static indefinitely. Therefore, if it is important for you to reference a specific location within the book, we recommend including the complete URL and date of access in your reference. You can refer to individual chapters or pages within this book as:
<Primary Authors>
(2024)<Title of Chapter or Page>
. In Lanzafame et al. (Eds.), Modelling, Uncertainty and Data for Engineers (MUDE) Textbook. Delft University of Technology. https://mude.citg.tudelft.nl/book (chapter./book/intro/
, retrieved [<date>
]).
Better yet, include a link to the specific commit! If you know what this means, we assume you know how to do it.
How the book is made#
This book is created using open source tools: it is a Jupyter Book that uses a number of features from TeachBooks and is written using Markdown, Jupyter notebooks and Python files to generate some figures. The source files are stored on a public GitHub repository github.com/TUDelft-MUDE/book. Zenodo is used to archive all open versions of the book (beginning with the 2024-25 academic year) and to provide a DOI (10.5281/zenodo.16236358). View the repository README file or contact the editors for additional and up-to-date information.
Acknowledgements#
This book has many contributors, many of whom are also key members of the MUDE Team, as well as critical feedback from MUDE students. The sections below list the primary authors and contributors for each chapter, buit is unfortunately not possible to list all of the small contributions from various people from within and outside Delft University of Technology, not list all contributions in detail.
A better way to see the contributions is to check the Contributors Page of the GitHub repository.
A big “thank you” is also due to the Educational Management Team of the Civil Engineering and Geosciences Faculty at Delft University of Technology for giving the MUDE Team financial and organizational support during the early years of MUDE (especially 2022-2024), in particular Hans Welleman, Director of Education of the faculty. Without the freedom and support to experiment with new tools, this book (and TeachBooks as well!) would not exist!
And in the end, none of this would have happened if it weren’t for the quick meeting between Robert Lanzafame, Caspar Jungbacker and Thirza Feenstra in the Fall of 2022 when we considered making our first Jupyter Book and decided to “go for it!” Caspar Jungbacker set up the first book later that year, which is why the book worm in the TeachBooks logo is named “Caspar.”
License#
This manual is CC BY 4.0 licensed allowing you to share and adapt the material, as long as the source is named. Resources that are not included under the CC BY license and external resources that are reused in this book are listed in the sections below.
If an author is not listed on a particular page, it is by the Editors (for example, the introduction page of some chapters).
Auxiliary files such as figures, code, videos, etc, are included under the license of this book and should be attributed to the authors of the chapter or page where they are used, unless otherwise stated below or in the file itself. Text-based files (i.e., non-binary) are typically stored in the repository, within the subdirectory where the source file of the chapter or page is located. Binary files are stored in an FTP server (https://files.mude.citg.tudelft.nl/<binary_file_name>
). Videos and quiz questions are stored in and served from YouTube and H5p; contact the MUDE Team directly if you are interested in source materials for these resources.
External Resources#
Parts of this book are taken from other external resources and reused in various ways (some of which are not shared with a permissive license). Entire chapters or pages are listed individually in the External Resources section below. Resources that are used within a page and/or are modified by MUDE authors are listed individually in the Individual Chapters and Pages section below.
Resources not under CC BY#
CC BY conditions are not applicable to some resources included in this book which resources cannot be reused without explicit permission from the original copyright holder. In some cases, external resources are provided under their own permissive license (e.g., CC BY), in which case permission and instructions for use are already explicitly provided by the copyright holder; however this is not always the case. All resources that are not included in the CC BY license of this book are listed individually in the sections below, either: within the summary of each chapter or page, or as entire chapters or pages in External Resources.
Individual Chapters and Pages#
Credits are provided here for chapters and pages that are released under the license of this book (internal resources). Use the guidance provided above to properly share, reuse and cite relevant chapters, pages or any other resources from this book.
Chapter: Modelling Concepts#
Modelling concepts is written by Alessandro Cabboi, Patricia Mares Nasarre and Robert Lanzafame.
Special thanks goes to João Moura Pereira de Lucas Teixeira, who created first draft of pages from powerpoint slides.
Chapter: Uncertainty Propagation#
Propagation of Uncertainty is written by Sandra Verhagen.
