scholarly journals Flood Risk Evaluation in Ungauged Coastal Areas: The Case Study of Ippocampo (Southern Italy)

Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 1466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ciro Apollonio ◽  
Maria Francesca Bruno ◽  
Gabriele Iemmolo ◽  
Matteo Gianluca Molfetta ◽  
Roberta Pellicani

The growing concentration of population and the related increase in human activities in coastal areas require numerical simulations to analyze the effects of flooding events that might occur in susceptible coastal areas in order to determine effective coastal management practices and safety measures to safeguard the inhabited coastal areas. The reliability of the analysis is dependent on the correct evaluation of key inputs such as return period of flooding events, vulnerability of exposed assets, and other risk factors (e.g., spatial distribution of elements at risk, their economic value, etc.). This paper defines a methodology to assess the effects of flooding events associated with basin run-off and storm surge in coastal areas. The assessment aims at quantifying in economic terms (e.g., loss of assets) the risk of coastal areas subject to flooding events. The methodology proposed in this paper was implemented to determine the areas subject to inundation on a coastal area in Southern Italy prone to hydrogeological instability and coastal inundation. A two-dimensional hydraulic model was adopted to simulate storm surges generated by severe sea storms coupled with intense rainfalls in order to determine the areas subject to inundation in the low-land area along the Adriatic coast object of this study. In conclusion, the economic risk corresponding to four different flooding scenarios was assessed by correlating the exceedance probability of each flooding scenario with the potential economic losses that might be realized in the inundated areas. The results of the assessment can inform decision-makers responsible for the deployment of risk mitigation measures.

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanni Gullà ◽  
Gianfranco Nicodemo ◽  
Settimio Ferlisi ◽  
Luigi Borrelli ◽  
Dario Peduto

AbstractThis paper proposes a three-phase method that combines multi-source (i.e. topographic, thematic, monitoring) input data in a GIS environment to rank—at small (1:250,000) scale—administrative units (e.g. municipalities) based on their exposure to slow-moving landslide risk within a selected area (e.g. a region) and, accordingly, detect those primarily requiring mitigation measures. The method is applied in the Calabria region (southern Italy) where several municipalities are widely affected by slow-moving landslides that systematically cause damage to buildings and infrastructure networks resulting in significant economic losses. The results obtained are validated based on the information gathered from previous studies carried out at large (municipal) scale. The work undertaken represents a first, fundamental step of a wider circular approach that can profitably facilitate the decision makers in addressing the issue of the slow-moving landslide risk mitigation in a sustainable way.


Author(s):  
Shraddha Praharaj ◽  
Faria Tuz Zahura ◽  
T. Donna Chen ◽  
Yawen Shen ◽  
Luwei Zeng ◽  
...  

Climate change and sea-level rise are increasingly leading to higher and prolonged high tides, which, in combination with the growing intensity of rainfall and storm surges, and insufficient drainage infrastructure, result in frequent recurrent flooding in coastal cities. There is a pressing need to understand the occurrence of roadway flooding incidents in order to enact appropriate mitigation measures. Agency data for roadway flooding events are scarce and resource-intensive to collect. Crowdsourced data can provide a low-cost alternative for mapping roadway flood incidents in real time; however, the reliability is questionable. This research demonstrates a framework for asserting trustworthiness on crowdsourced flood incident data in a case study of Norfolk, Virginia. Publicly available (but spatially limited) flood incident data from the city in combination with different environmental and topographical factors are used to create a logistic regression model to predict the probability of roadway flooding at any location on the roadway network. The prediction accuracy of the model was found to be 90.5%. When applying this model to crowdsourced Waze flood incident data, 71.7% of the reports were predicted to be trustworthy. This study demonstrates the potential for using Waze incident report data for roadway flooding detection, providing a framework for cities to identify trustworthy reports in real time to enable rapid situation assessment and mitigation to reduce incident impact.


