Elena Toth

Elena Toth
University of Bologna | UNIBO · Department of Civil, Chemical, Environmental and Materials Engineering DICAM

PhD

About

75
Publications
42,617
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4,639
Citations
Additional affiliations
September 2014 - present
University of Bologna
Position
  • Professor (Associate)

Publications

Publications (75)
Article
Full-text available
Study region: Northern Italy. Study focus: Gridded meteorological products provide spatially-distributed meteorological forcings, facilitating hydrological modeling in large-scale experiments. However, their accuracy, in particular as far as precipitation is concerned, varies considerably in space and time, and rigorous validation of these product...
Article
Full-text available
Large-sample datasets containing hydrometeorological time series and catchment attributes for hundreds of catchments in a country, many of them known as “CAMELS” (Catchment Attributes and MEteorology for Large-sample Studies), have revolutionized hydrological modelling and have enabled comparative analyses. The Caravan dataset is a compilation of s...
Preprint
Full-text available
Large-sample datasets containing hydrometeorological time series and catchment attributes for hundreds of catchments in a country, many of them known as “Camels” (catchment attributes and meteorology for large-sample studies), have revolutionized hydrological modelling and enabled comparative analyses. The Caravan dataset is a compilation of severa...
Article
Full-text available
The water-tourism nexus requires better knowledge, management and governance to address environmental and societal challenges. This review takes stock of the approaches used to address this nexus in the Mediterranean from 2000 to 2020. Bibliometric and exploratory content analysis targeted tourism impacts on water supply, determinants of water cons...
Book
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This volume collects the abstracts accepted for presentation at the Hydrology Days 2023, entitled "Complexity of Hydrological Phenomena in the natural and anthropized environment". The Hydrology Days 2023 of the Italian Hydrological Society were held in Matera (Italy), in September 13th-15th 2023.
Article
Nature-based solutions (NbS) can be beneficial to help human communities build resilience to climate change by managing and mitigating related hydro-meteorological hazards (HMHs). Substantial research has been carried out in the past on the detection and assessment of HMHs and their derived risks. Yet, knowledge on the performance and functioning o...
Article
The transfer of the hydrological information between catchments is founded on the definition of hydrological similarity, which is in turn strictly connected to the features to be regionalised. In order to characterise the catchment behaviour in the streamflow generation processes, the similarity should reflect also the interaction between meteorolo...
Article
Full-text available
Drought events and their impacts vary spatially and temporally due to diverse pedo-climatic and hydrologic conditions, as well as variations in exposure and vulnerability, such as demographics and response actions. While hazard severity and frequency of past drought events have been studied in detail, little is known about the effect of drought man...
Article
Full-text available
Human activities both aggravate and alleviate streamflow drought. Here we show that aggravation is dominant in contrasting cases around the world analysed with a consistent methodology. Our 28 cases included different combinations of human-water interactions. We found that water abstraction aggravated all drought characteristics, with increases of...
Preprint
Full-text available
Drought events and their impacts vary spatially and temporally due to diverse pedo-climatic and hydrologic conditions, as well as variations in exposure and vulnerability, such as demographics and response actions. While hazardous severity and frequency of past drought events have been studied in detail, little is known about the effect of drought...
Article
Full-text available
As reported in the recent image velocimetry literature, tracking the motion of sparse feature points floating on the river surface as done by the Optical Tracking Velocimetry (OTV) algorithm is a promising strategy to address surface flow monitoring. Moreover, the lightweight nature of OTV coupled with computational optimizations makes it suited ev...
Article
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The adoption of Nature-Based Solutions (NBSs) represents a novel means to mitigate natural hazards. In the framework of the OPERANDUM project, this study introduces a methodology to assess the efficiency of the NBSs and a series of Open-Air Laboratories (OALs) regarded as a proof-of-concept for the wider uptake of NBSs. The OALs are located in Finl...
Technical Report
Full-text available
This document reports information needed for the set-up of Nature Based Solutions (NBS) at Open Air Laboratories (OALs). It includes the description of the current hydro-meteorological and socio-economic status and identification of climatic and socio-economic drivers for future hazards. Land use scenarios, built on the identified drivers are descr...
Article
Full-text available
The setup of a rainfall-runoff model in a river section where no streamflow measurements are available for its calibration is one of the key research activities for the Prediction in Ungauged Basins (PUB): in order to do so it is possible to estimate the model parameters based on the hydrometric information available in the region. The informative...
Technical Report
Full-text available
Deliverable D6.2 presents the output of Task 6.2. This report illustrates the conceptual framework for vulnerability and risk assessment for Open Air Laboratories (OALs) developed based on review of existing frameworks and the impact chains for OALs and stakeholders’ suggestions provided through Focus Group Discussion (FGD) and questionnaire survey...
