Caterina Samela

Italian National Research Council | CNR · Institute of Methodologies for Environmental Analysis IMAA

The complexity of land transport infrastructures, their length and the heterogeneity of potential hazardous scenarios across large areas make flood hazard assessment a challenging task. We propose a parsimonious, rapid and operational procedure that enables large scale applications and, at the same time, a detailed evaluation of individual segments...

Satellite remote sensing is a highly valuable data source useful in the monitoring of surface water dynamics and an essential tool in flood risk management although several factors can interfere with the detection of water features. This study explores an approach that integrates satellite optical images and DEM-based hydrogeomorphic features to en...

Soil erosion is one of the most widespread soil degradation phenomena worldwide. Mediterranean landscapes, due to some peculiar characteristics, such as fragility of soils, steep slopes, and rainfall distribution during the year, are particularly subject to this phenomenon, with severe and complex issues for agricultural production and biodiversity...

The increase in frequency and intensity of extreme precipitation events caused by the changing climate (e.g., cloudbursts, rainstorms, heavy rainfall, hail, heavy snow), combined with the high population density and concentration of assets, makes urban areas particularly vulnerable to pluvial flooding. Hence, assessing their vulnerability under cur...

Large-scale flood risk assessment is essential in supporting national and global policies, emergency operations and land-use management. The present study proposes a cost-efficient method for the large-scale mapping of direct economic flood damage in data-scarce environments. The proposed framework consists of three main stages: (i) deriving a wate...

It is well-known that rural-urban patterns help to capture socioeconomic interactions between different settlement forms. The sustainability challenge requires to consider the evolution of these patterns as a reliable indicator of the dynamics of land use change and potential land degradation processes occurred in a time frame. In this research, by...

The monitoring of shrublands plays a fundamental role, from an ecological and climatic point of view, in biodiversity conservation, carbon stock estimates, and climate-change impact assessments. Laser scanning systems have proven to have a high capability in mapping non-herbaceous vegetation by classifying high-density point clouds. On the other ha...

The design of hydraulic structures needs to account for a trade-off between implementation costs and flood damages, as well as for the impacts on basins hydrological responses over a wide spectrum of events. In this work, a new methodology for dimensioning an in-line detention dam that integrates geomorphic, probabilistic and economic modeling is p...

Taken as a classical issue in applied economics, the notion of ‘convergence’ is based on the concept of path dependence, i.e., from the previous trajectory undertaken by the system during its recent history. Going beyond social science, a ‘convergence’ perspective has been more recently adopted in environmental studies. Spatial convergence in non-l...

A topographic index (flood descriptor) that combines the scaling of bankfull depth with morphology was shown to describe the tendency of an area to be flooded. However, this approach depends on the quality and availability of flood maps and assumes that outcomes can be directly extrapolated and downscaled. This work attempts to relax these problems...

A topographic index, or flood descriptor, that combines the scaling of bankfull depth with morphology was shown to describe well the tendency of an area to be flooded. However, this approach depends on the quality and availability of flood maps and assumes that outcomes can be directly extrapolated and downscaled. This work attempts to relax these...

A detailed delineation of flood-prone areas over large regions represents a challenge that cannot be easily solved with today’s resources. The main limitations lie in algorithms and hardware, but also costs, scarcity and sparsity of data and our incomplete knowledge of how inundation events occur in different river floodplains. We showcase the impl...

In caso di eventi alluvionali, i danni strutturali e/o le interruzioni di servizio delle infrastrutture lineari di trasporto (ad esempio ferrovie, autostrade, ecc.) sono responsabili di una parte considerevole delle perdite economiche totali, dirette e indirette, specialmente nei Paesi più sviluppati. Partendo da questa considerazione, la memoria,...

Extended abstract Economic losses and social consequences caused by hydrological extreme events in Europe have been steadily increasing over the last three decades, due to the combination of different factors. Climate change is often indicated as responsible for the intensification of extreme hydrological events, but several studies also highlight...

In case of flood events the damage and/or service disruption of linear infrastructures (e.g. railways, highways, etc.) is responsible for a considerable part of the total direct and indirect loss, especially in developed countries. Moving from this consideration, this study focuses on large networks of linear infrastructures (in particular, railway...

A detailed delineation of flood-prone areas over large regions represents a challenge that cannot be easily solved with today's resources. The main limitations lie in algorithms and hardware, but also costs, scarcity and sparsity of data and our incomplete knowledge of how inundation events occur in different river floodplains. We showcase the impl...

