Flood hazard of major river segments, Benevento Province, Southern Italy

Abstract

On 15 October 2015, a storm-induced flood hit the central sector of Benevento Province (southern Italy) causing two deaths and severe damage to infrastructure, buildings and local agriculture. This area has a long history of similar events and since 1924 its major river segments have been monitored with several hydrometric stations. We used data from two of these stations and a LiDAR derived high-resolution topography to develop a flood hazard map. For map computation, we first derived a flood inundation map from topography. Subsequently we estimated the probability of exceedance of each specific fluvial stage from the combination of a Generalized Extreme Value and a Gamma fits of available hydrometric data. As boundary condition, we considered a reference scenario corresponding to an estimated 500 year flood. The hazard maps provide an overview of the flood hazard in the central sector of Benevento Province and floodplains zonation in flood perspective. ARTICLE HISTORY

GIS-Based Geomorphological Map of the Calore River Floodplain Near Benevento (Southern Italy) Overflooded by the 15th October 2015 Event

“…Recent studies [41] found that the flood covered an overall area of about 30 km 2 of the entire Calore River floodplain and reached a maximum river stage of ∼9.8 m at the Solopaca stream gauge station, located a few tens of kilometers downstream from the study area ( Figure 1). A very similar stage of ∼9.5 m was also estimated in Benevento [41]. As previously stated, an event similar to the flood described in this paper occurred in 1949.…”

“…In this study, a GIS-based, object-oriented geomorphological map of the Calore River floodplain in the surroundings of Benevento (southern Italy; Figure 1), overflooded by the 15 October 2015 destructive flood [41] is presented. From a geomorphological point of view, in the Benevento basin, at least four orders of land surfaces, interpreted as remnants of depositional glacis [47], shaped in the alluvial and fluviolacustrine deposits described above, whose ages range from Middle Pleistocene to Holocene, are present.…”

Multiple Effects of Intense Meteorological Events in the Benevento Province, Southern Italy

“…The flooded areas of major river segments of the Calore River were described in a previous mapping study [20]; here, we considered the flooded areas in the entire Benevento province.…”

“…The overflow of the Tammaro and Calore rivers damaged Benevento's industrial area, which is downstream and near the confluence of these two rivers. In this area, the water reached an estimated maximum level of 9.5 m [20] and destroyed important local infrastructures and factories ( Figure 9A). Further downstream, some of the most damaged zones include a sector of the historical center of Benevento ( Figure 9B) and the area named "Pantano" (Figure 9C,D), which means swamp-a clear reflection of its history.…”

Multi-Method Tracking of Monsoon Floods Using Sentinel-1 Imagery

“…Flood hazard and risk evaluations can be completed using the results of deterministic hydrodynamic models that simulate water movement across the floodplain. In the presence of monitoring (fluvial stage or discharge) and topographic data, statistical models associated with GIS processing can provide a basis for such kinds of analyses [6][7][8]. Both deterministic and statistical models need to be calibrated and validated using available flood data in terms of spatial extent, persistence, and frequency.…”