Technical Report
Full-text available
The purpose of this document is twofold. First, it presents the characterisation of extreme events occurred in the last 30 years (1989-2018) in the OPERANDUM OALs (in Europe and abroad): after a selection of cases, with criteria established according to hazard and site, the analysis is carried on by looking at their meteorological settings, availab...
Article
Full-text available
Nature-based solutions (NBS) are increasingly being implemented as suitable approaches for reducing vulnerability and risk of social-ecological systems (SES) to hydro-meteorological hazards. Understanding vulnerability and risk of SES is crucial in order to design and implement NBS projects appropriately. A systematic literature review was carried...
Article
Full-text available
Monitoring streamflow velocity is of paramount importance for water resources management and in engineering practice. To this aim, image-based approaches have proved to be reliable systems to non-intrusively monitor water bodies in remote places at variable flow regimes. Nonetheless, to tackle their computational and energy requirements, offload pr...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Various frameworks for vulnerability and risk assessment of social-ecological systems (SES) to natural hazards have been developed addressing different contexts. However, none were specifically developed in the context of implementing nature-based solutions (NBS) to hydro-meteorological risks. Since the basic concepts and principles of NBS are main...
Article
Full-text available
Nature-based solutions (NBS) are being promoted as adaptive measures against predicted increasing hydrometeorological hazards (HMHs), such as heatwaves and floods which have already caused significant loss of life and economic damage across the globe. However, the underpinning factors such as policy framework, end-users’ interests and participation...
Preprint
Full-text available
Abstract. The set up of a rainfall-runoff model in a river section where no streamflow measurements are available for its calibration is one of the key research activity for the Prediction in Ungauged Basins (PUB): in order to do so it is possible to regionalise the model parameters based on the information available in gauged sections in the study...
Technical Report
Full-text available
The purpose of this document is twofold. First, it presents the characterisation of extreme events occurred in the last 30 years (1989-2018) in the OPERANDUM OALs (in Europe and abroad): after a selection of cases, with criteria established according to hazard and site, the analysis is carried on by looking at their meteorological settings, availab...
Article
Full-text available
This paper is the outcome of a community initiative to identify major unsolved scientific problems in hydrology motivated by a need for stronger harmonisation of research efforts. The procedure involved a public consultation through on-line media, followed by two workshops through which a large number of potential science questions were collated, p...
Article
Full-text available
Nonintrusive image-based methods have the potential to advance hydrological streamflow observations by providing spatially distributed data at high temporal resolution. Due to their simplicity, correlation-based approaches have until recent been preferred to alternative image-based approaches, such as optical flow, for camera-based surface flow vel...
Article
The availability of smart metered high-resolution water consumption data introduces, through the synchronous readings of the smart meters, new perspectives in the proactive approach to the monitoring of water losses. Measuring or transmission systems problems are unavoidable in real-world networks and, if not appropriately addressed, may compromise...
Article
The concentration in time and space of tourists and of specific water-demanding touristic activities can add considerable pressure on available water supplies in coastal regions. The impact of tourism has not been adequately addressed in the water demand literature, especially at sub-annual scale: the present study includes the role of tourism on t...
Article
Full-text available
We explore how to address the challenges of adaptation of water resources systems under changing conditions by supporting flexible, resilient and low-regret solutions, coupled with on-going monitoring and evaluation. This will require improved understanding of the linkages between biophysical and social aspects in order to better anticipate the pos...
Article
Full-text available
In many real-world flood forecasting systems, the runoff thresholds for activating warnings or mitigation measures correspond to the flow peaks with a given return period (often 2 years, which may be associated with the bankfull discharge). At locations where the historical streamflow records are absent or very limited, the threshold can be estimat...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
This paper concerns the analysis of the snow accumulation and melt model applied by ARPAE-SIMC (Regional Environmental Protection Agency – Hydro-Meteo-Climate Service) to monitor snow cover and Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) in the Emilia-Romagna region. Snow measurements acquired by the Meteomont Service for the avalanche risk assessment may represen...
Article
Full-text available
“Panta Rhei – Everything Flows” is the science plan for the International Association of Hydrological Sciences scientific decade 2013–2023. It is founded on the need for improved understanding of the mutual, two-way interactions occurring at the interface of hydrology and society, and their role in influencing future hydrologic system change. It ca...
Article
Full-text available
In 2013, the International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS) launched the hydrological decade 2013–2022 with the theme “Panta Rhei: Change in Hydrology and Society”. The decade recognizes the urgency of hydrological research to understand and predict the interactions of society and water, to support sustainable water resource use under ch...
Article
Full-text available
In many real-world flood forecasting systems, the runoff thresholds for activating warnings or mitigation measures correspond to the flow peaks with a given return period (often the 2-year one, that may be associated with the bankfull discharge). At locations where the historical streamflow records are absent or very limited, the threshold can be e...
