Evaluation of marine flooding impacts along the coast of Emilia-Romagna (Italy): new methods and comparison with user-driven assessments

The Comacchio municipality, located in the northern part of the Emilia-Romagna region, northern Italy, is exposed to the impact of marine storms that can cause large inundations. The case study is represented by the coastal 27 villages of Lido degli Estensi and Spina (Ferrara province) that are located in a low-lying area. The Adriatic Sea is generally low energetic, but significant storms can occur. The coast is highly urbanized and exploited for tourism, therefore the exposure of different receptors is high. The presentation will focus on new tools developed in a recent EU-FP7 project specifically designed to provide end-users charged with managing flood protection and resilience. The tools include an impact-based database of marine storms, a series of numerical tools and an impact assessment tool. The tools could be used to increase resilience for the local communities as well as provide an example exportable to other European areas. The regional authorities have implemented a methodology to identify the extension of flood-prone areas in the framework of the EU flood directive. The regional maps, implemented with a simplified GIS-based methodology, are compared to the maps developed within the RISC-KIT project (www.risckit.eu) in order to identify similarities and dissimilarities in terms of prediction of flooding extension. The RISC-KIT maps were produced with a modelling chain that includes XBeach (1D) and LISFLOOD-FP models. The impact to several identified receptors (households, structures and infrastructures) was assessed through the INDRA model and compared to the risk maps issued by the regional authorities.