In recent years, the acquisition of data from multiple sources, together with improvements in computational capabilities, has allowed to improve our understanding on natural hazard through new approaches based on machine learning and Big Data analytics. This has given new potential to flood risk mapping, allowing the automatic extraction of flood p...

Flood susceptibility indicators that combine hydraulic scaling with morphological descriptors were shown to be well suited to map flood prone areas (Manfreda et al., 2015; Samela et al., 2017). However, the methodological workflow used (Degiorgis et al., 2012) strongly depends on the availability of reference flood studies to perform a linear binar...

KEY POINTS - In data-poor environments useful information about flood hazard exposure can be obtained using geomorphic methods. - An automated DEM-based procedure, named Geomorphic Flood Areas tool, has been implemented in the QGIS environment. - The GFA tool enables a fast and cost-effective flood mapping by performing a linear binary classific...

The GFA tool executable code and documentation can be downloaded from the QGIS plugin repository and/or the website: https://github.com/HydroLAB-UNIBAS/GFA-Geomorphic-Flood-Area.

Understanding in detail which areas are prone to riverine flooding over large scales remains a challenge, relating very much to data scarcity and sparsity, but also to our limited knowledge on how hazard in an atmosphere-catchment system operates and to the economic effort in setting up detailed models for complex river networks. This paper describ...

The last decades have seen a massive advance in technologies for Earth observation (EO) and environmental monitoring, which provided scientists and engineers with valuable spatial information for studying hydrologic processes. At the same time, the power of computers and newly developed algorithms have grown sharply. Such advances have extended the...

Advances in flow monitoring are crucial to increase our knowledge on basin hydrology and to understand the interactions between flow dynamics and infrastructures. In this context, image processing offers great potential for hydraulic monitoring, allowing acquisition of a wide range of measurements with high spatial resolution at relatively low cost...

The present work summarizes the findings of the validation of an index-based estimation of riverine flood-prone areas at the European scale (i.e., 269 drainage basins). A pattern recognition technique is applied to a morphological descriptor for the classification of flood-prone areas and their simplified mapping over large-scales. The classificati...

Floods have an important influence on society, being able to affect human life, human properties and also cultural heritage. Nevertheless, the dynamics of floods and their interaction with infrastructure over time is still unexplored. Therefore, there is a significant need for the development of new hydrologic and hydraulic modeling techniques able...

Floods have an important influence on society, being able to affect human life, human properties and also cultural heritage. Nevertheless, the dynamics of floods and their interaction with infrastructure over time is still unexplored. Therefore, there is a significant need for the development of new hydrologic and hydraulic modeling techniques able...

In hydrological modelling, the challenge is to identify an optimal strategy to exploit tools and available observations in order to enhance model reliability. The increasing availability of data promotes the use of new calibration techniques able to make use of additional information on river basins. In the present study, a lumped hydrological mode...

Delineation of flood hazard and flood risk areas is a critical issue, but practical difficulties regularly make complete achievement of the task a challenge. In data-scarce environments (e.g. ungauged basins, large-scale analyses), useful information about flood hazard exposure can be obtained using geomorphic methods. In order to advance this fiel...

Knowing the location and the extent of areas exposed to floods is the most basic information needed for planning flood management strategies. Unfortunately, a complete identification of these areas is still lacking in many countries. Recent studies have highlighted that a significant amount of information regarding the inundation process is already...

The goal of this paper is to introduce the first clear-water scour model based on both the informational entropy concept and the principle of maximum entropy, showing that a variational approach is ideal for describing erosional processes under complex situations. The proposed bridge–pier scour entropic (BRISENT) model is capable of reproducing the...

Integrating large open data and emerging information and communication technologies in flood risk management may well represent a next crucial stage in supporting robust, evidence-based decision-making. Flood risk management policies, such as the EU Floods Directive, are increasingly demanding and challenging, and authorities and stakeholders are c...

Basilicata is known for the highest frequency of extreme hydrological and geological events. Several landslides and floods have extensively affected the region because of its geological characteristics and dynamics of precipitation producing extensive damage to regional urban areas and infrastructures. In this work, an analysis of extreme events oc...

Il presente lavoro descrive i risultati della campagna di rilievo fotogrammetrico della città dei Sassi mediante UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle). Le tecniche innovative di rilievo UAV permettono di ottenere informazioni ad alta risoluzione di aree di interesse storico ed architettonico anche in aree difficilmente raggiungibili con altri metodi. I dat...

