Luigia Brandimarte

Luigia Brandimarte
KTH Royal Institute of Technology | KTH · Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering

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67
Publications
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Introduction
Skills and Expertise

Publications

Publications (67)
Article
Full-text available
This study evaluates the impact of hydroclimate-driven periodic runoff on hydropower operations and production, with a focus on how the forecasted biennial periodicity of runoff time series could affect the efficiency of hydropower generation. Hydrologic stochastic processes are utilized to forecast long-term runoff, and seven hydroclimate scenario...
Chapter
Livability of Mediterranean cities is highly challenged by the pressure coming from fast-growing urban expansion and climate-induced hazards. To ensure the wellbeing of its inhabitants, cities need to adopt flexible and dynamic approaches to cope, mitigate and/or adapt to these pressures. In this chapter, we first review population and climate chal...
Article
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Developing and implementing climate adaptation measures in complex socio-ecological systems can lead to unintended consequences, especially when those systems are undergoing rapid hydro-climatic and socio-economic change. In these dynamic contexts, a systemic approach can make the difference between adaptive and maladaptive outcomes. This paper foc...
Article
Full-text available
Advances in numerical algorithms, improvement of computational power and progress in remote sensing have led to the development of global flood models (GFMs), which promise to be a useful tool for large-scale flood risk management. However, performance and reliability of GFMs, especially in data-scarce regions, is still uncertain, as they are diffi...
Article
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Economic inequality is rising within many countries globally, and this can significantly influence the social vulnerability to natural hazards. We analysed income inequality and flood disasters in 67 middle- and high-income countries between 1990 and 2018 and found that unequal countries tend to suffer more flood fatalities. This study integrates g...
Article
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Societal awareness is a crucial factor driving floodplain dynamics. When modelling these dynamics, flood awareness decay is considered constant. However, empirical studies have shown that the intensity of an experienced event can influence awareness decay. Here we explore and model the influence of variable flood awareness decay on flood losses for...
Preprint
Full-text available
Economic inequality is rising within many countries globally, and this can significantly influence social vulnerability to natural hazards. Through a global analysis of income inequality and flood disasters in middle- and high-income countries, we show that unequal countries tend to suffer higher flood fatalities. Based on our results, we argue tha...
Article
The effects of land use alteration, migration and urbanization are key aspects in flood management, as human activities can strongly influence the capacity of ecosystems to provide flood regulating ecosystem services and determine their demand. This study analyzes spatio–temporal dynamics of flood regulating ecosystem services to support watershed...
Article
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Riverine flood risk studies often require the identification of areas prone to potential flooding. This modelling process can be based on either (hydrologically derived) flood hazard maps or (topography-based) hydrogeomorphic floodplain maps. In this paper, we derive and compare riverine flood exposure from three global products: a hydrogeomorphic...
Preprint
Full-text available
Riverine flood risk studies require the identification of areas prone to potential flooding. This process can be based on either (hydrologically-derived) flood hazard maps or (topography-based) hydrogeomorphic floodplain maps. In this paper, we derive and compare riverine flood exposure from three global products: a hydrogeomorphic floodplain map (...
Article
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In this study, we explore the long-term trends of floodplain population dynamics at different spatial scales in the contiguous United States (U.S.). We exploit different types of datasets from 1790–2010—i.e., decadal spatial distribution for the population density in the US, global floodplains dataset, large-scale data of flood occurrence and damag...
Article
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The past few years have seen the raise of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) in geosciences for generating highly accurate digital elevation models (DEM) at low costs, which promises to be an interesting alternative to satellite data for small river basins. The reliability of UAV-derived topography as input to hydraulic modelling is still under investi...
Article
The back cover image is based on the Overview A review of freely accessible global datasets for the study of floods, droughts and their interactions with human societies, by Sara Lindersson et al., https://doi.org/10.1002/wat2.1424 Supported by: Nightlight data from NASA Black Marble 2012 and 2016. Flood hazard data from JRC Flood Hazard Map of the...
