Silvia Barbetta

• Italian National Research Council

Sediment transport can be observed within the flow of water in rivers, canals, and coastal regions, encompassing both suspended-load transport and bed-load transport. Bed-load transport specifically occurs near the riverbed, playing a crucial role in the formation of the riverbed itself. The current study aimed to explore the process of sediment tr...

The research focuses on estimating bathymetry in extensive and ungauged river systems through entropy theory. This method was utilized in the central segment of the Congo River, spanning 1740 km and encompassing vast sections of up to 6 km, as well as in areas with highly intricate watercourse morphology, such as multi-thread reaches.

This study implements an entropy theory-based approach to infer bathymetry for 29 selected cross-sections along a 1740 km reach of the Congo River. A genetic algorithm optimization approach is used based on an analysis of near-surface velocity measurements to generate a random sample of 1000 bathymetry profiles from which the analysis is carried ou...

Estimating the flow velocity and discharge in rivers is of particular interest for monitoring, modeling, and research purposes. Instruments for measuring water level and surface velocity are generally mounted on bridge decks, and this poses a challenge because the bridge structure, with piers and abutments, can perturb the flow field. The current r...

Sediment transport is a natural process where sediment particles can be deposited downstream and exacerbate flooding. The movement of sediments can be observed in flows through rivers, canals, and coastal areas which include suspended load transport and bed-load transport. Bed-load transport occurs in the area close to the riverbed, which is of par...

Climate change is profoundly affecting the global water cycle, increasing the likelihood and severity of extreme water-related events. Better decision-support systems are vital to accurately predict and monitor water-related environmental disasters and optimally manage water resources. These must integrate advances in remote sensing, in situ, and c...

The study aims to demonstrate that an effective solution can be implemented for modeling complex carbonate basins, in the situation of limited data availability. Considering the alternative modeling approaches under circumstances of data shortage is more significant knowing the vulnerability and effectiveness of these kinds of basins to drought and...

Estimating the flow velocity and discharge in rivers is of particular interest for monitoring, modelling, and research purposes. Instruments for measuring water level and surface velocity are generally mounted on bridge decks, and this poses a challenge because the bridge structure (e.g., piers and abutments) can lead to perturbated flow fields. Th...

The majority of freshwater on earth is transported by rivers and streams. Many cities are located near large rivers and streams, where water plays an important role. Hydraulic parameters in a stream or river can be considered and inferred in numerous ways, but velocity and discharge rates are particularly important. The Entropy concept has been inc...

The accurate delineation of flood hazard maps is a key element of flood risk management policy. Flood inundation models are fundamental for reproducing the boundaries of flood-prone areas, but their calibration is limited to the information available on the areas affected by inundation during observed flood events (typically fragmentary photo, vide...

Irrigation water use represents the primary source of freshwater consumption by humans. The amount of water withdrawals for agricultural purposes is expected to further increase in the upcoming years to face the rising world population and higher living standards. Hence, effective plans for enacting a rational management of agricultural water use a...

The effect of flood waves entering into artificial reservoirs has to be carefully considered for properly addressing dam management to warrant water resources utilization and to provide flood control within a context of safety for the upstream and downstream territories. The optimization of the dam management has to be mainly based on the forecast...

Hydraulic complexity metrics referred to as M1 and M2 play an important role when it comes to the analysis of habitat metrics. In the present paper, the significance of these parameters is analysed by using laboratory data as well as field observations along the Tiber River in Italy. Based on the laboratory data, the estimated parameters allow us t...

Irrigation water use represents the primary source of freshwater consumption by humans. The amount of water withdrawals for agricultural purposes is expected to further increase in the upcoming years to face the rising world population and higher living standards. Hence, effective plans for enacting a rational management of agricultural water use a...

Sommario/Abstract Non-uniform river flows are associated with an abundance of aquatic habitats due to hydrodynamic features such as gradients in velocity. Hydraulic complexity metrics M1, M2, and M3 are useful for analysing habitat metrics on a 3D spatial level. Parameters M1 and M2 refer to how much drag an organism applies after moving between tw...

The current research aims to predict the velocity distribution and discharge rates in rivers based on the entropy concept using only one surface velocity measurement. In this direction, first, the uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV)‐based image acquisition technique was applied to collect the surface velocity distribution along two European rivers, the S...

The assessment of flood impact on a Water Supply System (WSS) requires a comprehensive approach including several scales of analysis and models and should be managed in the Water Safety Plans (WSP), as recommended in the EU Water Directive 2020/2184. Flooding can affect the quality of groundwater and surface water resources and can cause supply ser...