The importance of delineating flood hazard and risk areas at a global scale has been highlighted for many years. However, its complete achievement regularly encounters practical difficulties, above all the lack of data and implementation costs. In conditions of scarce data availability (e.g. ungauged basins, large-scale analyses), a fast and cost-e...

Bridges are important for society because they allow social, cultural and economic connectivity. Flood events can compromise the safety of bridge piers up to the complete collapse. The Bridge Scour phenomena has been described by empirical formulae deduced from hydraulic laboratory experiments. The range of applicability of such models is restricte...

According to the European Environment Agency (EEA Report No 1/2016), a significant share of the European population is estimated to be living on or near a floodplain, with Italy having the highest population density in flood-prone areas among the countries analysed. This tendency, tied with event frequency and magnitude (e.g.: the 24/11/2016 floods...

Efficient strategies for preparing communities to protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate flood hazard are often hampered by the lack of information about the position and extent of flood-prone areas. Hydrologic and hydraulic analyses allow to obtain detailed flood hazard maps, but are a computationally intensive exercise requiring...

Bridges are important for society because they allow social, cultural and economic connectivity. Flood events can compromise the safety of bridge piers up to the complete collapse. The Bridge Scour phenomenon has been described by empirical formulae deduced from hydraulic laboratory experiments. The range of applicability of such models is restrict...

Knowing the location and the extent of the areas exposed to flood hazards is essential to any strategy for minimizing the risk. Unfortunately, in ungauged basins the use of traditional floodplain mapping techniques is prevented by the lack of the extensive data required. The present work aims to overcome this limitation by defining an alternative s...

Binary raster dataset (.txt format) containing flood susceptibility maps related to 100-year river floods occurring in the continental U.S. These mapping products were derived through terrain analysis and a technique of pattern classification performed on DEMs obtained from HydroSHEDS (http://hydrosheds.cr.usgs.gov/overview.php) with a 3 arc-second...

A practical and cost-effective method is proposed to realize a fast delineation of the floodplains in the contexts where the available data are too poor to carry out hydrological/hydraulic analyses.  The linear binary classification using the recently proposed Geomorphic Flood Index (GFI) exhibited high classification accuracies and reliability in...

Historically, man has always preferred to settle and live near the water. This tendency has not changed throughout time, and today nineteen of the twenty most populated agglomerations of the world (Demographia World Urban Areas, 2015) are located along watercourses or at the mouth of a river. On one hand, these locations are advantageous from many...

In the present work, the flood hazard exposure in an ungauged basin in Africa is assessed exploiting the basin morphological characteristics. Flood-prone areas are identified using linear binary classifiers based on several geomorphic descriptors extracted from digital elevation models (DEMs). The classifiers are calibrated individually and evaluat...

The identification of flood-prone areas is a critical issue becoming everyday more pressing for our society. A preliminary delineation can be carried out by DEM-based procedures that rely on basin geomorphologic features. In the present paper, we investigated the dominant topographic controls for the flood exposure using techniques of pattern class...

Three different geomorphic approaches to the identification of flood prone areas are investigated by means of a comparative analysis of the input parameters, the performances and the range of applicability. The selected algorithms are: the method proposed by Manfreda et al. (2011) based on a modified version of the Topographic Index (TIm); the line...

The identification of flood-prone areas is a critical issue becoming everyday more pressing for our society. A preliminary delineation can be carried out by DEM-based procedures that relay on basin geomorphologic features. In the present paper, we investigated the dominant topographic controls for the flood exposure using techniques of pattern clas...

Floods represent the most critical natural hazard for many countries and their frequency appears to be increasing in recent times. The legal constraints of public administrators and the growing interest of private companies (e.g., insurance companies) in identifying the areas exposed to the flood risk, is determining the necessity of developing new...

The remarkable number of inundations that caused, in the last decades, thousands of deaths and huge economic losses, testifies the extreme vulnerability of many Countries to the flood hazard. As a matter of fact, human activities are often developed in the floodplains, creating conditions of extremely high risk. Terrain morphology plays an importan...

In the present work, we present an application of a new formulation for the estimation of the soil moisture in the root zone based on the measured value of soil moisture at the surface. The method has been recently proposed by Manfreda et al. (2012) with the aim to provide a mathematical relationship between surface and root zone soil moisture. It...