From Hazard to Consequences: Evaluation of Direct and Indirect Impacts of Flooding Along the Emilia-Romagna Coastline, Italy

Abstract

Managing coastal flood risk at the regional scale requires a prioritization of economic resources along the shoreline. Advanced modeling assessment and open-source tools are now available to support transparent and rigorous risk evaluation and to inform managers and stakeholders in their choices. However, the issues lay in data availability and data richness to estimate coastal vulnerability and impacts. The Coastal Risk Assessment Framework (CRAF) has been developed as part of the Resilience Increasing Strategies for Coasts -Toolkit (RISC-KIT) EU FP7 project. The framework provides two levels of analysis. In the first phase, a coastal index approach is applied to identify a restricted number of potential critical areas for different hazards (i.e., erosion and flooding). In the second phase, an integrated hazard and impact modeling approach is applied in the critical areas to assess the direct and indirect impacts of storm events using a matrix-based approach and a systemic analysis. The framework was tested on the coastline of the Emilia-Romagna region (northern Italy) for two probabilistic coastal storms with representative return periods of 10 and 100 years. In this work, the application of the second phase of the CRAF is presented for two sites, Lido degli Estensi-Spina (Ferrara province) and Milano Marittima (Ravenna province). The hazard modeling of floods was implemented using a coupling between XBeach and Lisflood-FP. The Integrated Disruption Assessment (INDRA) model was applied to quantify direct and indirect impacts. The impact assessment focused on household's financial recovery, business disruption and financial recovery, transport network disruption and risk to life. The considered business sector comprised the key economic activities related to the sun-and-beach tourism, which is one of the main drivers of the regional economy. A Multi-Criteria Analysis was applied to support decision-makers to identify the most critical site. The importance of detailed physical and socio-economic data collected at the regional and local levels is highlighted and discussed, together with the importance to involve different stakeholders in the process (e.g., through interviews and surveys). The limitations of the applied approach due to data quality and availability and to the assumptions introduced in the hazard and disruption models are highlighted.

Dynamic modeling of coastal compound flooding hazards due to tides, extratropical storms, waves, and sea-level rise: a case study in the Salish Sea, Washington (USA)

“…Other (computationally efficient) approaches exist to estimate the effect of short waves on modeled flood extent. For example, [46] uses 1D profiles of XBeach in combination with LISFLOOD [47] where XBeach computes discharge time series of overtopping over the dune crest which is used as input for LISFLOOD that computes the 2D flooding. The authors also included sandy morphodynamic change during the storm as part of the assessment.…”

Wind-wave characteristics and extremes along the Emilia-Romagna coast

“…The wind-induced stress on the sea surface gives rise to wind waves that affect human activities on the coasts (Armaroli et al, 2019). The prevailing wind waves of a region determine the defence performance of coastal and offshore structures, and therefore precise information on wind waves is crucial for coastal operations and defence systems.…”

“…In the light of several hazardous and extreme events in the Emilia-Romagna (ER) coastal area, several studies have investigated the following: (i) coastal risk and vulnerability to flooding and erosion (Armaroli et al, 2009(Armaroli et al, , 2019Sekovski et al, 2015;Armaroli and Duo, 2018;Sanuy et al, 2018;Ferrarin et al, 2020); (ii) sea level rise, land subsidence, and littoral hydrodynamics (Perini et al, 2017;Gaeta et al, 2018); (iii) identification of storm thresholds (Armaroli et al, 2012); and (iv) forecasting of coastal flooding (Biolchi et al, 2021(Biolchi et al, , 2022.…”

An Innovative Tool for the Management of the Surface Drinking Water Resources at European Level: GOWARE—Transnational Guide Towards an Optimal WAter REgime

“…One of the main outputs of the Project is represented by GOWARE (transnational Guide toward Optimal WAter REgime), an interactive DST designed for selecting, prioritizing, and promoting the most suitable management practices for the integrated water resource protection and land use management, accounting for a number of specific user's requirements. In GOWARE-DST, BMPs are ranked by applying the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) [20], a MCDA model widely used in decision-making processes related to the management of natural and environment resources [21][22][23][24][25][26][27], since it is recognized as one of the most effective ways to achieve tailored solutions taking into account requirements of single or specific categories of users.…”