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-37
Author(s):  
Shreya Pradhan ◽  
Ajay K. Shah

The study is primarily focused on credit risk assessment practices in commercial banks on the basis of their internal efficiency, assessment of assets and borrower. The model of the study is based on the analysis of relationship between credit risk management practices, credit risk mitigation measures and obstacles and loan repayment. Based on a descriptive research approach the study has used survey-based primary data and performed a correlation analysis on them. It discovered that credit risk management practices and credit risk mitigation measures have a positive relationship with loan repayment, while obstacles faced by borrowers have no significant relationship with loan repayment. The study findings can provide good insights to commercial bank managers in analysing their model of credit risk management system, policies and practices, and in establishing a profitable and sustainable model for credit risk assessment, by setting a risk tolerance level and managing credit risks vis-a-vis the prevailing market competition.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (22) ◽  
pp. 7960
Author(s):  
Federica Cotecchia ◽  
Francesca Santaloia ◽  
Vito Tagarelli

Nowadays, landslides still cause both deaths and heavy economic losses around the world, despite the development of risk mitigation measures, which are often not effective; this is mainly due to the lack of proper analyses of landslide mechanisms. As such, in order to achieve a decisive advancement for sustainable landslide risk management, our knowledge of the processes that generate landslide phenomena has to be broadened. This is possible only through a multidisciplinary analysis that covers the complexity of landslide mechanisms that is a fundamental part of the design of the mitigation measure. As such, this contribution applies the “stage-wise” methodology, which allows for geo-hydro-mechanical (GHM) interpretations of landslide processes, highlighting the importance of the synergy between geological-geomorphological analysis and hydro-mechanical modeling of the slope processes for successful interpretations of slope instability, the identification of the causes and the prediction of the evolution of the process over time. Two case studies are reported, showing how to apply GHM analyses of landslide mechanisms. After presenting the background methodology, this contribution proposes a research project aimed at the GHM characterization of landslides, soliciting the support of engineers in the selection of the most sustainable and effective mitigation strategies for different classes of landslides. This proposal is made on the assumption that only GHM classification of landslides can provide engineers with guidelines about instability processes which would be useful for the implementation of sustainable and effective landslide risk mitigation strategies.


Author(s):  
Christopher Thomas ◽  
Siddharth Narayan ◽  
Joss Matthewman ◽  
Christine Shepard ◽  
Laura Geselbracht ◽  
...  

<p>With coastlines becoming increasingly urbanised worldwide, the economic risk posed by storm surges to coastal communities has never been greater. Given the financial and ecological costs of manmade coastal defences, the past few years have seen growing interest in the effectiveness of natural coastal “defences” in reducing the risk of flooding to coastal properties, but estimating their actual economic value in reducing storm surge risk remains a challenging subject.</p><p>In this study, we estimate the value of mangroves in reducing annual losses to property from storm surges along a large stretch of coastline in Florida (USA), by employing a catastrophe modelling approach widely used in the insurance industry. We use a hydrodynamic coastal flood model coupled to a property loss model and a large property exposure dataset to estimate annual economic losses from hurricane-driven storm surges in Collier County, a hurricane-prone part of Florida. We then estimate the impact that removing mangroves in the region would have on average annual losses (AAL) caused by coastal flooding. We find that mangroves reduce AAL to properties behind them by over 25%, and that these benefits are distributed very heterogeneously along the coastline. Mangrove presence can also act to enhance the storm surge risk in areas where development has occurred seaward of mangroves.</p><p>In addition to looking at annual losses, we also focus on the storm surge caused by a specific severe event in Florida, based on Hurricane Irma (2017), and we estimate that existing mangroves reduced economic property damage by hundreds of millions of USD, and reduced coastal flooding for hundreds of thousands of people.</p><p>Together these studies aim to financially quantify some of the risk reduction services provided by natural defences in terms of reducing the cost of coastal flooding, and show that these services can be included in a catastrophe modelling framework commonly used in the insurance industry.</p>


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (8) ◽  
pp. 2221-2241 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dina D'Ayala ◽  
Kai Wang ◽  
Yuan Yan ◽  
Helen Smith ◽  
Ashleigh Massam ◽  
...  

