Elisa Arnone

University of Udine | UNIUD · Dipartimento Politecnico di Ingegneria e Architettura

In this study we propose a probabilistic approach for coupled distributed hydrological-hillslope stability models that accounts for soil parameters uncertainty at basin scale. The geotechnical and soil retention curve parameters are treated as random variables across the basin and theoretical probability distributions of the Factor of Safety (FS) a...

The Friuli Venezia Giulia (FVG) region, northeastern Italy, records the heaviest precipitation annual totals of the country. The region counts on a dense ground-station network constituted by 2 main rain-gauges networks, whose sampling frequency has been progressively increased from 60 up to 1 min step. In this work, we propose a comprehensive anal...

Prolonged droughts and water scarcity have become more frequent in recent years, exacerbating the problem of the artificial reservoirs management in the Mediterranean area. This study proposes a methodology which combines a Nonlinear AutoRegressive network with eXogenous input (NARX) data-driven model with Seasonal Forecasts (SFs) data, with the ai...

We present a procedure to predict peakflows in mountain and ungauged basins, by addressing two challenges: fine temporal-resolution required to capture intense storms; scarcity of streamflow measurements needed to calibrate hydrological models. The study area is the Fella river basin at Pontebba and its upstream Uque sub-basin, northeastern Italian...

Leonardo's rule (Lrule) applied to below-ground systems defines a simple topological scheme that describes how the branches of root architectures develop within the soil. The approach does not consider the soil-climate-root interactions. From another hand, eco-hydrological approaches exploit physically-based formulations to derive the dynamic evolu...

This study employs a distributed eco-hydrological-landslide model, the tRIBS-VEGGIE-Landslide, to evaluate the influence of terrain resolution on the hydro-geomorphological processes involved in slope stability analysis. The model implements a Triangulated Irregular Network (TIN) to describe the topography starting from a grid-DEM. Five grid-DEM re...

The Northeastern Italy and the therein Friuli Venezia Giulia (FVG) region are frequently hit by heavy and prolonged precipitations, which cause frequent debris flow and diffused shallow landslides. In this study we focus on a mountain sub-basin of the Fella river watershed, the Uque at Ugovizza, located in the northeastern Julian Alps of the FVG, w...

This study proposes a methodology for the drought assessment based on the seasonal forecasts. These are climate predictions of atmospheric variables, such as precipitation, temperature, wind speed, for upcoming season, up to 7 months. In regions particularly vulnerable to droughts and to changes in climate, such as the Mediterranean areas, predicti...

In this paper, we discuss the drought-alert decision support system (DA-DSS), a solution developed by the Small Medium Enterprise Amigo s.r.l., (Rome, Italy) and MaP Ltd., (Athens, Greece). within the Horizon 2020 cross-sectoral project "cross-climate". DA-DSS is a prototype of the WebGIS application aimed to support the water utilities (WUs) in th...

In the climate change era, it is fundamental to monitor the availability of water resources. One of the possible causes for a change in the water availability is related to variations in the meteorological conditions. To track this change, ground-based observations are one of the commonly used measurements. However, these datasets might include bot...

Water resources are under stress in many areas of the world, because of a combination of climatic and anthropogenic factors. The Mediterranean area is one of the regions mostly vulnerable to climate alterations. These alterations have direct impacts on the surface water balance and groundwater recharge, and thus changes in the reservoir inputs and...

Warmer air has the potential to hold more water vapour and, therefore, to provide more water to rainfall events. Studying the relationship between rainfall and temperature represents an emerging issue in hydrology and meteorology, since it can be considered fundamental for evaluating the effects of global warming on future precipitation. Various ap...

The ECI is a multi-hazard index which has been developed in the context of the eXtreme Climate Facilities (XCF) project lead by ARC (African Risk Capacity) with the objective of detecting the occurrence of climate extremes over the African continent. The main hazards covered by ECI are the extreme dry, wet and heat events. However, the definition o...

Changes in climate and urban growth are the most influential factors affecting hydrological characteristics in urban and extra‐urban contexts. The assessment of the impacts of these changes on the extremes rainfall‐runoff events may have important implications on urban and extra‐urban management policies against severe events, such as floods, and o...

Increasing precipitation extremes are one of the possible consequences of a warmer climate. These may exceed the capacity of urban drainage systems and thus impact the urban environment. Since short-duration precipitation events are primarily responsible for flooding in urban systems it is important to assess the response of extreme precipitation a...

The entire Piedmont of the Southeastern United States, where the Calhoun Critical Zone Observatory (CCZO) is located, experienced one of the most severe erosive events of the last two centuries. Forested areas were cleared to cultivate cotton, tobacco, and other crops during the nineteenth and early twentieth century and these land use changes, tog...

Critical rainfall thresholds for landslides are powerful tools for preventing landslide hazard. The thresholds are commonly estimated empirically starting from rainfall events that triggered landslides in the past. The creation of the appropriate rainfall-landslide database is one of the main efforts in this approach. In fact, an accurate agreement...