Placed at the center of the Mediterranean, the Apennines chains provide a critical water supply for people living in the Italian Peninsula. Yet, the quantification of water resources in this region is challenging given that the different components of the water cycles (i.e., snowmelt, evapotranspiration, and subsurface water recharge) are highly va...

The assessment of flood impact on a Water Supply System (WSS) requires a comprehensive approach including several scales of analysis and models to capture dependencies between meteorological/hydrological forcing and WSS components. The flood risk on WSS should be managed in the Water Safety Plans (WSP), recommended in the EU Water Directive 2020/21...

The analysis of seepage through earthen levees is fundamental to investigate the levee safety condition, since that the seepage phenomenon can often lead to piping causing the collapse of the levee (Saghaee et al., 2012). This work proposes a new approach for identifying the location of the saturation line through the earthen levee by using a multi...

Hydrodynamic features of the confluence zone of large rivers are complicated because of their three-dimensional flow structure. The confluence between the Rio Negro and the Rio Solimões, characterised by black and white waters, respectively, ranks among the largest river junctions on Earth. An Entropy-based investigation was carried out to assess t...

Irrigation represents one of the most impactful human interventions in the terrestrial water cycle. Knowing the distribution and extent of irrigated areas as well as the amount of water used for irrigation plays a central role in modeling irrigation water requirements and quantifying the impact of irrigation on regional climate, river discharge, an...

Sommario/Abstract The present study aims to estimate cross sectional velocity distribution and discharge rate in rivers based on the Entropy concept using only one surface velocity measurement. In this case study, UAV-based image acquisition was applied to collect the surface velocity distribution along the Sajó River near the city of Nagycsécs, Hu...

In 2018 we celebrated 25 years of development of radar altimetry, and the progress achieved by this methodology in the fields of global and coastal oceanography, hydrology, geodesy and cryospheric sciences. Many symbolic major events have celebrated these developments, e.g., in Venice, Italy, the 15th (2006) and 20th (2012) years of progress and mo...

In 2018 we celebrated 25 years of development of radar altimetry, and the progress achieved by this methodology in the fields of global and coastal oceanography, hydrology, geodesy and cryospheric sciences. Many symbolic major events have celebrated these developments, e.g., in Venice, Italy, the 15th (2006) and 20th (2012) years of progress and mo...

When two mega rivers merge the mixing of two flows results in a highly complex three- dimensional flow structure in an area known as the confluence hydrodynamic zone. In the confluence zone, substantial changes occur to the hydrodynamic and morphodynamic features which are of significant interest for researchers. The confluence of the Negro and Soli...

Water depths and velocities predicted inside urban areas during severe storms are traditionally the final result of a chain of hydrologic and hydraulic models. The use of a single model embedding all the components of the rainfall–runoff transformation, including the flux concentration in the river network, can reduce the subjectivity and, as a con...

River monitoring is a critical issue for hydrological modelling that strongly relies on the use of Flow Rating Curves (FRCs). In most of the cases, FRCs are approximated by least-squares fitting, whose performance may be influenced by measurements variability, which is often limited in high values. In this context, a new formulation has been recent...

River discharge is an important variable to measure in order to predict droughts and flood occurrences. Once the cross-sectional geometry of the river is known, discharge can be inferred from water level and surface flow velocity measurements. Since river discharges are of particular interest during extreme weather events, when river sites cannot b...

Streamgauge-based information is the foundation for many hydrological applications in a river basin including the aquatic-habitat conservation. A simple two-parameter model for routing streamflow depth (alternatively, stream–stage) hydrographs and estimating corresponding discharge hydrographs in river channels is proposed using the multilinear app...

A novel procedure for estimation of the vulnerability to seepage inducing piping processes in earthen levees affected by animal burrows is presented. The proposed methodology combines an available procedure of seepage vulnerability assessment for undamaged levees with the result of a finite element analysis software, which is used for identifying t...

The NASA Surface Water Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission and ESA Sentinel‐1, inter‐alia, propose to monitor inland waters from satellites. The radar altimeter and the microwave radiometer can be used to monitor water surface level and assess the cross‐sectional mean flow velocity, respectively. However, for most river sites bathymetric data are lacki...

This work investigates the potential of using the Bayesian-based Model Conditional Processor (MCP) for complementing satellite precipitation products with a rainfall dataset derived from satellite soil moisture observations. MCP – which is a Bayesian Inversion approach – was originally developed for predictive uncertainty estimates of water level a...

Accurate forecast stages at river sections is of paramount importance to properly address Flood Forecasting and Warning Systems (FFWSs) operating in real-time. The forecast values can be provided by flood wave routing models to be implemented when gauged sections are operative along the channel. Different models have been proposed in the literature...