Special thanks goes to:
Robert Lanzafame, Patricia Mares Nasarre and Max Ramgraber, who reviewed, commented and/or modified content. Robert and Patricia wrote the page Uncertainty Classification.
Sophie Keemink, Caspar Jungbacker and Thirza Feenstra, who provided feedback and helped develop exercises.
Antonio Magherini, who created first draft of pages from powerpoint slides.
Fig. 2.4 and Fig. 2.6 are created by Max Ramgraber (maxramgraber.com/interactive), which are published with a CC BY license and included in this book without modification.
Chapter: Observation Theory#
Observation theory is written by Sandra Verhagen.
Special thanks goes to:
Peter Teunissen and Christiaan Tiberius who co-shaped the material, indirectly, through collaboration with the author as TU Delft colleagues.
The books Adjustment theory: an introduction (Teunissen, 2024) and Testing theory: an introduction (Teunissen, 2024) which provided the framework for this chapter.
Sophie Keemink, Caspar Jungbacker and Thirza Feenstra, who provided feedback and helped develop exercises.
Chapter: Numerical Modelling#
Numerical Modelling is written by Jaime Arriaga Garcia, Justin Pittman and Robert Lanzafame.
Special thanks goes to:
Isabel Slingerland and Mona Devos for critical feedback and development of exercises, figures and related content.
Dhruv Mehta and Ajay Jagadeesh for feedback on structure, content.
Fig. 4.1 is included on page Numerical Modelling but is not included under the CC BY license of this book. Original content is used here with explicit permission of Amgad Omer on behalf of Deltares.
Fig. 4.6 is reproduced from Strang and Herman (2016) without modification and is not included under the CC BY license of this book. The source content is provided with a CC BY NC SA license and can be accessed for free at https://openstax.org/books/calculus-volume-2/pages/1-introduction.
Chapters: Univariate and Multivariate Continuous Distributions#
Univariate Continuous Distributions and Multivariate Distributions are written by Patricia Mares Nasarre and Robert Lanzafame.
Special thanks goes to Oswaldo Morales Napoles and Elisa Ragno for suggestions on the theoretical and didactic framework, as well as critical feedback and review.
Pages One Random Variable and Two Random Variables are from the Chapter Probabilistic Design (Lanzafame, 2024) from the book Risk and Reliability for Engineers (Lanzafame, 2024), published with a CC BY license. Files are included without modification.
Fig. 2.4, Fig. 5.1, Fig. 5.3, Fig. 6.1 and Fig. 6.11 are created by Max Ramgraber (maxramgraber.com/interactive), which are published with a CC BY license and included in this book without modification.
Chapter: PDEs and the Finite Volume Method#
PDEs and the Finite Volume Method is written by Robert Lanzafame and Jaime Arriaga Garcia.
Special thanks goes to:
Isabel Slingerland and Mona Devos for critical feedback and development of exercises, figures and related content.
Dhruv Mehta for providing a first draft of the chapter structure and contents.
Chapter: Finite Element Method#
Finite Element Method is written by Frans van der Meer.
The material in this chapter is also incorporated in an in-depth book “Finite Elements in Civil Engineering and Geosciences” by Oriol Colomés, Iuri Rocha, Frans van der Meer and Martin Lesueur which can be found here.
Special thanks goes to Lex Niessen who greatly assisted in developing material on the finite element method for the first edition of MUDE, which was the starting point for this chapter.
Chapter: Signal Processing#
Signal Processing is written by Christiaan Tiberius.
The material in this chapter is related to an in-depth book “Engineering signal analysis - from Fourier to filtering” by Christiaan Tiberius and Max Mulder (TU Delft Open Publishing, 2025).
Special thanks goes to:
Max Mulder for being a signal processing soul-mate, sparring-partner and TU Delft colleague of the author who co-shaped the material, indirectly, through collaboration since early 2000’s.
Jelle Knibbe, who reviewed, commented and/or modified content of original powerpoint slides.
João Moura Pereira de Lucas Teixeira, created first draft of pages from powerpoint slides.
Antonio Magherini, who reviewed, commented and/or modified content.
Fig. 3.18 is included on page Fourier Series but is not included under the CC BY license of this book. Original content licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 by BFG (2020) and can be found here; used here without modification.
