Extreme Rainfall and Floods in the Mediterranean Regions

A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Hydrology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2021) | Viewed by 13838

Special Issue Editors

Università di Salerno (UNISA)
Interests: hydrological extremes: floods and drought rainfall; rainfall–runoff modelling; uncertainty in forecasting, monitoring, and prediction; hydraulic network; granular flow
National Research Council of Italy, Research institute for geo-hydrological protection (CNR-IRPI), Rende (CS), Italy
Interests: natural hazards; floods; landslides; physical geography; climate change; hydrological modeling; environmental impact assessment; water resource management
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

There are many reasons to dedicate a Special Issue to Very Extreme Rainfall and Floods in the Mediterranean Regions (VERAFIM):

(i) The interaction between complex topography and convective meteorological phenomenology generates intense and small-scale phenomena, for which the quality of the magnitude and location predictions is still largely unsatisfactory, in the the monitoring network design and management phase, in the forecasting and construction phase of risk scenarios, and in the planning phase of structural and nonstructural interventions to mitigate their effects;

(ii) The high anthropic pressure on both shores of the Mediterranean accentuates the consequences of these phenomena, both in terms of damage and loss of human life;

(iii) Finally, recent results have indicated significant changes in the intensity and persistence of seasonality flooding across Europe and, in particular, in the Mediterranean.

This Special Issue is intended to be a moment that systematically brings together relevant and up-to-date information on the statistical, physiographic, and meteorological characteristics of VERAFIM and allows their effects to be analyzed both methodological and case studies points of view. Particular attention will be devoted to case studies on flood-related impact.

Prof. Paolo Villani
Prof. Olga Petrucci
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Water is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Very extreme rainfall and flooding
  • Rainfall–runoff modelling
  • Ground effect
  • Erosion
  • Inundation
  • Monitoring, forecast, and prediction
  • Uncertainty.

Published Papers (4 papers)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

14 pages, 1826 KiB  
Article
Regional Assessment of Sub-Hourly Annual Rainfall Maxima
by Anna Pelosi, Giovanni Battista Chirico, Pierluigi Furcolo and Paolo Villani
Water 2022, 14(7), 1179; https://doi.org/10.3390/w14071179 - 06 Apr 2022
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1747
Abstract
The assessment of rainfall extremes at sub-hourly scales is generally hindered by a lack of rainfall data at small timescale resolutions. This study proposes a methodology for assessing mean annual maximum rainfall at the sub-hourly scale by blending historical time series of annual [...] Read more.
The assessment of rainfall extremes at sub-hourly scales is generally hindered by a lack of rainfall data at small timescale resolutions. This study proposes a methodology for assessing mean annual maximum rainfall at the sub-hourly scale by blending historical time series of annual maxima recorded by mechanical stations (operating at hourly scales) up to the end of the past century with newer time series of annual maxima at higher time resolutions recorded by automatic stations installed over the past twenty years. A linear correlation was found at the regional scale between the shape parameter controlling the dependency of rainfall maxima with a duration longer than one hour and the shape parameter of the dependency of rainfall maxima with the durations shorter than one hour. Thanks to this correlation, data recorded at the mechanical stations could be exploited to assess sub-hourly mean annual maxima. The proposed hybrid procedure was verified and was found to provide estimates with an accuracy close to those obtained with the high-resolution data, i.e., our best estimates. Moreover, the proposed procedure outperforms what could be achieved by spatially interpolating the best estimates at those locations where only hourly data are available. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Extreme Rainfall and Floods in the Mediterranean Regions)
Show Figures

Figure 1

18 pages, 27701 KiB  
Article
I2-RED: A Massive Update and Quality Control of the Italian Annual Extreme Rainfall Dataset
by Paola Mazzoglio, Ilaria Butera and Pierluigi Claps
Water 2020, 12(12), 3308; https://doi.org/10.3390/w12123308 - 25 Nov 2020
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 3871
Abstract
The collection and management of hydrological data in Italy has been dealt with at national level, initially, by the National Hydrological Service (SIMN), and at regional level in the last 40 years. This change has determined problems in the availability of complete and [...] Read more.
The collection and management of hydrological data in Italy has been dealt with at national level, initially, by the National Hydrological Service (SIMN), and at regional level in the last 40 years. This change has determined problems in the availability of complete and homogeneous data for the whole country. As of 2020, an updated and quality-controlled dataset of the historical annual maxima rainfall in Italy is still lacking. The Italian Rainfall Extreme Dataset (I-RED) has recently been created to allow studies to be performed with a homogeneous dataset at a national level. In this paper, the methodological approach adopted to build an improved and quality-controlled version of I-RED (in terms of both the rainfall depth values and the position of the rain gauges) is presented. The new database can be used as a more reliable research support for the frequency analysis of the rainfall extremes. This new I2-RED database contains rainfall annual maxima rainfall of 1, 3, 6, 12 and 24 h from 1916 until 2019, counts 5265 rain gauges and has been corroborated by a re-positioning and elevation-checking of 15% of the stations. A descriptive analysis of the maximum values of the stations, which provides an additional quality check and reveals different intriguing spatial features of Super-Extreme rainfall events, is also presented. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Extreme Rainfall and Floods in the Mediterranean Regions)
Show Figures