Article
Full-text available
Reproducibility and repeatability of experiments are the fundamental prerequisites that allow researchers to validate results and share hydrological knowledge, experience and expertise in the light of global water management problems. Virtual laboratories offer new opportunities to enable these prerequisites since they allow experimenters to share...
Article
Many of the empirical formulae used for the prediction of the expected scour depth at piers are excessively conservative, providing substantial overestimations. On the other hand, the recently proposed neural networks methods generally issue accurate predictions but also high percentages of underpredictions, due to the use of a symmetric error func...
Article
Full-text available
Reproducibility and repeatability of experiments are the fundamental prerequisites that allow researchers to validate results and share hydrological knowledge, experience and expertise in the light of global water management problems. Virtual laboratories offer new opportunities to enable these prerequisites since they allow experimenters 5 to shar...
Article
Full-text available
The new Scientific Decade 2013–2022 of IAHS, entitled “Panta Rhei—Everything Flows”, is dedicated to research activities on change in hydrology and society. The purpose of Panta Rhei is to reach an improved interpretation of the processes governing the water cycle by focusing on their changing dynamics in connection with rapidly changing human syst...
Chapter
Predicting water runoff in ungauged water catchment areas is vital to practical applications such as the design of drainage infrastructure and flooding defences, runoff forecasting, and for catchment management tasks such as water allocation and climate impact analysis. This full colour book offers an impressive synthesis of decades of internationa...
Article
Full-text available
The formulation of objective procedures for the delineation of homogeneous groups of catchments is a fundamental issue in both operational and research hydrology. For assessing catchment similarity, a variety of hydrological information may be considered; in this paper, gauged sites are characterised by a set of streamflow signatures that include a...
Article
Full-text available
The formulation of objective procedures for the delineation of homogeneous groups of catchments is a fundamental issue in both operational and research hydrology. For assessing catchment similarity, a variety of hydrological information may be considered; in this paper, gauged sites are characterised by a set of streamflow signatures that include a...
Article
Full-text available
This paper traces two decades of neural network rainfall-runoff and streamflow modelling, collectively termed 'river forecasting'. The field is now firmly established and the research community involved has much to offer hydrological science. First, however, it will be necessary to converge on more objective and consistent protocols for: selecting...
Article
The objective of this study is to explore one possible solution to optimise the parameters of rainfall-runoff models in ungauged catchments. We propose a cross-calibration procedure based on the adoption, for selected pairs of catchments, of a unique, space- invariant parameter set, which can be identified by using information that refers to gauged...
Article
Full-text available
A promising approach to catchment classification makes use of unsupervised neural networks (Self Organising Maps, SOM's), which organise input data through non-linear techniques depending on the intrinsic similarity of the data themselves. Our study considers ~300 Italian catchments scattered nationwide, for which several descriptors of the streamf...
Article
Full-text available
The scouring effect of the flowing water around bridge piers may undermine the stability of the structure, leading to extremely high direct and indirect costs and, in extreme cases, the loss of human lives. The use of Artificial Neural Network (ANN) models has been recently proposed in the literature for estimating the maximum scour depth around br...
Article
An interesting case study for the implementation of the model was identified by the DISTART research group in the Northern Apennine Mountains, as requested by the LAMPIT research group. The identified watershed is the most upstream part of Reno river basin, at the closure section of Pracchia, located in the Tuscan part of the Reno watershed, close...
Article
Full-text available
A promising approach to catchment classification makes use of unsupervised neural networks (Self Organising Maps, SOM’s), which organise input data through non-linear techniques depending on the intrinsic similarity of the data themselves. Our study considers _300 Italian catchments scattered nationwide, for which several descriptors of the streamf...
Article
Full-text available
Objective criteria for catchment classification are identified by the scientific community among the key research topics for improving the interpretation and representation of the spatiotemporal variability of streamflow. A promising approach to catchment classification makes use of unsupervised neural networks (Self Organising Maps, SOM's), which...
Article
The study focuses on regional calibration for a generic rainfall-runoff model. The maximum likelihood function in the spectral domain proposed by Whittle is approximated in the time domain by maximising the simultaneous fit (through a multiobjective optimisation) of selected statistics of streamflow values, with the aim to propose a calibration pro...
Article
The study presents, in two companion papers, an approach for regional calibration of a rainfall-runoff model that may be applied also to ungauged or scarcely gauged catchments, since it is based on the knowledge of characteristics of the catchment and of its climate other than hydrometric measurements. In the companion presentation, we describe the...
Article
In several European countries, the emerging need for efficient water resources assessment is making the real world application of rainfall-runoff models a key instrument for simulating catchment streamflows and in particular the behaviour of low flows, that may lead to water scarcity conditions. One of the main obstacles to such applications is the...
