Flood risk assessment of environmental pollution hotspots

Abstract

The potential spread of pollutants stored in environmental hotspots such as wastewater treatment plants, waste handling facilities, contaminated sites, etc., is among the adverse consequences of floods. This aspect has been rarely examined with a risk-based approach, although required by the European legislation. In this study, a method for estimating flood risk caused by environmental hotspots is developed. Risk includes flood hazard, hotspots exposure, and the expected severity of the environmental impacts, obtained as the combination of vulnerability of the surrounding environment and pollution potential of the hotspots. The assessment is performed at catchment scale on a geographical basis, using open data, available from databases of public bodies and environmental agencies. Risk maps obtained by the application of the developed method are produced for the Arno river catchment in Tuscany (central Italy).\ud The area hosts approximately 1750 environmental pollution hotspots among which 5-10% have been classified at high risk

The Whole Versus the Parts: The Challenge of Compositional Data Analysis (CoDA) Methods for Geochemistry

“…The catchment area of the Arno River Basin is entirely located in Tuscany, Central Italy and has a surface of 8,228 km 2 with an average elevation of 353 m. The river's headwater spring is in the Northern Apennines at 1650 m, and flows for about 242 km toward the Ligurian Sea, 10 km West of Pisa and 110 km of Florence, respectively. The drainage network follows NW-SE trending tectonic structures that form six main sub-basins from East to West: (1) Casentino, ( 2 (Berner and Berner 1996), has suffered from the past century an increased industrial and agricultural development, so that the contribution of chemical weathering is mixed with anthropic inputs (Arrighi et al 2018). Further details about sampling and analytical methodologies can be found in Nisi et al (2008).…”

How Flood Hazard Maps Improve the Understanding of Ecologically Active Floodplains

“…A further aspect considering more frequent floods as floodplain borders for regulation functions is that larger floods like T-medium have a very different effect on the system than frequent floods. Large-magnitude peak flows are disastrous and lead to processes like floodplain resetting [38]; and there is a higher risk for contamination of floodplains through damaged critical infrastructure like waste water treatment plant overflow [39], creating some disadvantages of floodplains strongly modified by large flood inundation. However, pollution from the outwash of polluted water bodies and soils (e.g., heavy metals) can already occur during floods with recurrence intervals of 3-4 years [40] or with changing flooding frequencies and is strongly related to the sediment transport of each river and its physical-chemical conditions [11,41].…”

Assessment and Management of Pressure on Water Quality Protection along the Middle Route of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project

“…The design of the trunk canal ensures that there is no discharge outlet in the canal and that the canal is completely isolated from the crossed river, eliminating the possibility of industrial and residential waste water along the route. As the trunk canal directly passes through the mountains and the hilly areas, there are still risks from an outbreak of large-scale flooding, carrying the surrounding surface pollutants into the dry canal and affecting the water quality of the dry canal [17].…”