Stefano Annis

Flood hazard is one of the most critical natural hazards at global and national scale. According to the "Report on flood hazard conditions in Italy and associated risk indicators" (Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA), 2021), the 4.1% of the Italian population (almost 2.5 million people) live in areas with high flood probability while over 12 million of people live in areas subjected to flooding with low probability. To mitigate flood risk, structural (e.g. levees, dams) as well as non-structural (e.g. land use planning laws) measures can be performed. The evaluation of the effectiveness of structural flood mitigation is challenging due to climate change and to uncertainties in the hydrological and hydraulic models.

The research project is aimed the development of a simplified tool to evaluate the effectiveness of structural measures for mitigation of the hydraulic risk. The methodology will be tested with real case measures of the GeoSciences network and the results will be implemented within the RaStEM (Standardized Representation of Mitigation Effects) web application, developed by ISPRA. In parallel, advanced numerical models will be employed to perform an extensive evaluation of the effectiveness of structural measures for flood risk mitigation, supported by satellite data of real flood events. The utilization of state-of-the-art hydraulic numerical models will also allow for the study of events in urban areas, both for river and pluvial floods.

For the research project the evaluation will be performed at first with simplified hydrogeomorphic methods. Subsequently, we will employ 1D-2D and 3D hydraulic modelling and the results will be integrated with satellite data for real case flood events (e.g. using NDWI index). For events in urban areas, the Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI), if available, will be possibly utilized for further comparison and validation of the numerical results. All the analysis will be performed with the use of open-source models and data.

The objective of the present research project is twofold. First, the development of a tool for the ante- and post-operam simplified evaluation of the structural measures of flood risk mitigation, that will be integrated in the RaStEM web application. Second the development of a methodology which integrates advanced hydraulic numerical models with satellite data to improve and validate the results of the developed simplified tools.