Aurelia Sole

Università degli Studi della Basilicata | UniBas · School of Engineering (SI-UniBas)

Urban flood risk mitigation requires fine-scale near-real-time precipitation observations that are challenging to obtain from traditional monitoring networks. Novel data and computational techniques offer a valuable potential source of information. This study explores an unprecedented, device-independent, artificial intelligence-based system for op...

Automatic building extraction from high-resolution remotely sensed data is a major area of interest for an extensive range of fields (e.g., urban planning, environmental risk management) but challenging due to urban morphology complexity. Among the different methods proposed, the approaches based on supervised machine learning (ML) achieve the best...

Near real-time rainfall monitoring at local scale is essential for urban flood risk mitigation. Previous research on precipitation visual effects supports the idea of vision-based rain sensors, but tends to be device-specific. We aimed to use different available photographing devices to develop a dense network of low-cost sensors. Using Transfer Le...

Floods are considered major natural disasters throughout Europe, furthermore climate change may increase their frequency and magnitude. The vulnerability of urban structures demonstrates the urgency of mitigation interventions to improve the risk knowledge, dissemination and communication, response capability and monitoring and warning service. For...

Large-scale flood risk assessment is essential in supporting national and global policies, emergency operations and land-use management. The present study proposes a cost-efficient method for the large-scale mapping of direct economic flood damage in data-scarce environments. The proposed framework consists of three main stages: (i) deriving a wate...

SPHERA v.9.0.0 (RSE SpA) is a FOSS CFD-SPH research code validated on the following application fields: floods with transport of solid bodies and bed-load transport; fast landslides and their interactions with water reservoirs; sediment removal from water bodies; fuel sloshing tanks; hydrodynamic lubrication for energy efficiency actions in the ind...

To simulate the dynamics of two-dimensional dam-break flow on a dry horizontal bed, we use a smoothed particle hydrodynamics model implementing two advanced boundary treatment techniques: (i) a semi-analytical approach, based on the computation of volume integrals within the truncated portions of the kernel supports at boundaries and (ii) an extens...

Participatory methods to support successful policy decisions regarding the complex and dynamic interactions of social, ecological, and physical processes involved in flooding must be simple, easy-to-use, and cost-efficient. Accordingly, a stepwise methodological framework based on causal loop diagrams (CLDs) was developed to address the challenge o...

Mapping the delineation of areas that are flooded due to water control infrastructure failure is a critical issue. Practical difficulties often present challenges to the accurate and effective analysis of dam-break hazard areas. Such studies are expensive, lengthy, and require large volumes of incoming data and refined technical skills. The creatio...

In the last decade, real-time access to data and the use of high-resolution spatial information have provided scientists and engineers with valuable information to help them understand risk. At the same time, there has been a rapid growth of novel and cutting-edge information and communication technologies for the collection, analysis and dissemina...

The considerable increase in flood damages in Europe in recent decades has shifted attention from flood protection to flood risk management. Assessments of expected damage provide critical information for flood risk management efforts. The evaluation of potential damages under different flood scenarios through quantification of their ability to pro...

KEY POINTS - In data-poor environments useful information about flood hazard exposure can be obtained using geomorphic methods. - An automated DEM-based procedure, named Geomorphic Flood Areas tool, has been implemented in the QGIS environment. - The GFA tool enables a fast and cost-effective flood mapping by performing a linear binary classific...

The GFA tool executable code and documentation can be downloaded from the QGIS plugin repository and/or the website: https://github.com/HydroLAB-UNIBAS/GFA-Geomorphic-Flood-Area.

The increasing number of floods and the severity of their consequences, which is caused by phenomena, such as climate change and uncontrolled urbanization, create a growing need to develop operational procedures and tools for accurate and timely flood mapping and management. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), with its day, night, and cloud-penetrating...

Delineation of flood hazard and flood risk areas is a critical issue, but practical difficulties regularly make complete achievement of the task a challenge. In data-scarce environments (e.g. ungauged basins, large-scale analyses), useful information about flood hazard exposure can be obtained using geomorphic methods. In order to advance this fiel...

The European ‘Floods Directive’ 2007/60/EC focuses on the development of flood risk maps and management plans on the basis of the most appropriate and advanced tools. This pushed a paradigm shift for moving to sustainable development through processes of stakeholder engagement to improve the efficiency and transparency of decision processes. In thi...

