In the recent past throughout the Mediterranean area, many extreme events such as floods, debris flows and landslides occurred. The use of a reliable flood forecasting model can play an important role in managing land and water resources. The purpose of this work is the development of a Decision Support System (DSS) for flash flood forecasting. A system of alerts, based on the use of rainfall thresholds and structured in three phases, has been implemented in order to achieve an integrated system of support for the prediction of hydraulic and hydro-geological instability. Starting from precipitation and temperature air data, the first phase of the DSS deal with the implementation of a procedure to model the soil moisture conditions (saturation degree) using API index in order to generate a first warning based on the antecedent moisture condition of the soil. In the second phase the comparison between rainfall events and rainfall thresholds calculated for a given river section of the catchment are displayed. Finally, the third phase concerns the imminence of a possible hydrogeological risk by comparing the time when cumulative rainfall and rainfall thresholds meet to each other. The output of the first phase gives the probability of producing a flood event if the catchment has a certain degree of saturation. To activate the other two alarm phases it is necessary to derive, for a given river section where the critical discharge has been fixed, rainfall thresholds as a function of the antecedent soil moisture conditions and the temporal evolution of the rain storm. The implementation of the DSS allows to build a user interface for the operator of the flood risk easy to understand. The system has been successfully applied to the Giampilieri catchment, located in the north-eastern of Sicily. Actually, the system could help to program a precise system of civil protection in order to put in place all necessary emergency actions to reducing the loss of lives and damage to property.
Development od Decision Support System for flash flood forecasting in small catchments
BRIGANDI', GIUSEPPINA;ARONICA, Giuseppe Tito;
2011-01-01
Abstract
In the recent past throughout the Mediterranean area, many extreme events such as floods, debris flows and landslides occurred. The use of a reliable flood forecasting model can play an important role in managing land and water resources. The purpose of this work is the development of a Decision Support System (DSS) for flash flood forecasting. A system of alerts, based on the use of rainfall thresholds and structured in three phases, has been implemented in order to achieve an integrated system of support for the prediction of hydraulic and hydro-geological instability. Starting from precipitation and temperature air data, the first phase of the DSS deal with the implementation of a procedure to model the soil moisture conditions (saturation degree) using API index in order to generate a first warning based on the antecedent moisture condition of the soil. In the second phase the comparison between rainfall events and rainfall thresholds calculated for a given river section of the catchment are displayed. Finally, the third phase concerns the imminence of a possible hydrogeological risk by comparing the time when cumulative rainfall and rainfall thresholds meet to each other. The output of the first phase gives the probability of producing a flood event if the catchment has a certain degree of saturation. To activate the other two alarm phases it is necessary to derive, for a given river section where the critical discharge has been fixed, rainfall thresholds as a function of the antecedent soil moisture conditions and the temporal evolution of the rain storm. The implementation of the DSS allows to build a user interface for the operator of the flood risk easy to understand. The system has been successfully applied to the Giampilieri catchment, located in the north-eastern of Sicily. Actually, the system could help to program a precise system of civil protection in order to put in place all necessary emergency actions to reducing the loss of lives and damage to property.Pubblicazioni consigliate
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