Graphical abstract

25 pages, 11487 KiB  
Article
Hydrometeorological and Socio-Economic Impact Assessment of Stream Flooding in Southeast Mediterranean: The Case of Rafina Catchment (Attica, Greece)
by Christos Giannaros, Vassiliki Kotroni, Konstantinos Lagouvardos, Christina Oikonomou, Haris Haralambous and Katerina Papagiannaki
Water 2020, 12(9), 2426; https://doi.org/10.3390/w12092426 - 29 Aug 2020
Cited by 19 | Viewed by 2825
Abstract
The CyFFORS (Cyprus Flood Forecasting System) project aims at increasing flood risk awareness and promoting preparedness against flooding by developing and validating a pilot flood forecasting system targeted over three river/stream basins in the Larnaca region, Cyprus, and Attica region, Greece. The present [...] Read more.
The CyFFORS (Cyprus Flood Forecasting System) project aims at increasing flood risk awareness and promoting preparedness against flooding by developing and validating a pilot flood forecasting system targeted over three river/stream basins in the Larnaca region, Cyprus, and Attica region, Greece. The present study demonstrates the analysis of flood-associated information, based on ground-based and ERA5 model reanalysis data, which is a necessary procedure prior to the development of the hydrometeorological modeling tool, in one of the study areas, namely in the Rafina catchment in Attica, Greece. The analysis focusses on 12 stream flood episodes that occurred in the period 2008–2014. The results show that most events were associated with a typical, for the study area, wet-season cyclonic activity. The detailed investigation of two case studies highlighted important spatiotemporal differences in the generation and development of rainfall, as well as in the flooding magnitude, which were related to specific characteristics of the synoptic-scale forcing, topography and soil moisture preconditioning. Moreover, highly correlated positive relationships were found between the observed maximum stream discharge and the duration and maximum total accumulation of precipitation. A strong positive correlation was also evident between the peak discharge and the flooding impacts, leading to the identification of preliminary discharge thresholds for impact-based warnings, which can be applied to the pilot CyFFORS forecasting system. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Extreme Rainfall and Floods in the Mediterranean Regions)
Show Figures

Graphical abstract

23 pages, 7394 KiB  
Article
Heavy Precipitation Systems in Calabria Region (Southern Italy): High-Resolution Observed Rainfall and Large-Scale Atmospheric Pattern Analysis
by Aldo Greco, Davide Luciano De Luca and Elenio Avolio
Water 2020, 12(5), 1468; https://doi.org/10.3390/w12051468 - 21 May 2020
Cited by 23 | Viewed by 4099
Abstract
An in-depth analysis of historical heavy rainfall fields clearly constitutes an important aspect in many related topics: as examples, mesoscale models for early warning systems and the definition of design event scenarios can be improved, with the consequent upgrading in the prediction of [...] Read more.
An in-depth analysis of historical heavy rainfall fields clearly constitutes an important aspect in many related topics: as examples, mesoscale models for early warning systems and the definition of design event scenarios can be improved, with the consequent upgrading in the prediction of induced phenomena (mainly floods and landslides) into specific areas of interest. With this goal, in this work the authors focused on Calabria region (southern Italy) and classified the main precipitation systems through the analysis of selected heavy rainfall events from high resolution rain gauge network time series. Moreover, the authors investigated the relationships among the selected events and the main synoptic atmospheric patterns derived by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) ERA5 Reanalysis dataset, in order to assess the possible large-scale scenarios which can induce heavy rainfall events in the study area. The obtained results highlighted: (i) the importance of areal reduction factors, rainfall intensities and amounts in order to discriminate the investigated precipitations systems for the study area; (ii) the crucial role played by the position of the averaged low-pressure areas over the Mediterranean for the synoptic systems, and by low-level temperature for the convective systems. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Extreme Rainfall and Floods in the Mediterranean Regions)
Show Figures

Figure 1

Back to TopTop