Flood susceptibility evaluation on ephemeral streams of southern Italy: A case study of lama balice

Abstract

In the proposed work areas exposed to flood risk were evaluated in a particular context of karst ephemeral streams located in Puglia region (Southern Italy). The case study of Lama Balice, characterized by a natural geomorphologic structure, was tested for the application of a DTM-based approach, aimed to the rapid identification and mapping of flood risk. The inundated areas, obtained with a 2D hydraulic model, following design rainfall events characterized by different return periods, were used as reference maps for the selection of the most appropriate geomorphological descriptor exploiting the binary classifiers test. The performance of the adopted procedure was tested by validating the selected geomorphological descriptors on a different area with respect to that used for calibration, in order to estimate the discrepancy between DTM-based flood maps and those obtained by numerical simulation.