TITLE:
A Systemic Approach to Evaluate the Flood Vulnerability for an Urban Study Case in Southern Italy
AUTHORS:
Raffaele Albano, Aurelia Sole, Francesco Sdao, Luciana Giosa, Andrea Cantisani, Stefania Pascale
KEYWORDS:
Urban Flooding; Vulnerability; GIS; Systemic Approach
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Water Resource and Protection,
Vol.6 No.4,
March
28,
2014
ABSTRACT: Currently,
the urban flooding is one of the most concerning problems in hydraulic
protection, both for the enormous number of people and the different elements
(buildings, roads, vehicles, and so on) potentially exposed to risk, as well as
the complexity of the territory at issue. At the practical level, vulnerability
indicators are often predictably too narrow in their coverage of aspects of vulnerability.
An important need remains to produce more conceptually informed vulnerability
indicators or parameters and more satisfactory operational tools to assess
weaknesses and resilience in coping with natural risks. In this paper, we
present an innovative methodology that adopts a systemic approach to evaluate
the vulnerability due to a flood scenario. The operative efficiency of the
proposed GIS tool is validated in pilot application site, i.e. an urban area in Puglia Region, Southern Italy, on the basis
of, studies surveys and damages carried out from a recent flood event occurred
in the area. The model evaluates the direct structural damages and explores the
potential operating conditions of the road network in case of the flood event.
The resulting vulnerability assessment tool can guide evaluators towards a
comprehensive understanding of strengths and fragilities of a territory and
community where a flood occurs embedding and integrating as much as possible
the multifaceted and articulated nature of an urban system.