IT Technologies for Science Application: Using Meteorological Local Area Model to Contrast the Hydrogeological Risks

During last 20 years, Sicily has been affected by an increasing sequence of extreme weather events that have produced, besides huge damages to both environment and territory, the death of hundreds of people together with the evacuation of thousands of residents, which have permanently lost their houses. The aim of this paper is to describe the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF) and to report findings obtained, through this model, in a relevant case study. On purpose a WRF Local Area Model (LAM) has been used to re-analyze the heavy rainfall occurred during the night of October 10th, 2015 in Sicily. The re-analysis of this case study, shows how a LAM, suitably configured for the complex orography of Sicily, is able to forecast this kind of extreme weather events. This study clearly shows how forecasts obtained using this kind of model can be very useful to reduce the hydrogeological impact of extreme events on the environment and on territory.