The importance of delineating flood hazard and risk areas at a global scale has been highlighted for many years. However, its complete achievement regularly encounters practical difficulties, above all the lack of data and implementation costs. In conditions of scarce data availability (e.g. ungauged basins, large-scale analyses), a fast and cost-e...

Flood damage assessments supply crucial information to support authorities, local entities, and the stakeholders involved in decision-making regarding flood risk management in their compliance with the Floods Directive (2007/60/EC). Specifically, the estimation of economic flood damage provides objective results and rational procedure in so that re...

A practical and cost-effective method is proposed to realize a fast delineation of the floodplains in the contexts where the available data are too poor to carry out hydrological/hydraulic analyses.  The linear binary classification using the recently proposed Geomorphic Flood Index (GFI) exhibited high classification accuracies and reliability in...

We developed a tool: FloodRisk, a QGIS plugin that provides the assessment of flood consequences, in terms of loss of life and direct economic damages

In the present work, the flood hazard exposure in an ungauged basin in Africa is assessed exploiting the basin morphological characteristics. Flood-prone areas are identified using linear binary classifiers based on several geomorphic descriptors extracted from digital elevation models (DEMs). The classifiers are calibrated individually and evaluat...

Large debris, including vehicles parked along floodplains, can cause severe damage and significant loss of life during urban area flash-floods. In this study, the authors validated and applied the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) model, developed in Amicarelli et al. (2015), which reproduces in 3D the dynamics of rigid bodies driven by free su...

An analysis of global statistics shows a substantial increase in flood damage over the past few decades. Moreover, it is expected that flood risk will continue to rise due to the combined effect of increasing numbers of people and economic assets in risk-prone areas and the effects of climate change. In order to mitigate the impact of natural hazar...

Landslides and debris flows can strongly interact with the river network and its mass transport processes, determining modifications of the river pattern with consequent effects on the hydrodynamic phenomena, alterations of the existing morphologies and possible interferences with anthropic works. Modifications of the cross section geometry and cha...

This study has developed a 3D Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) numerical scheme to reproduce the transport of rigid bodies in free surface flows (e.g. floods, surface waves). It is based on the Euler–Newton equations for body dynamics, implemented through the SPH formalism. This scheme has been coupled to a Weakly Compressible (WC)-SPH model f...

As evidenced by the EU Floods Directive (2007/60/EC), flood management strategies in Europe have undergone a shift in focus in recent years. The goal of flood prevention using structural measures has been replaced by an emphasis on the management of flood risks using non-structural measures. One implication of this is that public authorities alone...

The identification of flood-prone areas is a critical issue becoming everyday more pressing for our society. A preliminary delineation can be carried out by DEM-based procedures that rely on basin geomorphologic features. In the present paper, we investigated the dominant topographic controls for the flood exposure using techniques of pattern class...

The landslide phenomenon interfering with river processes is a complex topic and its interpretation through models is still being studied and tested. In this work, the authors describe the investigations carried out on a single-thread gravel-bed reach of the Noce River in Basilicata (Italy), which underwent a progressive morphodynamic change caused...

As evidenced by the EU Floods Directive (2007/60/EC), flood management strategies in Europe have undergone a shift in focus in recent years. The goal of flood prevention using structural measures has been replaced by an emphasis on the management of flood risks using non-structural measures. One implication of this is that it is no longer public au...

Efficient decision-making regarding flood risk reduction has become a priority for authorities and stakeholders in many European countries. Risk analysis methods and techniques are a useful tool for evaluating costs and benefits of possible interventions. Within this context, a methodology to estimate flood consequences was developed in this paper...

Three different geomorphic approaches to the identification of flood prone areas are investigated by means of a comparative analysis of the input parameters, the performances and the range of applicability. The selected algorithms are: the method proposed by Manfreda et al. (2011) based on a modified version of the Topographic Index (TIm); the line...

The identification of flood-prone areas is a critical issue becoming everyday more pressing for our society. A preliminary delineation can be carried out by DEM-based procedures that relay on basin geomorphologic features. In the present paper, we investigated the dominant topographic controls for the flood exposure using techniques of pattern clas...

Risk analysis has become a priority for authorities and stakeholders in many European countries, with the aim of reducing flooding risk by considering the priority and benefits of possible interventions. Within this context, a flood risk analysis model was developed in this study that is based on GIS, and integrated with a model that assesses the d...

Floods represent the most critical natural hazard for many countries and their frequency appears to be increasing in recent times. The legal constraints of public administrators and the growing interest of private companies (e.g., insurance companies) in identifying the areas exposed to the flood risk, is determining the necessity of developing new...

