An Integrated Method to Assess Flood Risk and Resilience in the MAB UNESCO Collina Po (Italy)

Abstract

Climate change is exacerbating vulnerabilities in cities and territories and compromising the value of the whole heritage. In this context, the UNESCO sites should be prepared to preserve and manage their Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) by the uncertainty posed by flood-related risk. Therefore, this paper deals with the development of an integrated method to assess the biophysical impacts’ scenarios through the employment of the Urban Flood Risk Mitigation model (InVEST) and evaluates them through a A’WOT technique. The proposed method considers a cluster of Municipalities of the MAB UNESCO Collina Po (Italy) as case study. To support the development of the Urban Flood Risk Mitigation model, a number of parameters have been fitted according to defined Nature-Based Solutions scenarios (NBS). The A’WOT employs a set of indicators aiming at assessing the performance of the study area with the aim to find the best NBS solution to facilitate the adaptation of the case study to pluvial flood risk. The output provided by the integration of such models is to support the Decision Makers in risk and resilience assessment of heritage and design long-term strategic guidelines and recommendations to mitigate the flood extremes and preserve and monitor the integrity and authenticity of the MAB bioreserve.