Inundation Impacts on Agriculture: Reconstruction and Preliminary Findings of the Recent Event occurred along the Panaro River

Abstract

<p><span>The estimation of flood damage plays a key role for planning and implementing flood risk prevention and mitigation measures. While many contributions can be found in the scientific literature about inundation damage to buildings and infrastructures, estimation of losses to the agricultural sector is currently poorly discussed. Even if different conceptual or physically based models have been proposed for the agricultural sector as well, studies testing their application to real cases are still not sufficiently abundant due to the difficulties in finding appropriate inundation and damage data. The present work attempts to contribute in this matter by investigating the impacts of a recent inundation event: the selected case study is the flood event occurred the 6<sup>th</sup> December 2020 in Northern Italy (Emilia-Romagna region), caused by the formation of a breach on the right levee of the Panaro River. The area is mainly devoted to agriculture, with farmers growing prevalently winter wheat, sorghum and forage crops, such as alfalfa. The inundation footprint has been reproduced by means of a detailed 2D hydraulic model settled with HEC-RAS software (v. 6.0). The model focuses on the accurate reproduction of water depth and permanence required for the estimation of damages to agriculture activities. Model validation refers to different observed data: (a) inundation extent, (b) maximum water depth and (c) duration of water presence; data has been collected from various sources: remote sensing images, surveys to local land owners and interviews to authorities involved in the inundation management. Although representative of a preliminary investigation, the study provides additional insights towards a better estimation of potential impacts of inundation events on agriculture activities. </span></p>