Machine learning (soft) methods have a wide range of applications in many disciplines, including hydrology. The first application of these methods in hydrology started in the 1990s and have since been extensively employed. Flood hydrograph prediction is important in hydrology and is generally done using linear or nonlinear Muskingum (NLM) methods o...

Quite often the discharge at a site is estimated using the rating curve developed for that site and its development requires river flow measurements, which are costly, tedious and dangerous during severe floods. To circumvent the conventional rating curve development approach, Perumal et al. in 2007 and 2010 applied the Variable Parameter Muskingum...

This work extends the multi-temporal approach of the Model Conditional Processor (MCP-MT) to the multi-model case and to the four Truncated Normal Distributions (TNDs) approach, demonstrating the improvement on the single-temporal one. The study is framed in the context of probabilistic Bayesian decision-making that is appropriate to take rational...

Extensive flooding can be the result of levee system failures most frequently caused by the piping process due to seepage. The proper description of the seepage line is affected by the difficulty of estimating the hydraulic parameters, mainly the soil hydraulic conductivity. Therefore, the development of simple methods for a quick analysis of exten...

The discharge hydrograph estimation in rivers based on reverse routing modeling and using only water level data at two gauged sections is here extended to the most general case of significant lateral flow contribution, without needing to deploy rainfall–runoff procedures. The proposed methodology solves the Saint‐Venant equations in diffusive form...

A new methodology for estimating the discharge starting from the monitoring of surface flow velocity, usurf, is proposed. The approach, based on the entropy theory, involves the actual location of maximum flow velocity, umax, which may occur below the water surface (dip phenomena), affecting the shape of velocity profile. The method identifies the...

Extensive flooding is frequently the result of levee system failures most frequently caused by the piping process due to seepage. The proper description of the seepage line within the levee body is affected by the difficulty of estimating the hydraulic parameters, mainly the soil hydraulic conductivity. Therefore, the development of simple methods...

SUMMARY The strategies to deal with extreme events in recent decades have been investigated worldwide, both in terms of scientific research for the understanding of the phenomena and the development of monitoring systems, and in terms of methodologies for an effective management of the events affected by global changes. In this context, discharge i...

SUMMARY The strategies to deal with extreme events in recent decades have been investigated worldwide, both in terms of scientific research for the understanding of the phenomena and the development of monitoring systems, and in terms of methodologies for an effective management of the events affected by global changes. In this context, discharge i...

Keynote speech presented by Jérôme Benveniste

This work presents the application of the multi-temporal approach of the Model Conditional Processor (MCP-MT) for predictive uncertainty (PU) estimation in the Godavari River basin, India. MCP-MT is developed for making probabilistic Bayesian decision. It is the most appropriate approach if the uncertainty of future outcomes is to be considered. It...

A simplified model for calculating satellite based surface runoff.

The capability of coupling measurements of river velocity derived from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and water levels derived from ENVISAT Advanced Radar Altimeter (RA-2) for river discharge estimation is thoroughly investigated. The method is applied even considering the possible unavailability of the river cross-section su...

Discharge estimation at a river site depends on local hydraulic conditions identified by recording water levels. In fact, stage monitoring is straightforward and relatively inexpensive compared with the cost necessary to carry out flow velocity measurements which are, however, limited to low flows and constrained by the accessibility of the site. I...

The levee failure event occurred along the Foenna stream (Tuscany region, central Italy) on 1st January 2006 is investigated. The levee body vulnerability to seepage is first assessed through a procedure here proposed and based on a simple vulnerability index. In particular, the index is defined for dimensionless geometry of levee body and related...

The rating curve model (RCM) proposed by Moramarco and co-authors is modified here for flood forecasting purposes without using rainfall information. The RCM is a simple approach for discharge assessment at a river site of interest based on relating the local recorded stage and the remote discharge monitored at an upstream gauged river site located...

The issue of bridge piers vulnerability to scour is addressed by comparing two procedures. The first method quantifies the Scour Vulnerability Index (SVI) considering the combined effects of local and contraction scour. The method requires that a scale factor, for taking account of the scour depth overestimation provided by empirical formulae, is q...

A physically based simplified discharge routing method, namely, the variable parameter Muskingum discharge-hydrograph (VPMD) routing method, having the capability of estimating the stage hydrographs simultaneously in channels with floodplains is presented herein. The upstream discharge hydrograph is routed using this VPMD method in different two-st...

