Daniela Molinari

• PhD
• PostDoc Position at Politecnico di Milano

This paper introduces INSYDE-content, a novel, probabilistic multi-variable synthetic flood damage model designed to analyze physical damage to household contents on a component-by-component basis. The model addresses a critical gap in current modeling tools, which often overlook the significance of household contents in overall damage assessments....

This study proposes a novel approach to improve the classification of severe building losses caused by river floods (i.e., identification of buildings with high flood damages). In addition to traditional variables reflecting flood hazard and building vulnerability, we investigate the impact of coping capacity variables (i.e., variables accounting f...

Managing flood risk is crucial for achieving global sustainability. Particularly, flood damage to firms' assets imposes significant financial stress, necessitating efforts to minimize future consequences. However, current tools and knowledge for estimating flood damage to firms are inadequate, primarily due to a lack of high-quality damage data and...

Accurate flood damage modelling is essential to estimate the potential impact of floods and to develop effective mitigation strategies. However, flood damage models rely on diverse sources of hazard, exposure and vulnerability data, which are often incomplete, inconsistent or totally missing. These issues with data quality or availability introduce...

Accurate flood damage modelling is essential to estimate the potential impact of floods and to develop effective mitigation strategies. However, flood damage models rely on diverse sources of hazard, exposure and vulnerability data, which are often incomplete, inconsistent, or totally missing. These issues with data quality or availability introduc...

Flood damage assessment is a critical aspect in any decision-making process on flood risk management. For this reason, reliable tools for flood damage estimation are required for all the categories of exposed elements. Despite infrastructures can suffer high economic losses in case of flood, compared to other exposed sectors, their flood damage mod...

Commonly adopted procedures for flood damage assessment are based on functions of the hazard that depend on the item under investigation (e.g., an area, a building), and on the vulnerability of exposed items. Available flood damage models make use of summary indicators, usually correspondent to the worst conditions expected during the flood event (...

The spatial transfer of flood damage models among regions and countries is a challenging but unavoidable approach for performing flood risk assessments in data- and model-scarce regions. In these cases, similarities and differences between the contexts of application should be considered to obtain reliable damage estimations, and, in some cases, th...

To mark the 20th anniversary of Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences (NHESS), an interdisciplinary and international journal dedicated to the public discussion and open-access publication of high-quality studies and original research on natural hazards and their consequences, we highlight 11 key publications covering major subject areas of NHE...

Flood damage assessment is an essential asset in flood risk management, and the literature brings several models, most based on damage curves. This kind of approach is essential and well established but not suitable for being applied in the immediate aftermaths of a flood. Herein, a new application of a zero-order model for the Po-Venetian plain ar...

Direct flood damage is commonly assessed using damage models (i.e. vulnerability functions and fragility curves), which describe the relationship between hazard, vulnerability, and the (probability of) damage for items exposed to floods. In this paper, we introduce a non-dimensional impact parameter that, according to the physics of damage mechanis...

The evaluation of flood impacts to economic activities is characterized by obstacles like the paucity of available data to characterise the enterprises, the lack of high-quality data to derive new models or validate existing ones, and the high variability of activity types which hampers generalisation. This study contributes at improving knowledge...

The spatial transfer of flood damage models among regions and countries is a challenging but unavoidable approach, for performing flood risk assessments in data and model scarce regions. In these cases, similarities and differences between the contexts of application should be considered to obtain reliable damage estimations and, in some cases, the...

To mark the twentieth anniversary of Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences (NHESS), an interdisciplinary and international journal dedicated to the public discussion and open-access publication of high-quality studies and original research on natural hazards and their consequences, we highlight eleven key publications covering major subject are...

This paper shows a detailed, advanced procedure to implement cost–benefit analyses (CBAs) in order to assess the effectiveness of flood mitigation measures. The town of Lodi (North of Italy) has been selected as a case study for the research work, as it was hit by a large flood in 2002 for which several data are available. In order to compute the b...

Quantitative data on observed flood ground effects are precious information to assess current risk levels and to improve our capability to forecast future flood damage, with the final aim of defining effective prevention policies and checking their success. This paper presents the first collection and analysis of flood damage claims produced in Ita...

Flood damage assessment is crucial to address the challenges of climate and socioeconomic changes. Researchers and practitioners have developed several damage models to tackle local and regional situations. Particularly for direct damages to the residential sector, these models rely on numerous hypothesis (e.g. zero damage threshold) and parameters...

Effective flood risk management requires a realistic estimation of flood losses. However, available flood damage estimates are still characterized by significant levels of uncertainty, questioning the capacity of flood damage models to depict real damages. With a joint effort of eight international research groups, the objective of this study was t...

INSYDE is a multivariable, synthetic model for flood damage assessment to dwellings. The analysis and use of this model highlighted some weaknesses, linked to its complexity, that can undermine its usability and correct implementation. This study proposes a simplified version of INSYDE which maintains its multivariable and synthetic nature but has...

The European Floods Directive (2007/60/EC) requires Member States to make flood hazard and risk maps available to the public. Yet, making flood risk maps available is not enough to inform the public about risk, they need to be understood correctly. Which are the elements that make risk maps suitable and clear for non-expert citizens? Which is the i...