Abstract. Flood hazard is increasing in frequency and magnitude in major South East Asian metropolitan areas due to fast urban development and changes in climate, threatening people's property and life. Typically, flood management actions are mostly focused on large-scale defences, such as river embankments or discharge channels or tunnels. However, these are difficult to implement in town centres without affecting the value of their heritage districts and might not provide sufficient mitigation. Therefore, urban heritage buildings may become vulnerable to flood events, even when they were originally designed and built with intrinsic resilient measures, based on the local knowledge of the natural environment and its threats at the time. Their aesthetic and cultural and economic values mean that they can represent a proportionally high contribution to losses in any event. Hence it is worth investigating more localized, tailored mitigation measures. Vulnerability assessment studies are essential to inform the feasibility and development of such strategies. In this study we propose a multilevel methodology to assess the flood vulnerability and risk of residential buildings in an area of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, characterized by traditional timber housing. The multiscale flood vulnerability model is based on a wide range of parameters, covering building-specific parameters, neighbourhood conditions and catchment area conditions. The obtained vulnerability index shows the ability to reflect different exposure by different building types and their relative locations. The vulnerability model is combined with high-resolution fluvial and pluvial flood maps providing scenario events with 0.1 % annual exceedance probability (AEP). A damage function of generic applicability is developed to compute the economic losses at individual building and sample levels. The study provides evidence that results obtained for a small district can be scaled up to the city level, to inform both generic and specific protection strategies.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Cugliari ◽  
Massimo Crescimbene ◽  
Andrea Cerase ◽  
Alessandro Amato ◽  
Loredana Cerbara ◽  
...  

<p>The tsunami risk perception survey is promoted by the Tsunami Alert Centre of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, operating within the Italian System for Tsunami Alert (SiAM) with the Civil Protection Department and ISPRA, and acting as Tsunami Service Provider in the NEAMTWS.</p><p>Conducting studies on tsunami risk perception is important in order to obtain data on population’s knowledge and awareness, and understanding people’s perception of tsunami risk. These data are going to be added to those from two previous surveys on tsunami risk perception being issued in 2018 and 2020, to integrate the available knowledge on these issues and will provide publics, experts and policy makers with relevant tools to <strong>implement risk mitigation policies</strong>. </p><p>The third phase of the survey was completed in January 2021, administering a <strong>total of 4,207 questionnaires</strong> to the population living on the coastal areas of <em>Sicily, Campania, Latium and Sardinia</em>, <strong>in addition to the 1,635 interviewees</strong> considered in previous surveys.</p><p>The survey used a semi-structured questionnaire consisting of 27 items, with closed alternative questions, and four sets of Likert scale questions. The questionnaire was optimized for <em>CATI</em> administration, taking into account the need for conciseness and comprehensibility of the questions.</p><p>All the studied regions are located in the central Mediterranean basin (including central and southern Tyrrhenian Sea, Sardinian Sea, Sicily Channel), some of which are characterized by <strong>high tsunami hazard</strong>, and in some cases they have been affected by recorded tsunamis in a close or distant past. Some regions are located in areas where potential seismic tsunami sources are present, others surround waters where active volcanoes exist, both on islands (such as <em>Stromboli</em>, Vulcano) and below the sea (<em>Marsili, Palinuro</em>). </p><p>In addition, the four studied regions have a <strong>high risk exposure</strong> due to the <strong>high density of population living on</strong>, or visiting the coastal areas for tourism. In the areas where the questionnaire was administered, five highly populated regional capitals are located, including <em>Palermo, Messina, Naples, Rome and Cagliari</em>, together with other important towns (such as <em>Catania, Siracusa, Trapani, Salerno, Olbia</em> etc.). Moreover, the coastal shores involved in the survey, live of a <strong>significant tourist affluence</strong> in the summer period (and not only), with many tourist facilities and large hotels located along the coasts.</p><p>The survey's main aim is to analyze the perception of tsunami risk by the coastal population and to correlate levels of tsunami risk perception with scientific data from <em>probabilistic tsunami hazard assessment</em> (PTHA) for the considered coastal area. We will present some preliminary results of this last survey, with a comparison with the previous analyses on other regions in southern Italy.</p>