This study analyzes whether and at what rate the parameterization of the Soil Water Retention Curve (SWRC) affects the analysis of shallow slope stability for differently structured unsaturated soils. Advanced empirical or physically-based equations of SWRCs have been proposed in literature to describe soil systems characterized by the so-called bi...

The damages caused by flash floods are among the most onerous in terms of loss of lives and damage to properties. Derivation of rainfall threshold is one of the approaches commonly used for the development of flash flood warning systems. Specifically, rainfall threshold is the rainfall amount that, for a given basin area and duration, is enough to...

This study proposes a new methodology for estimating the additional shear strength (or cohesion) exerted by vegetation roots on slope stability analysis within a coupled hydrological-stability model. The mechanical root cohesion is estimated within a Fiber Bundle Model framework that allows for the evaluation of the root strength as a function of s...

The dynamics of soil organic carbon (SOC) in tropical forests play an important role in the global carbon (C) cycle. Past attempts to quantify the net C exchange with the atmosphere in regional and global budgets do not systematically account for dynamic feedbacks among linked hydrological, geomorphological, and biogeochemical processes, which cont...

Tropical rainforests play a significant role in the global carbon (C) cycle. The Luquillo Critical Zone Observatory (LCZO) in Puerto Rico is characterized by intense erosion and landslide occurrence, which have been historically influenced by human activity and land use change, and drive the redistribution and burial of soil organic C (SOC) across...

The dynamics of carbon and nitrogen cycles, increasingly influenced by human activities, are the key to the functioning of ecosystems. These cycles are influenced by the composition of the substrate, availability of nitrogen, the population of microorganisms, and by environmental factors. Therefore, land management and use, climate change, and nitr...

The development of Web-based information systems coupled with advanced monitoring systems could prove to be extremely useful in landslides risk management and mitigation. A new frontier in the field of Rainfall-Triggered Landslides (RTLs) lies in the real-time modeling of the relationship between rainfall and slope stability; this requires an inten...

Climate variability due to the greenhouse effect has important implications on hydrological processes and water resources systems. Indeed, water availability, quality and streamflow are very sensitive to changes in temperature and precipitation regimes whose effects have to be fully considered in current water management and planning. International...

This work presents the capabilities of a model, i.e. the tRIBS-VEGGIE-Landslide, in two different versions, i.e. developed within a probabilistic framework and coupled with a root cohesion module. The probabilistic model treats geotechnical and soil retention curve parameters as random variables across the basin and estimates theoretical probabilit...

This study proposes a methodology to account for the uncertainty of hydrological and mechanical parameters in coupled distributed hydrological-stability models for shallow landslide assessment. A probabilistic approach was implemented in an existing eco-hydrological and landslide model by randomizing soil cohesion, friction angle and soil retention...

Retrieving precipitation data from a rain gauge network is a classical and common practice in hydrology and climatology. These data represent the key input in hydrological modeling to reproduce, for example, the characteristics of a flood phenomenon. The accuracy of the model results is strongly dependent on the consistency of the monitoring networ...

The spatial variability of soil, vegetation, topography, and precipitation controls hydrological processes, consequently resulting in high spatio-temporal variability of most of the hydrological variables, such as soil moisture. Limitation in existing measuring system to characterize this spatial variability, and its importance in various applicati...

Catchment slope distribution is one of the topographic characteristics that significantly control rainfall-triggered landslide modeling, in both direct and indirect ways. Slope directly determines the soil volume associated with instability. Indirectly slope also affects the subsurface lateral redistribution of soil moisture across the basin, which...

Slope stability depends on geotechnical and hydrological factors that exhibit wide natural spatial variability, yet sufficient measurements of the related parameters are rarely available over entire study areas. The uncertainty associated with the inability to fully characterize hydrologic behavior has an impact on any attempt to model landslide ha...

I modelli empirici per la derivazione di soglie pluviometriche critiche di innesco frana risultano tra le metodologie più utilizzati utilizzate in letteratura volte a fornire strumenti di pre-allarme in vista di un evento meteorico critico. Esse identificano il valore minimo o massimo di precipitazione necessaria per innescare il processo franoso a...

La suscettibilità da frana può essere definita come la propensione di una determinata area all’innesco di movimenti di massa, in relazione alle caratteristiche intrinseche dei terreni di copertura e del substrato, alle caratteristiche morfometriche e morfologiche, all'attività antropica, ed alla maggiore esposizione nei confronti degli agenti clima...

This paper presents the development of a rainfall-triggered landslide module within an existing physically based spatially distributed ecohydrologic model. The model, tRIBS-VEGGIE (Triangulated Irregular Networks-based Real-time Integrated Basin Simulator and Vegetation Generator for Interactive Evolution), is capable of a sophisticated description...

We performed an island-wide determination of static landslide susceptibility and hazard assessment as well as dynamic modeling of rainfall-induced shallow landslides in a particular hydrologic basin. Based on statistical analysis of past landslides, we determined that reliable prediction of the susceptibility to landslides is strongly dependent on...

Changes in rainfall characteristics are one of the most relevant signs of current climate alterations. Many studies have demonstrated an increase in rainfall intensity and a reduction of frequency in several areas of the world, including Mediterranean areas. Rainfall characteristics may be crucial for vegetation patterns formation and evolution in...

