Search results for "flood"

NOVEL APPROACHES FOR FLOOD RISK ASSESSMENT USING EXPOSURE-VULNERABILITY MATRICES

L’approccio “classico” di difesa dall’inondazione, basato sulla costruzione di opere strutturali in grado di contenere piene di tempo di ritorno sempre maggiore, è stato sostituito da un approccio gestionale del rischio da inondazione, nel quale prende piede sempre più il concetto di “convivere” con la piena accettando un certo livello di inondazione. In quest’ottica, la vulnerabilità diventa la variabile chiave nell’equazione del rischio e gli interventi non strutturali lo strumento principale per mitigarlo: nonostante si creda nella loro efficacia, i metodi per stimarla sono pochi, così come scarsi sono i dati sui loro effetti. Il 22 Novembre 20112, un evento meteorico eccezionale ha colp…

Development of an early warning system to predict sewer overflow

Flash flooding in our city is still a fairly common phenomenon.Unfortunately, the development of a flash flood forecasting system in urban areas is not a simple and unambiguous procedure.While attending the PhD course in Civil and Environmental Engineering, research activity has been given to realize an urban overflowing prediction system that was best as possible suited to the drainage network of the city of Palermo. With the support of radar data and hybrid hydraulic model for drainage network has been possible to demonstrate the effectiveness of this instrument, while the reduction of residual flood risk has been supported by modern resilience measures.

On the use of innovative post-event data for reducing uncertainty in calibrating flood propagation models

2013

Hydraulic models for flood propagation description are an essential tool in many fields and are used, for example, for flood hazard and risk assessments, evaluation of flood control measures, etc. However, the calibration of these models is still underdeveloped in contrast to other models like e.g. hydrological models essentially for lacking of specific data, because extreme flood events occur rarely and very rarely are monitored. Very often calibration data, when available, consist of water depths measure in some scattered points. For an inundation event occurred on November 2011 in Sicily, new sources of data were available due to the availability of many videos recorded by ‘common’ peopl…

Geomorphological evolution of the River Loukkos estuary around the Phoenician city of Lixus on the Atlantic Littoral of Morocco

2009

The ancient city of Lixus, today situated on a hill on the right bank of the River Loukkos, 4km from the coast, was founded on the shore of a brackish lagoon that was sheltered from Atlantic storms. This geographical context provided the city with one of the best Phoenician harbors and abundant fishing resources, and allowed access to the Gharb cattle farming resources and cereal production systems. In this study, the historical evolution of the Loukkos estuarine environment is reconstructed through geomorphological and sedimentological analyses, combined with cartographic, archaeological, and geographical data. The outcomes reveal the progressive infilling of the estuarine lagoon of Lixus …

Long-term monitoring of soil bulk density and erosion rates in two Prunus Persica (L) plantations under flood irrigation and glyphosate herbicide tre…

2021

Abstract Early season fruit production for the northern European market is highly intensive in fertilization, machinery, irrigation and the use of herbicides. Those conditions increase the soil losses and soil compaction and threaten the Sustainable Goals for Development of the United Nations by 2030. Long-term soil erosion measurements are necessary to determine the sustainability of agriculture managements. Moreover, soil erosion on flood irrigation land is a topic that request more surveys and research as rainfed sloping terrains attracted all the attention of scientists and research investment. Improved Stock Unearthing Method (ISUM) was applied to two 15 years-old herbicide treated fie…

A paradigm of extreme rainfall pluvial floods in complex urban areas: the flood event of 15 July 2020 in Palermo (Italy)

2021

Abstract. In the last few years, some regions of the Mediterranean area have witnessed a progressive increase in extreme events, such as urban and flash floods, as a response to the increasingly frequent and severe extreme rainfall events, which are often exacerbated by the ever-growing urbanization. In such a context, the urban drainage systems may not be sufficient to convey the rainwater, thus increasing the risk deriving from the occurrence of such events. This study focuses on a particularly intense urban flood that occurred in Palermo (Italy) on 15 July 2020; it represents a typical pluvial flood due to extreme rainfall on a complex urban area that many cities have experienced in rece…

Assessment of Modelling Structure and Data Availability Influence on Urban Flood Damage Modelling Uncertainty

2014

Abstract In modelling application, different model structures may be equally reliable in terms of calibration ability but they may produce different uncertainty levels; moreover, available data during model calibration may influence the uncertainty linked to the predictions of the same modelling structure. In the present paper, Bayesian model-averaging was applied to several flood damage estimation models in order to identify the best model combination for urban flooding distribution analysis in Palermo city center (Italy). During the analysis, was taken into account the effect of the available data growth on the model uncertainty with respect to the different combination of models outputs.

Infrastructure and system programming for digital ecosystems used in natural disaster management

2009

Researchers in most fields of activity must concentrate their efforts to eradicate or at least to mitigate the negative effects of “global warming”, which affect the entire planet. Within this context, we strongly believe that IT&C specialists should also approach the issue. Therefore, this paper presents the results and solutions obtained during the development of a research contract dealing on the one hand with real-time data collection and data centralization in a decision making system, and on the other with the dissemination of information among the people exposed to the effects of natural disasters such as: floods, storms, tsunamis, or other natural disasters which may destroy propert…

A practical methodology to perform global sensitivity analysis for 2D hydrodynamic computationally intensive simulations

2021

Sensitivity analysis is a commonly used technique in hydrological modeling for different purposes, including identifying the influential parameters and ranking them. This paper proposes a simplified sensitivity analysis approach by applying the Taguchi design and the ANOVA technique to 2D hydrodynamic flood simulations, which are computationally intensive. This approach offers an effective and practical way to rank the influencing parameters, quantify the contribution of each parameter to the variability of the outputs, and investigate the possible interaction between the input parameters. A number of 2D flood simulations have been carried out using the proposed combinations by Taguchi (L27…

Human settlement dynamics and alluvial dynamics of the Rhine River during the Holocene: Geoarchaeology of the site of Oedenburg (Haut-Rhin, France).

2007

The relationship between alluvial dynamics and control parameters such as climate are well known and understood at plurimillennial and pluriannual time-scales. But it is not really the case at multicentennial and multidecennal time-scales compatible with human society settlement time-scales. In a present and near future context, when human settlement may be affected by strong climatic variation, alluvial dynamics understanding is however a major centre of attention to the development of efficient models. To approach this scale-related question, a segment of the Upper Rhine River presenting both anastomosed and braided was investigated. This area also gives us the opportunity to study settle…