Article
The scientific community indicates that the formulation of objective criteria for catchment classification is one of the main objectives for obtaining a better interpretation and representation of the spatiotemporal variability of streamflows. A promising approach to catchment classification, and in general to pattern recognition, makes use of unsu...
Article
Parameter estimation for rainfall-runoff models in ungauged basins is a challenging task that is receiving significant attention by the scientific community. In fact, many practical applications suffer from problems induced by data scarcity, given that hydrological observations are often sparse or unavailable. This study focuses on regional calibra...
Article
Full-text available
The contribution presents the results of a modular approach for real-time streamflow forecasting, that applies different rainfall-runoff models, on the basis of the hydro-meteorological situation characterising each forecast instant. Modular neural networks or multi-network modelling for streamflow forecasting have been successfully applied in the...
Article
In the calibration procedure of continuously-simulating models, the hydrologist has to choose which part of the observed hydrograph is most important to fit, either implicitly, through the visual agreement in manual calibration, or explicitly, through the choice of the objective function(s). Changing the objective functions it is in fact possible t...
Article
The parameterisation (or calibration) procedure is crucial in any kind of rainfall-runoff transformation model, independent of the degree of conceptualisation, but it is particularly important for system-theoretic models, like Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), due to their data-driven nature. The reliability of the parameterisation, and therefore...
Article
Full-text available
This paper presents the application of a modular approach for real-time streamflow forecasting, that uses different system-theoretic rainfall-runoff models according to the situation characterising the forecast instant. For each forecast instant, a specific model is applied, parameterised on the basis of the data of the similar hydrological and met...
Chapter
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Data-driven modelling approaches, like artificial neural networks, are particularly sensitive to the choice of input and output variables. This study focuses on the size of the temporal observation interval of input and output data in a river flow prediction application, analysing the simulation performances when considering increasing time aggrega...
Article
Full-text available
When choosing the rainfall-runoff modeling approach to be integrated in a river flow forecasting system, two crucial issues are the minimum data requirement for calibration purposes and the reliability of the predictions over different time horizons (lead-times). The paper presents an investigation of the real-time forecasting ability of a conceptu...
Article
Full-text available
1] This study considers the use of the maximum likelihood estimator proposed by Whittle for calibrating the parameters of hydrological models. Whittle's likelihood provides asymptotically consistent estimates for Gaussian and non-Gaussian data, even in the presence of long-range dependence. This method may represent a valuable opportunity in the co...
Article
Full-text available
An evaluation of system analysis techniques for obtaining short-term quantitative precipitation forecasting, based on radar images, is presented. The analysis considers eight rainfall events monitored through radar scans collected at San Pietro Capofiume (northern Italy). These images have temporal and spatial resolutions equal to 15 min and 1 × 1...
Article
In the last decade the increasing accessibility of computing means has made the application of spatially-distributed hydrological model an attractive perspective for both researchers and practitioner hydrologists. The availability of physically-based approaches does not generally overcome the need to calibrate at least a part of the model parameter...
Article
Full-text available
An extensive evaluation of system analysis techniques for obtaining short-term quantitative precipitation nowcasting based on radar maps is presented. The analysis considers four rainfall events monitored through radar scans collected at San Pietro Capofiume (northern Italy). These maps have temporal and spatial resolutions equal to 15 minutes and...
Article
In recent years, there has been a revival of black-box modelling for river flow forecasting due to the widespread use of Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). ANN are highly flexible and robust tools for modelling many hydro-meteorological variables, but because of their inability to extrapolate beyond the range of the data used for in the training (th...
Article
Full-text available
Time-series analysis techniques for improving the real-time flood forecasts issued by a deterministic lumped rainfall-runoff model are presented. Such techniques are applied for forecasting the short-term future rainfall to be used as real-time input in a rainfall-runoff model and for updating the discharge predictions provided by the model. Along...
Article
The increasing availability of extended information on the study watersheds does not generally overcome the need for the determination through calibration of at least a part of the parameters of distributed hydrologic models. The complexity of such models, making the computations highly intensive, has often prevented an extensive analysis of calibr...
Article
Distributed rainfall-runoff models are being paid increasing attention from hydrologists. Nowadays, the availability of powerful computer resources makes the application of this kind of models possible for operational purposes. It is well known that distributed parameter models take advantage of high resolution data and can model river flows at bas...
Article
This study compares the accuracy of the short-term rainfall forecasts obtained with time-series analysis techniques, using past rainfall depths as the only input information. The techniques proposed here are linear stochastic auto-regressive moving-average (ARMA) models, artificial neural networks (ANN) and the non-parametric nearest-neighbours met...
Article
Stochastic modelling of the simulation errors resulting from the off-line application of conceptual rainfall-runoff models is often performed in the context of real-time flood forecasting, in order to improve the forecasting accuracy. Although widely applied in the operational practice, such approach has not been yet extensively investigated in the...