Abstract. As a consequence of flood impacts, communities inhabiting mountain areas are increasingly affected by considerable damage to infrastructure and property. The design of effective flood risk mitigation strategies and their subsequent implementation is crucial for a sustainable development in mountain areas. The assessment of the dynamic evolution of flood risk is the pillar of any subsequent planning process that is targeted at a reduction of the expected adverse consequences of the hazard impact. Given these premises, firstly, a comprehensive method to derive flood hazard process scenarios for well-defined areas at risk is presented. Secondly, conceptualisations of a static and dynamic flood risk assessment are provided. These are based on formal schemes to compute the risk mitigation performance of devised mitigation strategies within the framework of economic costbenefit analysis. In this context, techniques suitable to quantify the expected losses induced by the identified flood impacts are provided.

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Waste-to-energy (WtE) could prevent the production of up to 50 million tons of CO2 emissions that would otherwise be generated by burning fossil fuels. Yet, support for a large deployment of WtE plants is not universal because there is a widespread concern that energy from waste discourages recycling practices. Moreover, incineration plants generate air pollution and chemical waste residuals and are expensive to build compared to modern landfills that have appropriate procedures for the prevention of leakage of harmful gasses. In the context of the EU, this paper aims to provide a picture of the actual role of WtE as a disposal option for municipal solid waste (MSW), enabling it to be utilized as a source of clean energy, and to address two important aspects of the debate surrounding the use of WtE; namely, (i) the relationship between WtE and recycling, and (ii) the effects of decentralization, waste mobility, and plant ownership. Finally, it reviews the role of the EU as a supranational regulator, which may allow the lower government levels (where consumer preferences are better represented) to take decisions, while taking spillovers into account.

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Abstract:The impacts of flood events that occurred in autumn 2011 in the Italian regions of Liguria and Tuscany revived the engagement of the public decision-maker to enhance the synergy of flood control and land use planning. In this context, the design of efficient flood risk mitigation strategies and their subsequent implementation critically relies on a careful vulnerability analysis of the fixed and mobile elements exposed to flood hazard. In this paper we develop computation schemes enabling dynamic vulnerability and risk analyses for a broad typological variety of elements at risk. To show their applicability, a series of prime examples are discussed in detail, e.g. a bridge deck impacted by the flood and a car, first displaced and subsequently exposed to collision with fixed objects. We hold the view that it is essential that the derivation of the computational schemes to assess the vulnerability of endangered objects should be based on classical and fluid mechanics. In such a way, we aim to complement from a methodological perspective the existing, mainly empirical, vulnerability and risk assessment approaches and to support the design of effective flood risk mitigation strategies by defusing the main criticalities within the systems prone to flood risk. OPEN ACCESSWater 2012, 4 197