The use of statistical methods together with the GIS technologies is currently one of the most efficient tools in the assessment of landslide susceptibility. The correlation between the physical phenomenon and its triggering factors depends on several factors, including the resolution at which the elevation data are represented in a Digital Elevati...

The interest for spatial interpolating climatic datasets, as precipitation and temperature, arises from different needs, ranging from their usage for hydrological models to the building of meteoclimatic atlas of spatially distributed data. In the area of Sicily (Italy) the spatial distribution of these variables is related to the extremely variable...

Susceptibility assessment of areas prone to landsliding remains one of the most useful approaches in landslide hazard analysis. The key point of such analysis is the correlation between the physical phenomenon and its triggering factors based on past observations. Many methods have been developed in the scientific literature to capture and model th...

Changes in rainfall characteristics are one of the most relevant signs of current climate alterations. Many studies have demonstrated an increase in rainfall intensity and a reduction of frequency in several areas of the world, including Mediterranean areas. Rainfall characteristics may be crucial for vegetation patterns formation and evolution in...

Questo lavoro propone un modello idrologico concettuale a parametri concentrati capace di simulare il deflusso giornaliero in zone semiaride e le sue componenti di deflusso superficiale e sub-superficiale. La precipitazione è suddivisa in due componenti: la prima interessa una zona totalmente impermeabile e viene convogliata direttamente ad un serb...

This paper reports the first results of the Project SESAMO - SistEma informativo integrato per l'acquisizione, geStione e condivisione di dati AMbientali per il supportO alle decisioni (Integrated Information System for the acquisition, management and sharing of environmental data aimed to decision making). The main aim of the project is to design...

Effects of vegetation in improving slope stability are recognized on both hydrological and mechanical mechanisms. From one hand, vegetation leads to lower porewater pressure and soil moisture due to interception by foliage of rainfall, which reduces the amount of water available for infiltration, or uptake by root system of soil moisture. From the...

The use of statistical methods together with the GIS technologies is currently the most efficient tool in susceptibility assessment of area prone to landslide. The correlation between the physical phenomenon and its triggering factors based on past observations is the key point of such analysis. Many methods exist in scientific literature to captur...

Our goal is to develop a model capable to discern the response of a watershed to different erosion mechanisms. We propose a framework that integrates a geomorphic component into the physically-based and spatially distributed TIN-based Real-time Integrated Basin Simulator (tRIBS) model. The coupled model simulates main erosive processes of hillslope...

Landslides are a serious threat to life and property throughout the world. The causes of landslides are various since multiple dynamic processes are involved in driving slope failures. One of these causes is prolonged rainfall, which affects slope stability in different ways. Water infiltrating in a hillslope may cause a rise of the piezometric sur...

Precipitation data, one of the most important input required in hydrological modeling and forecasting, are usually recorded using raingauges which are classical and fundamental tools able to provide an estimate of rainfall at a point. The consistency of precipitation monitoring network in terms of spatial scale (network density and location of rain...

Changes in extreme rainfall are one of the most relevant sign of current climate alterations. Many studies have demonstrated an increase in rainfall intensity and a reduction of frequency in several areas of the world. This could be probably due to an acceleration of the hydrological cycle caused by temperature increase and could have, as consequen...

L’analisi statistica basata sulla correlazione tra cause e occorrenze, costituisce uno degli approcci più utilizzati in letteratura scientifica per la valutazione delle aree propense a produrre dissesti idrogeologici. Tra questi, il dissesto da frana rappresenta uno tra i più pericolosi e dannosi eventi naturali che negli ultimi anni hanno particol...

La conoscenza della distribuzione spaziale e temporale delle piogge di breve durata, nonché la loro cinematica, sono alcuni tra i fattori più importanti che stanno alla base dell’approssimazione dei modelli di trasformazione afflussi-deflussi nei bacini urbani. L'incertezza dovuta alla variabilità spaziale della pioggia può influenzare, ad esempio,...

Landslides are a major geologic hazard in the United States, typically triggered by rainfall, earthquakes, volcanoes and human activity. Rainfall-induced landslides are the most common type in the island of Puerto Rico, with one or two large events per year. We performed an island-wide determination of static landslide susceptibility and hazard ass...

Landslides are a serious threat to lives and property throughout the world. Over the last few years the need to provide consistent tools and support to decision-makers and land managers have led to significant progress in the analysis and understanding of the occurrence of landslides. The causes of landslides are varied. Multiple dynamic processes...

It is widely recognized that catchment geomorphology relationships can be used as predictors of catchment flood properties. Starting from this consideration, this paper want to analyze the effect of DEM resolution and threshold area on the hydrologic response at different basin scale, by using the approach of the geomorphologic instantaneous unit h...

Erosion component added to the physically-based and spatially distributed hydrological model tRIBS is described in details in this paper. The component provides a fully-distributed modeling of hillslope and channel erosion processes at the catchment scale by using a multiple resolution approach (TIN geometry) in representing the spatial heterogenei...