Article
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Two-way interactions and feedback between hydrological and social processes in settled floodplains determine the complex human–flood system and change vulnerability over time. To focus on the dynamic role of individual and governmental decision making on flood-risk management, we developed and implemented a coupled agent-based and hydraulic modelli...
Article
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The availability of planetary‐scale geospatial datasets that can support the study of water‐related disasters in the Anthropocene is rapidly growing. We review 124 global and free datasets allowing spatial (and temporal) analyses of floods, droughts and their interactions with human societies. Our collection of datasets is available in a descriptiv...
Article
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Levees protect floodplain areas from frequent flooding, but they can paradoxically contribute to more severe flood losses. The construction or reinforcement of levees can attract more assets and people in flood-prone area, thereby increasing the potential flood damage when levees eventually fail. Moreover, structural protection measures can generat...
Article
We are experiencing a proliferation of satellite derived precipitation datasets. Advantages and limitations of their promising application in hydrological modelling application have been broadly investigated. However, most studies have analysed only the performance of one or few datasets, were limited to selected small-scale case studies or used lu...
Preprint
Full-text available
Over the past decades, a variety of valuable research studies has helped to advance our understanding of the advantages and limitations of satellite derived precipitation datasets as a forcing to hydrological models, in combination with or as an alternative to gauge data. However, most studies have assessed the performance of only one single datase...
Article
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Bangladeshi people use multiple strategies to live with flooding events and associated riverbank erosion. They relocate, evacuate their homes temporarily, change cropping patterns, and supplement their income from migrating household members. In this way, they can reduce the negative impact of floods on their livelihoods. However, these societal re...
Article
The levee effect refers to the paradox that the construction of a levee to protect from flooding might induce property owners to invest more in their property, increasing the potential damages should the levee breach. Thus, paradoxically, the levee might increase flood risk. The levee effect was observed for high-income countries. We analyze whethe...
Article
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This study compares model averaging and model selection methods to estimate design floods, while accounting for the observation error that is typically associated with annual maximum flow data. Model selection refers to methods where a single distribution function is chosen based on prior knowledge or by means of selection criteria. Model averaging...
Article
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In this paper, we propose a concept that captures the different socio-hydrological patterns that result from different societal choices on how to deal with rivers, floods and erosion: socio-hydrological spaces. Socio-hydrology aims to understand the dynamics and co-evolution of coupled human-water systems. Our proposed concept will help to understa...
Article
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The reliability of a levee system is a crucial factor in flood risk management. In this study we present a probabilistic methodology to assess the effects of levee cover strength on levee failure probability, triggering time, flood propagation and consequent impacts on population and assets. A method for determining fragility curves is used in comb...
Article
The scientific literature has focused on uncertainty as randomness, while limited credit has been given to what we call here the “seventh facet of uncertainty”, i.e. lack of knowledge. This paper identifies three types of lack of understanding: (i) known unknowns, which are things we know we don’t know; (ii) unknown unknowns, which are things we do...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The objective of this study was to demonstrate how different scenarios of data availability along the main river channel, such as geometrical levee characteristics, can affect the estimation of the probability of levee failure and the consequent breach location. To achieve this objective, a four steps methodology is proposed and applied to a case s...
Article
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In flood risk assessment, there remains a lack of analytical frameworks capturing the dynamics emerging from two-way feedbacks between physical and social processes, such as adaptation and levee effect. The former, “adaptation effect”, relates to the observation that the occurrence of more frequent flooding is often associated with decreasing vulne...
Article
The river formed by the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates is known as the Shatt Al-Arab; it runs for about 190 km from the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates, in Qurnah, Iraq, to the Arabian/Persian Gulf. The lowest alluvial plains of the Tigris and Euphrates have been for millennia exploited for their fertile soils and rich date palm fore...
Article
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The population growth and the economic development that the five Countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) located in La Plata Basin (LPB) have gone through over the last decades have risen the necessity to assess the current and future electricity demand and compare it to the energy production. In this region, the water resource...
Article
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The risk coping culture of a community plays a major role in the development of urban floodplains. In this paper we analyse, in a conceptual way, the interplay of community risk coping culture, flooding damage and economic growth. We particularly focus on three aspects: (i) collective memory, i.e., the capacity of the community to keep risk awarene...