Currently, the urban flooding is one of the most concerning problems in hydraulic protection, both for the enormous number of people and the different elements (buildings, roads, vehicles, and so on) potentially exposed to risk, as well as the complexity of the territory at issue. At the practical level, vulnerability indicators are often predictab...

This paper represents a contribution to the study of hazard caused by the interaction between landslides and river courses. The effects of such interferences are often catastrophic and could include the formation of backwater lakes, potential dam failure, river bed dynamics and morphological alterations. These scenarios could be substantially reduc...

Abstract— A two-dimensional (2D) hydraulic model for river flood inundation prediction is presented. This model named FLORA-2D (FLOod and Roughness Analysis) solves the shallow-water equations at each node of a regular mesh covering the channel and floodplain. Its special feature is the ability to consider the flow resistance due to vegetation as a...

Abstract— A two-dimensional (2D) hydraulic model for river flood inundation prediction is presented. This model named FLORA-2D (FLOod and Roughness Analysis) solves the shallow-water equations at each node of a regular mesh covering the channel and floodplain. Its special feature is the ability to consider the flow resistance due to vegetation as a...

Fast-moving flows due to flash floods and/or dam-break events may often cause potential hazard to human beings and their proprieties in urban floodplains. Recently, flood risks related to solid bodies transport, such as vehicles, have become more and more common and, therefore, worth investigating. These hydraulic phenomena are complex events diffi...

Il ripetersi di eventi di piena catastrofici in Italia ed in Europa ha messo in evidenza la necessità inderogabile di assumere la tematica della difesa del suolo tra i criteri prioritari per la definizione di una programmazione e pianificazione coerente con le concrete possibilità di trasformazione del territorio. Come evidenziato dalla normativa i...

This paper details the technical contribution to the theme of flood risk analysis as consequence of a dam failure. According to the numerical problem proposed for the workshop, the analysis consists of the evaluation of the dam break and its consequences. The simulation includes two scenarios of dam breach: the scenario 1 that represents the case o...

This paper represents a contribution to the study of hazard caused by the interaction between landslides and river courses. The effects of such interferences are often catastrophic and could include the formation of backwater lakes, potential dam failure, river bed dynamics and morphological alterations. These scenarios could be substantially reduc...

This paper performs denudation processes and landforms characterizing the Camastra River catchment (Basilicata – South Italy), on a 1:40,000 scale map. The map, which includes gravitational processes and landforms and water erosion processes and landforms, was obtained by combining field surveys with the analysis of topographic maps and of multi- t...

Landslides are significant natural hazards in many areas of the world. Mapping the areas that are susceptible to landslides is essential for a wise territorial approach and should become a standard tool to support land-use management. A landslide susceptibility map indicates landslide-prone areas by considering the predisposing factors of slope fai...

This paper is intended to highlight the need to use data at high spatial resolution, such as those obtained through the use of Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS) techniques, to support hydraulic models for the assessment of flood hazards in urban territory. In fact, the significant structural features (houses, walls, roads, etc.) in the city are importa...

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing have become key technology tools for the collection, storage and analysis of spatially referenced data. Industries that utilise these spatial technologies include agriculture, forestry, mining, market research as well as the environmental analysis . Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is a coherent...

The remarkable number of inundations that caused, in the last decades, thousands of deaths and huge economic losses, testifies the extreme vulnerability of many Countries to the flood hazard. As a matter of fact, human activities are often developed in the floodplains, creating conditions of extremely high risk. Terrain morphology plays an importan...

This paper aims to create a model for analyzing the systemic vulnerability of a complex urban area at landslide risk. The proposed approach of vulnerability evaluation differs from traditional methods as it provides an analysis of “Systemic Vulnerability” measuring the direct and indirect consequences of a simulated event on the territorial system....

The paper deals with evaluation and mapping of landslide hazard of an area located in the Archaeological Historic and Natural Park of the Rupestrian Churches in Matera. This park and old urban area of Matera town (“Sassi di Matera”) were recognized by the UNESCO World Heritage list since 1993. The studied site, named “Balvedere Chiese Rupestri” is...

Studi sperimentali sulla propagazione e sull’erosione generati da debris flow. In questo studio sono analizzati alcuni dei 42 esperimenti svolti presso il Laboratorio di Idraulica e Ingegneria Marittima dell’Università Politecnica di Catalunya (UPC) in collaborazione con il Prof. Bateman e il Gruppo di Ricerca di Trasporto di Sedimenti (GITS). L’ob...