Chapter: Time Series Analysis#
Time Series Analysis is written by Alireza Amiri-Simkooei, Christiaan Tiberius and Sandra Verhagen.
The initial framework and contents of this chapter were created by Alireza Amiri-Simkooei, which was then revised and updated by Sandra and Christian.
Special thanks goes to:
Berend Bouvy, who created a number ofinteractive figures and exercises, as well as provided critical feedback.
Serge Kaplev, who provided critical feedback and suggestions for the theoretical content.
Antonio Magherini, who created the first draft material from powerpoint slides and prepared notebooks as exercises.
The following resources are used in this chapter but are not included under the CC BY license of this book:
Fig. 4.17 is used on page Time Series Analysis (not modified) and is from IPCC (2018).
Fig. 4.19 is used on page Components of time series (not modified) and is from CSIRO (n.d.).
Chapter: Optimization#
Optimization is written by Gonçalo Homem de Almeida Correia, Maria Nogal Macho, Jie Gao and Bahman Ahmadi.
Gonçalo Homem de Almeida Correia created most of the material. Maria Nogal Macho and Bahman Ahmadi made contributions to various parts. Bahman Ahmadi developed the exercises in Python and Jupyter notebooks. Jie Gao created the genetic algorithm material.
Special thanks goes to:
Jialei Ding and Nadia Pourmohammadzia, who reviewed material and made improvements to the traffic exercise.
Tom van Woudenberg, who edited text and improved content and structure for online interactive textbook format.
João Moura Pereira de Lucas Teixeira, who created first draft of pages from powerpoint slides.
The Road Network Design Problem pages are included in this chapter but are not included under the CC BY license of this book; they are in-class exercises that will be shared by the authors of this book as part of a future publication (also under a CC BY license; citation will be provided here after publication).
Several figures are included in this chapter but are not included under the CC BY license of this book:
Fig. 5.31 is used on page Taxonomy of optimization models; the convex 3D figure is from Agrawal (2021) and the non-convex 3D figures is from Nogal and Nogal (2021). Both are included as part of the figure shown in this book modification.
Fig. 5.36 is used on page Genetic Algorithm and is from Daneshian (2025) (left) and the figure on the right is from an unknown source. Both are included as part of the figure shown in this book without modification.
Figures Fig. 5.37, Fig. 5.38, Fig. 5.39, Fig. 5.40, Fig. 5.41, Fig. 5.42, Fig. 5.43, Fig. 5.44 and Fig. 5.45 on page Genetic Algorithm are included under the CC BY license of this book, as they are from unknown sources and will be replaced.
Chapter: Introduction to Machine Learning#
Introduction to Machine Learning is written by Iuri Rocha, Anne Poot, Joep Storm and Leon Riccius.
Chapter: Extreme Value Analysis#
Extreme Value Analysis is written by Patricia Mares Nasarre.
Special thanks goes to Oswaldo Morales Napoles, Elisa Ragno and Robert Lanzafame for suggestions on the theoretical and didactic framework, as well as critical feedback and review.
External Resources#
The following chapters and pages are included directly from an external resource, are not included under the CC BY license of this book. Unless otherwise noted below, the contents have not been edited by the authors of this book.
Chapter: Risk Analysis#
Risk Analysis reuses the Chapters Risk Analysis (Jonkman and Lanzafame, 2024) and Risk Evaluation (Jonkman, 2024) and associated exercises from the book Risk and Reliability for Engineers (Lanzafame, 2024), published with a CC BY license. Files were modified to provide short introduction and explanation for readers (i.e., MUDE students).
Programming Chapters#
The chapters in the Programming part of this book are reused from two sources: Learn Programming for Engineers (Lanzafame and van Woudenberg, 2024) and Python for Engineers (Lanzafame et al., 2024). Both books are published with a CC BY license and are available online at teachbooks.io/learn-programming and teachbooks.io/learn-python.
All chapters are from Learn Programming for Engineers, except Chapters 1.6 and 1.8 (Errors and Sympy, respectively), which are from Python for Engineers. Content has been modified slightly to fit the MUDE context.
Contact#
If you have questions on the content, contact the MUDE team at MUDE-CEG@tudelft.nl. If you have technical questions regarding this book, contact the IT-coordinator of MUDE (Tom): T.R.vanWoudenberg@tudelft.nl