Flood loss estimation models are developed using synthetic or empirical approaches. The synthetic approach consists of what-if scenarios developed by experts. The empirical models are based on statistical analysis of empirical loss data. In this study, we propose a novel Bayesian Data-Driven approach to enhance established synthetic models using av...

Abstract. INSYDE is a multi-variable, synthetic model for flood damage assessment to dwellings. The analysis and use of this model highlighted some weaknesses, linked to its complexity, that can undermine its usability and correct implementation. This study proposes a simplified version of INSYDE which maintains its multi-variable and synthetic nat...

Abstract. Effective flood risk management requires a realistic estimation of flood losses. However, available flood damage estimates are still characterised by significant levels of uncertainty, questioning the capacity of flood damage models to depict real damages. With a joint effort of eight international research groups, the objective of this s...

This paper presents AGRIDE-c, a conceptual model for the assessment of flood damage to crops, in favour of more comprehensive flood damage assessments. Available knowledge on damage mechanisms triggered by inundation phenomena is systematised in a usable and consistent tool, with the main strength represented by the integration of physical damage a...

This paper presents AGRIDE-c, a conceptual model for the assessment of flood damage to crops. All available knowledge on damage mechanisms triggered by inundation phenomena is systematised in a usable and consistent tool, with the main strength represented by the integration of physical damage assessment with the evaluation of its economic conseque...

Rapid tools for the prediction of the spatial distribution of flood depths within inundated areas are necessary when the implementation of complex hydrodynamic models is not possible due to time constraints or lack of data. For example, similar tools may be extremely useful to obtain first estimates of flood losses in the aftermath of an event, or...

Although often neglected, model validation is a key topic in flood risk analysis, as flood risk estimates are used to underpin large investments and important decisions. In this paper, we discuss the state of the art of flood risk model validation, using as input the discussion among more than 50 experts at two scientific workshop events. The event...

One common approach to cope with floods is the implementation of structural flood protection measures, such as levees or flood-control reservoirs, which substantially reduce the probability of flooding at the time of implementation. Numerous scholars have problematized this approach. They have shown that increasing the levels of flood protection ca...

One common approach to cope with floods is the implementation of structural flood protection measures, such as levees or flood-control reservoirs, which substantially reduce the probability of flooding at the time of implementation. Numerous scholars have problematized this approach. They have shown that increasing the levels of flood protection ca...

One common approach to cope with floods is the implementation of structural flood protection measures, such as levees or flood-control reservoirs, which substantially reduce the probability of flooding at the time of implementation. Numerous scholars have problematized this approach. They have shown that increasing the levels of flood protection ca...

IN-depth SYnthetic Model for Flood Damage Estimation (INSYDE) is a model for the estimation of flood damage to residential buildings at the micro-scale. This study investigates the sensitivity of INSYDE to the accuracy of input data. Starting from the knowledge of input parameters at the scale of individual buildings for a case study, the level of...

Although often neglected, model validation is a key topic in flood risk analysis, as flood risk estimates are characterised by significant levels of uncertainty. In this paper, we discuss the state of art of flood risk models validation, as concluded from the discussion among more than 50 experts at two main scientific events. The events aimed at i...

As flood impacts are increasing in large parts of the world, understanding the primary drivers of changes in risk is essential for effective adaptation. To gain more knowledge on the basis of empirical case studies, we analyze eight paired floods, i.e. consecutive flood events that occurred in the same region, with the second flood causing signific...

The editors of a new book describe the benefits of systematic collection, storage, analysis, and sharing of damage data after flood events.

This chapter illustrates the concept and the methodology to develop what we call a “complete event scenario” of past events to provide a descriptive and interpretative framework of the different types of damage and losses that have actually occurred. In the second section, the concept of complete post event scenario will be described. In this case,...

This chapter describes the experience gained in the Umbria region (Central Italy) in developing RISPOSTA (Reliable InStruments for POST event damage Assessment), a new procedure for the collection of damage data at the local scale, after flood events. First, the objectives of the procedure are discussed as well as when and where the procedure can b...

Effective flood risk mitigation requires the impacts of flood events to be much better and more reliably known than is currently the case. Available post-flood damage assessments usually supply only a partial vision of the consequences of the floods as they typically respond to the specific needs of a particular stakeholder. Consequently, they gene...

Methodologies to estimate economic flood damages are increasingly important for flood risk assessment and management. In this work, we present a new synthetic flood damage model based on a component-by-component analysis of physical damage to buildings. The damage functions are designed using an expert-based approach with the support of existing sc...

The European project IDEA (Improving Damage assessments to Enhance cost-benefit Analyses) is a response to the limited reliability of data currently used to support cost-benefit analyses for natural hazards mitigation; in particular, an improvement of both damage data quality and procedures to collect and manage them is pursued by the project. A co...

This study was carried out as a part of the IDEA project which is a response to the very limited reliability of data currently used to support cost benefit analysis in the field of natural hazards mitigation. This particular case study focuses on the Gloucestershire area of the U.K. which has experienced severe flooding in recent years, most notabl...