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
André Furtado ◽  
Maria Teresa de Risi

The extension of the damages observed after the last major earthquakes shows that the seismic risk mitigation of infilled reinforced concrete structures is a paramount topic in seismic prone regions. In the assessment of existing structures and the design of new ones, the infill walls are considered as nonstructural elements by most of the seismic codes and, generally, comprehensive provisions for practitioners are missing. However, nowadays, it is well recognized by the community the importance of the infills in the seismic behaviour of the reinforced concrete structures. Accurate modelling strategies and appropriate seismic assessment methodologies are crucial to understand the behaviour of existing buildings and to develop efficient and appropriate mitigation measures to prevent high level of damages, casualties, and economic losses. The development of effective strengthening solutions to improve the infill seismic behaviour and proper analytical formulations that could help design engineers are still open issues, among others, on this topic. The main aim of this paper is to provide a state-of-the-art review concerning the typologies of damages observed in the last earthquakes where the causes and possible solutions are discussed. After that, a review of in-plane and out-of-plane testing campaigns from the literature on infilled reinforced concrete frames are presented as well as their relevant findings. The most common strengthening solutions to improve the seismic behaviour are presented, and some examples are discussed. Finally, a brief summary of the modelling strategies available in the literature is presented.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Mitter ◽  
Maria Postlmayr ◽  
Michael Kuttner

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to provide insights into the risk management practices of small family firms (SFFs).Design/methodology/approachThis paper is based on a multi-site case study approach among ten SFFs (that employ between 10 and less than 50 employees according to the European Commission's recommendation 2003/361/EC) and draws on the concept of social capital.FindingsThe study demonstrates that the vast majority of sample SFFs lacks a formal risk management system and does not prepare for crises and emergencies. However, they are aware of most of their specific risks and draw on a number of risk-mitigation measures to address them. Social capital emerges as common thread and overarching principle in these risk-reduction initiatives, as the SFFs rely on long-standing, trusting and fair relationships with key stakeholders to cushion their businesses from adverse impacts. This prevalence of informal risk management mechanisms may partially explain the paradox as to why formal risk management tools are rarely applied in SFFs.Practical implicationsAs the study findings suggest that social capital serves SFFs as risk-reduction measure, owner-managers should capitalise on this specific strength. However, they should also invest in more systematic risk management initiatives to better equip their businesses with the tools to fend off adverse scenarios.Originality/valueThis study is among the first to analyse risk management in SFFs.


2021 ◽  
pp. 35-94
Author(s):  
Dalila Loudyi ◽  
Moulay Driss Hasnaoui ◽  
Ahmed Fekri

AbstractFrom ancient flood management practices driven by agricultural activities to dam’s policy for water resources management including flood protection, to the National Strategy for Natural Disaster Risk Integrated Management; Morocco has come a long way in flood risk management. This chapter describes the recurrent flooding phenomenon plaguing the country along with progress in flood risk assessment approaches in terms of technique, governance, and best practices. An extensive number of research articles, administrative documents, consultancy, and international organizations reports are analyzed to give a holistic up-to-date insight into flood risk management in Morocco and present a comprehensive and critical view from a scientific perspective. Information and data were collected from a range of various sources and synthesized to integrate all scientific and governance aspects. Though analysis of this landscape shows progresses made by the Government to protect the population and reduce flood risk, it also shows shortcomings and challenges still to be overcome. Thus, a SWOT analysis was carried out for scoping and identifying the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats pertaining to this issue. The analysis reveals various success and failure factors related to three major components: governance, risk assessment approaches, and flood risk mitigation measures sustainability.


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