Considering a large satellite dataset (i.e. ~ 16-year of ERS-2 and ENVISAT observations) we investigate the reliability of remotely-sensed data for calibrating a quasi-twodimensional (quasi-2D) hydraulic model of a ~140 km reach of the middle-lower portion of the Po river (Northern Italy), for which detailed topographical information and in-situ hy...

A large number of dams were built in Italy in the first decades of the last century to supply the needs of industrial, electric power, agricultural, and drinking purposes. Among them, the Montedoglio dam, an important reservoir on the Tiber River located in central Italy, with a drainage area of 276km2 and a maximum storage volume of about 153Mm3....

The study integrates data provided by Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, MODIS, onboard AQUA satellite and by RA-2 altimeter onboard ERS-2 and ENVISAT satellites for river discharge estimation along the Po River (northern Italy). The discharge is estimated by multiplying the velocity estimated from MODIS by the flow area computed consid...

Floods are one of the most dangerous natural hazards in Mediterranean regions. Flood forecasting tools and early warning systems can be very beneficial to reduce flood risk. Event-based rainfall runoff models are frequently employed for operational flood forecasting purposes because of their simplicity and the reduced number of parameters involved...

This study proposes a statistically based procedure to quantify the confidence interval (CI) to be associated to the stages forecast by a simple model called STAge FOrecasting Model-Rating Curve Model (STAFOM-RCM). This model can be used for single river reaches characterized by different intermediate drainage areas and mean wave travel times when...

Two methods, namely the velocity-area method and the entropy method, for assessing with uncertainty discharge measurements at gauged river sites are analysed and compared; uncertainty is represented through the grey number technique. Two different approaches for the ‘greyification’ of both methods are presented. In the first approach, the uncertain...

A methodology to estimate the discharge along rivers, even poorly gauged ones, taking advantage of water level measurements derived from satellite altimetry is proposed. The procedure is based on the application of the Rating Curve Model (RCM), a simple method allowing for the estimation of the flow conditions in a river section using only water le...

Floods are one of the most dangerous natural hazards in Mediterranean regions. Flood forecasting tools and early warning systems can be very beneficial to reduce flood risk. Event-based rainfall runoff models are frequently employed for operational flood forecasting purposes because of their simplicity and the reduced number of parameters involved...

River discharge is an important quantity of the hydrologic cycle and it is essential for both scientific and operational applications related to water resources management and flood risk prevention. The absence of flow measurements along the natural channels and, sometimes, the inaccessibility to remote areas contribute to make the discharge estima...

The calibration of hydraulic models traditionally considers local data collected at stream gauging stations, which are generally costly to set-up, maintain and run. Moreover, the density of stream-gauging networks varies significantly worldwide, being particularly sparse or entirely absent in wide regions of the globe, which, for instance, may hamp...

River discharge estimate at ungauged sites is addressed by using water level data acquired by radar altimeter which represent the input for the Rating Curve Model (RCM). This simple approach is able to assess discharge at a downstream section where only stage is monitored while the flow is recorded at an upstream site and significant lateral inflow...

This study presents an enhancement of the Rating Curve Model (RCM) proposed by Moramarco et al. (2005) which was initially formulated to assess discharge at a downstream river site where only stage is monitored while the flow is recorded at an upstream section and significant lateral inflow can occur along the river branch. The original model formu...

The knowledge of the flow discharge at a river site is necessary for planning and management of water resources as well as for monitoring and real-time forecasting purposes when significant flood events occur. In the hydrological practice, the operational discharge measurement in medium and large rivers is mostly based on indirect approaches by con...

The Montedoglio dam, built in the 1980s for irrigation and drinking water purposes, is an important reservoir on the Tiber River located in central Italy. The earth-fill dam is 64.30 m high with a drainage area of 276 km2. The water storage volume, with the water at the height of the spillway, is approximately 153 millions m3. On December 29, 2010...

A real-time Flood Forecasting and Warning System (FFWS) is the main nonstructural measure for reducing risk in flood-prone areas. A model able to provide reliable stage and discharge forecasts is one of the fundamental FFWS components. In this context, a simple model for real-time flood forecasting is proposed for river reaches where significant la...

Analysis of forecasts obtained by a forecasting model called STAFOM, a Muskingum-type model for real-time application, shows that the model provides accurate forecast stage estimates for most of the selected case studies and flood events in the Upper-Middle Tiber River basin in central Italy. However, three main issues affected STAFOM: (1) its kine...

A Flood Monitoring and Warning System (FMWS) operating in real time is the main non-structural measure for reducing risk in flood-prone areas. During the last years significant efforts were addressed to improve the reliability of the forecast quantities mainly by assessing the forecast uncertainty in order to avoid the “illusion of certainty” for d...