Article
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In Bangladesh, socio-economic and hydrological processes are both extremely dynamic and inter-related. Human population patterns are often explained as a response, or adaptation strategy, to physical events, e.g. flooding, salt-water intrusion, and erosion. Meanwhile, these physical processes are exacerbated, or mitigated, by diverse human interven...
Article
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High social, environmental and financial costs of dam construction during the past century provide valuable lessons for improving large infrastructure governance and enhancing dam safety. The Italian Vajont dam tragedy in 1963, for example, where the urgency to boost post-war economic development overruled cautionary site selection and reservoir fi...
Article
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Traditionally, levees are a popular measure widely adopted for flood control accepted and trusted by populations living in floodplain areas. The presence of levees sometimes might even induce a false sense of safety in the population, influencing their decision to develop further in floodplains, as they feel safer. Thus, failures of levee systems a...
Article
This opinion article posits that the current lack of understanding of the dynamic interactions among the different components of risk (e.g., hazard, exposure, vulnerability, or resilience) is one of the main obstacles for the implementation of effective risk prevention measures. In state‐of‐the‐art methods for risk assessment, natural and social sy...
Article
Flood inundation models have been recognized to be a valuable tool to reproduce flow dynamics in a given area and support decision‐making processes on flood management measures. In many cases, in the simulation of flood events, only the main river channel and the associated structures are represented within the model. However, during flood events i...
Article
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Isla Hispaniola, the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic has repeatedly witnessed catastrophic disasters that caused dramatic economic losses and killed thousands of people over the last decades. One striking example is the disastrous flood event that hit the transnational basin of River Soliette on May 24th, 2004. The event resulted...
Article
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This paper offers a conceptual approach to explore the complex dynamics of floodplains as fully coupled human-water systems. A number of hydrologists have recently investigated the impact of human activities (such as flood control measures, land-use changes, and settlement patterns) on the frequency and severity of floods. Meanwhile, social scienti...
Article
ABSTRACTA detention basin is a structural measure used to manage floods by temporarily storing a portion of the incoming water volume in selected areas. The design of the inlet and outlet structures is crucial for the optimal efficiency of the detention system. This paper investigates the sensitivity of flood peak reduction through an offline deten...
Article
The presence of a bridge spanning over a river and its floodplain alters the condition of flow. In subcritical conditions, which are typical in alluvial rivers, this flow alteration results in the so-called backwater effect, that is, an increase of the water surface elevation upstream of the structure as a response to increased energy losses. The e...
Article
Full-text available
This paper offers a conceptual approach to explore the complex dynamics of floodplains as fully coupled human-water systems. A number of hydrologists have recently investigated the impact of human activities (such as flood control measures, land-use changes, and settlement patterns) on the frequency and severity of floods. Meanwhile, social scienti...
Article
Full-text available
Natural catastrophic events are one of most critical aspects for health and economy all around the world. However, the impact in a poor region can impact more dramatically than in others countries. Isla Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), one of the poorest regions of the planet, has repeatedly been hit by catastrophic natural disasters...
Article
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The scientific literature has widely shown that hydraulic modelling is affected by many sources of uncertainty (e.g. model structure, input data, model parameters). However, when hydraulic models are used for engineering purposes (e.g. flood defense design), there is still a tendency to make a deterministic use of them. More specifically, the predi...
Article
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La Plata Basin is shared by five countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay), which have fast growing economies in South America. These countries need energy for their sustainable development; hence, hydropower can play a very important role as a renewable clean source of energy. This paper presents an analysis of the current hydro...
Article
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Scouring of piers and abutment has been recognized as the main cause of damage and failure of bridges over waterways. The scientific community has produced a number of studies addressing the complex characteristics of the scour process and has provided engineers with several techniques for the estimate of the maximum expected scour depth at a bridg...
Article
A detention basin is a structural measure used to manage floods by temporarily storing a fraction of the incoming water volume into selected areas. The design of the inlet and outlet structures is crucial for the optimal efficiency of the detention system. This research work investigates the sensitivity of flood attenuation, by means of an off-line...