The European “Floods Directive” 2007/60/EC (FD) asks Member States to develop flood risk maps on the bases of most appropriate and advanced tools, with particular attention on limiting required economic efforts. The question arises on how these tools should be selected so as to supply all the knowledge that is required to develop Flood Risk Managem...

Effective flood risk mitigation requires that the impacts of flood events would be much better and more reliably known than is currently the case. Available post flood damage assessments usually supply only a partial vision of the consequences of the floods as they typically respond to the specific needs of a particular stakeholder. Coherently, the...

Post event damage and needs assessment can supply fundamental information to feed risk models, i.e. data to define, calibrate and validate risk models. The lack or low quality of information regarding damage and losses collected in the aftermath of events conditions the quality of pre-event scenarios, thus affecting also the significance and the re...

Disaster forensic investigation analyses the unfolding of a disaster and attempts to identify its multiple causes of damage which can lead to (i) improved disaster prevention and management from lessons learnt, and (ii) more effective mitigation measures in the aftermath of a disaster. The way in which damage data are collected after a flood event...

Master of Science Thesis, Politecnico di Milano University

Despite the perceived abundance of information collected after a disaster, available data furnish a narrow picture of flood impacts, or they are difficult to compare so as to produce an integrated interpretation of flood events. This is due to the diversity of the purposes for which data are collected and the variety of stakeholders involved in dat...

Despite decades of research, flood loss estimation is still a challenging task. Drawing on recent research, a number of major problems can be identified among them the question of what specific damages under what circumstances are seen as significant? It is sensible that people would choose risk management strategies according to their capacity to...

The aim of this paper is to present a \“procedure” to collect and store damage data in the aftermath of flood events. The activity is performed within the Poli_RISPOSTA project (stRumentI per la protezione civile a Supporto delle POpolazioni nel poST Alluvione), an internal project of Politecnico di Milano whose aim is to supply tools supporting Ci...

In recent years, awareness of a need for more effective disaster data collection, storage, and sharing of analyses has developed in many parts of the world. In line with this advance, Italian local authorities have expressed the need for enhanced methods and procedures for post-event damage assessment in order to obtain data that can serve numerous...

In recent years, awareness of a need for more effective disaster data collection, storage, and sharing of analyses has developed in many parts of the world. In line with this advance, Italian local authorities have expressed the need for enhanced methods and procedures for post-event damage assessment in order to obtain data that can serve numerous...

The European "Floods Directive" 2007/60/EU has produced an important shift from a traditional approach to flood risk management centred only on hazard analysis and forecast to a newer one which encompasses other aspects relevant to decision-making and which reflect recent research advances in both hydraulic engineering and social studies on disaste...

Vulnerability studies have evolved significantly in recent decades. Although not overly theoretical compared with some other fields of science, some important conceptual progress has been made. At the practical level, vulnerability indicators have been used either at a generic level or for particular hazard contexts. However, these indicators are o...

SOMMARIO La " Direttiva Alluvioni " (Direttiva 2007/60/CE) richiede agli Stati Membri di predisporre mappe della pericolosità e mappe del rischio derivante da alluvioni entro il 2013. Le mappe del rischio, in particolare, devono indicare le potenziali conseguenze negative derivanti dalle alluvioni sulla salute umana, l'ambiente, il patrimonio cultu...

Emergency management (intended here from emergency planning to reaction) is a crucial aspect of risk management, allowing us to handle residual risk. Therefore, its economic convenience is an important piece of information in designing flood risk management strategies. This paper seeks to answer the following questions: How expected damage reductio...

Damage data represents the basis on which flood risk models, re-founding schemes and mitigation activities are grounded on. Nevertheless damage data have been collected so far mainly at the national-regional scale; few databases exist at the local scale and, even if present, no standard exist for their development. On the contrary, risk analyses an...

The extent of losses avoided as a result of a warning is a key measure of warning system effectiveness. Tools to estimate the impact of warnings on losses are limited to postflood analysis or estimates of potential rather than actual damages. This paper illustrates a method for the appraisal of actual damages when a flood warning is issued. The app...

This chapter regarding present risk conditions, has been structured using significant “images” of Europe, addressing the hazard, exposure and vulnerability factors recognised as crucial components of any risk assessment. To draw such a picture, results of past research at the European level were extensively searched, showing achievements and gaps i...

Mitigation measures are those aimed at reducing the potential harm to people and damage to the built and natural environments resulting from natural extremes. Various actions, ranging from hazard mapping to structural and non-structural measures, to insurance and legislation have been proposed as components of risk mitigation.

Flood forecast verification is crucial to assess Flood Warning System performance. However, how forecasts should be verified is still an open question. This paper is grounded on the idea that flood forecast verification should not be seen as a universal process, instead it should be tailored to the particular context in which forecasts are implemen...

The presentation is focused on a simple and crucial question for warning systems: are flood and hydrological modelling and forecasting helpful to manage flood events? Indeed, it is well known that a warning process can be invalidated by inadequate forecasts so that the accuracy and robustness of the previsional model is a key issue for any flood wa...