Export Date: 19 July 2012, Source: Scopus

The Muskingum-Cunge model (MC, Cunge, 1969) can be used for real-time forecasting of discharges at the downstream end of a river reach for a predetermined lead time Delta t*, which is closely connected to the two routing parameters k and x (Franchini and Lamberti, 1994). Similarly, the Rating Curve Method (RCM, Moramarco and Singh, 2001) can be use...

The application of a Variable Parameter Muskingum Stage (VPMS) hydrograph routing method for real-time flood forecasting at a river gauging site is demonstrated in this study. The forecast error is estimated using a two-parameter linear autoregressive model with its parameters updated at every routing time interval of 30 minutes at which the stage...

A multilinear stage-hydrograph routing method using the diffusion analogy model as a sub-model is proposed in this study. The diffusion analogy model can be considered as the next level of approximation to the full Saint-Venant equations. The applicability of the method is tested by studying flood wave propagation in the 15 km Pierantonio-Ponte Fel...

Prediction of hydrologic response is particularly difficult in alpine regions where data are sparse and the spatial variability of both precipitation and physical controls on runoff generation is considerable. Moreover, alpine catchments are frequently affected by small scale flash floods, which are usually responsible for shallow landsliding and d...

This paper presents a novel approach for enhancing the accuracy of the variable parameter Muskingum stage–hydrograph (VPMS) routing method proposed by Perumal et al. [2007, A methodology for discharge estimation and rating curve development at ungaged river sites, 43(2), W02412, doi:10.1029/2005WR004609] for rating curve development at ungauged riv...

A multilinear stage-hydrograph routing method based on time distribution scheme is analyzed. The framework of the multilinear method is based on the Muskingum-type routing method, which is used as the linear submodel. The proposed method can implicitly model the nonlinear dynamics of the flood wave propagation by varying the model parameters at eac...

The genetic algorithm (GA) technique is applied to obtain optimal parameter values of the standard rating curve model (RCM) for predicting, in real time, event-based flow discharge hydrographs at sites receiving significant lateral inflows. The standard RCM uses the information of discharge and effective cross-sectional flow area at an upstream sta...

Following the parsimonious concept of parameters, simplified models for flood forecasting based only on flood routing have been developed for flood-prone sites located downstream of a gauged station and at a distance allowing an appropriate forecasting lead-time. In this context, the Muskingum model can be a useful tool. However, critical points in...

The hydrological-hydraulic risk mitigation as well as the flood forecasting and warning activity require the knowledge of the main hydrological quantities and, hence, cannot prescind from observations. The distributed or semi-distributed hydrological models need detailed measurements and the new technologies (radar, remote sensing), providing spati...

A multilinear routing method using diffusion analogy model as a sub-model is proposed in this study. The diffusion analogy model can be considered as the next level of approximation to the full Saint-Venant equations. The applicability of the method is first tested by simulating the outflow hydrographs generated by routing the hypothetical inflow h...

Cited By (since 1996): 4, Export Date: 19 July 2012, Source: Scopus

The influence of spatial variability of rainfall and soil/land use on the accuracy of runoff simulation was investigated in order to define the optimal spatial discretization of the basin to be adopted in rainfall-runoff modeling. In particular, the effects of a uniform versus distributed spatial representation of both rainfall field and basin prop...

A methodology for estimating discharges and development of rating curves at ungauged river sites is presented. The methodology employs a routing method, which is an extension of the variable parameter Muskingum stage hydrograph (VPMS) routing method developed by M. Perumal and K. G. Ranga Raju, for routing a given upstream stage hydrograph in a cha...

A simple real-time stage forecasting model recently proposed for equipped river reaches with significant lateral inflows is here modified in order to improve the rising limb future estimate. The model is based on the Muskingum formulation and requires the estimation of five parameters when the downstream rating curve is unknown. The parameter invol...

An adaptive model for on-line stage forecasting is proposed for river reaches where significant lateral inflow contributions occur. The model is based on the Muskingum method and requires the estimation of four parameters if the downstream rating curve is unknown; otherwise only two parameters have to be determined. As the choice of the forecast le...

The real-time hydro-meteorological monitoring, the rainfall spatial distribution, the initial wetness conditions of the basin are, here, investigated for getting an accurate flood forecasting assessment. The pilot area of the Upper Tiber river basin is considered at the purpose. Specifically, besides to propose criteria for the hydro-meteorological...

The development of a simple model for reconstructing the discharge hydrograph at a river site where only the stage is monitored and the discharge is recorded at another upstream section, is outlined. The model is designed to also accommodate significant lateral inflow contributions, permitting, without using a flood routing procedure and without th...