Article
Full-text available
La Plata Basin is shared by five countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay), which are having fast growing economies in South America. These countries need energy for their sustainable development; hence hydropower can play a very important role as a renewable clean source of energy. This paper presents an analysis of the current...
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
It is widely recognised that remote sensing can support flood monitoring, modelling and management. In particular, satellites carrying Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) sensors are valuable as radar wavelengths can penetrate cloud cover and are insensitive to daylight. However, given the strong inverse relationship between spatial resolution and revis...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The economic damages caused by floods, as well as the number of people killed by them has substantially increased in recent decades on the African continent. The number of flood fatalities, in particular, has increased about one order of magnitude during the last 50 years. These figures call for urgent actions to reduce damages and casualties. To plan...
Article
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Mediterranean basins are known for their susceptibility to water stress conditions resulting from a reduction in winter-season precipitation. This region is also prone to the effects of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), a large-scale climatic pattern associated with a displacement of air mass between the arctic and the subtropical Atlantic. Eve...
Article
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Flood-related fatalities in Africa, as well as associated economic losses, have increased dramatically over the past half-century. There is a growing global concern about the need to identify the causes for such increased flood damages. To this end, we analyze a large, consistent and reliable dataset of floods in Africa. Identification of causes is...
Article
Nowadays, it is widely recognised that remote sensing can support flood monitoring, modelling and management. In particular, satellites carrying Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) sensors are valuable as radar wavelengths can penetrate cloud cover and are insensitive to daylight. However, given the strong inverse relationship between spatial resolution...
Article
The analysis of the progression in time of scour depth at the contracted section of a bridge crossing is an important tool to the design and monitoring of bridge foundations. The nature of the riverbed material greatly affects the pace of scour development. In particular, in cohesive soils scour can develop at considerably long time scales and ther...
Article
It is sadly known that over the past decades Isla Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic) has been exposed to the devastating passage of several hurricanes and tropical storms. Territories that are economically weak and extremely poor in terms of natural resources have been shaken by severe flood events that caused the loss of thousands of hu...
Article
Over the last decades, Isla Hispaniola (i.e. the territory shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic) has been sadly affected by several hydro-geological disasters. In fact, the island has been involuntary protagonist of the international chronicles for being hit by the passage of several devastating hurricanes. Incalculable damages to structures...
Article
The average risk of a bridge over water in the USA collapsing from scour during its 75 years design life is estimated at 3.7×10. This risk makes scour of foundations the number one cause of bridge collapse and 3 times larger than the next cause of bridge collapse, which is collisions. The current paper presents a site specific method to estimate th...
Article
Damage to bridge crossings during flood events endangers the lives of the traveling public and causes costly disruptions to traffic flow. The most common causes of bridge collapse are scouring of the streambed and banks and erosion of highway embankments. This study couples a synthetic river flow simulation technique with a scour model for cohesive...
Article
A flow-duration curve (FDC) illustrates the relationship between the frequency and magnitude of streamflow. Applications of FDC are of interest for many hydrological problems related to hydropower generation, river and reservoir sedimentation, water quality assessment, water-use assessment, water allocation and habitat suitability. This study addre...
Article
Damage to bridge crossings during floods events endangers the lives of the traveling public and causes costly disruptions to traffic flow. The primary cause of bridge collapse is scouring of the streambed and banks and erosion of highway embankments. Scour is the erosion of waterway soils and sediments that provide support for bridge foundations. T...
Article
This study aims at analyzing this well-known bridge scour issue, traditionally approached through deterministic methods, by means of a statistical approach that is still a relatively new and unexplored technique. Because a significant part of the uncertainty inherent to bridge scour analysis is due to the randomness of the flow series, a probabilis...
Article
A Flow Duration Curve (FDC) provides an estimate of the percentage of time a flow discharge is exceeded over a historical period for a given river basin. Applications of FDC are of interest for many water related problems, such as evaluation of water supply potential for hydropower generation, stream-pollution and water-quality management problems,...

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