One of the key ideas of river restoration is that restoring rivers to a more natural status is desirable not only for pure environmental reasons but also to combat flood and geomorphic risk. This paper investigates whether this can be true even in a Mediterranean context, quite different from that of Northern Europe where European river restoration was born. Specifically, we evaluate whether the savings obtained from not implementing new protection works and from maintenance costs not spent – because of elimination of several existing works – exceed the likely increment of flooding and hydromorphological risk. Different conceptual approaches to the decision problem of flood control are synthesised within an integrated, three‐level, evaluation framework. The proposed evaluation framework is applied to a case study on the Chiese River (Po River basin, Italy). Results for this case study are presented. Finally, findings, limitations and potential for application are discussed, concluding that river restoration offers a viable pathway for improving the river environment while not incurring additional economic costs associated with classic flood risk management.
This work aims at integrating the understanding of the river geomorphic dynamic into planning of reservoir operation rules. The case study is a 112 km long reach of the Po river in Italy, from Piacenza to Boretto. The Isola Serafini (IS) gate serves a large run-of-the-river hydroelectricity plant since 1962. The dam blocks a relevant amount of sediments and is cause, together with intense sand mining, for the river bed incision immediately downstream that has made several navigation and irrigation devices unusable during low flow periods, leading to expensive and recurrent works to restore their functionality. The operational rule of IS gate was modelled using 4 parameters and a number of experiments were simulated adopting alternative operating policies over a 10-years period. A 1D hydraulic numerical model with mobile bed has been used to estimate bed degradation trends. The results show that there is space for a meaningful trade-off between the conflicting objectives of hydropower production and reduction of river bed degradation. The analysis provides operative rules able to effectively tackle river bed incision with moderate loss in hydropower production
This paper proposes a tool which river managers may need to ascertain whether the key idea of River Restoration is valid, i.e. that rivers in more natural status are desirable not only for pure environmental reasons, but also to combat flood and geomorphic risk. The point addressed is how to predict the morphology and geometry that a river will assume after the application of a River Restoration project which foresees significant changes in the system of defence and exploitation works as well as morphological adjustments (e.g. reconnection of an incised main channel with the surrounding ex-floodplain). To this aim we developed a semi-quantitative methodology that integrates several differing criteria: from historical analysis of geomorphic evolution, expert-based mechanistic reasoning, checking with empirical qualitative formulas and analytical support from fluvial geomorphology and classic hydraulics. The development of the methodology has taken place on a case study along the 80 km of Chiese River, downstream of Idro lake, in northern Italy. Although the product to be considered is just a pilot one, we see it as a promising tool, which also opens several challenging questions suited for further fascinating research work.
Introduction: This study examines the validity and the reliability of the translated-into-Italian version of the SCNS-SF34 melanoma module (SCNS-M12-Ita) for a sample of patients with melanoma ( n = 268). Methods: Content validity was analyzed by examining the redundancy of items. Floor/ceiling effects were investigated via frequency tables. Factor structure was studied through principal component analysis. Internal consistency was evaluated with Cronbach α. Test–retest reliability was analyzed using intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs). Convergent–discriminant validity was studied by calculating Pearson correlations. Construct validity was investigated by comparing subgroups of patients through multivariate analysis of variance. Results: Content validity of the SCNS-M12-Ita was satisfactory. The floor effect ranged from 24.3% to 82.5%. The 2-factor solution explained 61.4% of the total variance. Internal consistency was excellent for component 1 (α = 0.92) and questionable (α = 0.58) for component 2. Test–retest reliability was excellent for component 1 (ICC = 0.92) and poor for component 2 (ICC = 0.58). Except for component 2, item-total correlations were greater than 0.60. Construct validity was confirmed, as the expected correlations ( r < 0.40) were observed and 60% of the postulated hypotheses about between-group differences were confirmed. Conclusions: The study demonstrated that the SCNS-M12-Ita is a valid and reliable instrument for assessing the supportive care needs of patients with melanoma.
Water resource management and flood forecasting are crucial societal and financial stakes requiring reliable predictions of flow parameters (depth, velocity), the accuracy of which is often limited by uncertainties in hydrodynamic numerical models. In this study, we assess the effect of two uncertainty sources, namely breach characteristics induced by overtopping and the roughness coefficient, on water elevations and inundation extent. A two-dimensional (2D) hydraulic solver was applied in a Monte Carlo integration framework to a reach of the Loire river (France) including about 300 physical parameters. Inundation hazard maps for different flood scenarios allowed for the highlighting of the impact of the breach development chronology. Special attention was paid to proposing a relevant sensitivity analysis to examine the factors influencing the depth and extent of flooding. The spatial analysis of the vulnerability area induced by a levee breach width exhibits that, with increasing the flood discharge, the rise of the parameter influence is accompanied by a more localized spatial effect. This argues for a local analysis to allow a clear understanding of the flood hazard. The physical interpretation, highlighted by a global sensitivity analysis, showed the dependence of the flood simulation on the main factors studied, i.e., the roughness coefficients and the characteristics of the breaches.
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