78594 - Flood and Drought Risk Management

Learning outcomes

The objective of this course is to provide students with the understanding of the factors causing floods and droughts and with the knowledge both of the methods for quantifying and of the options for reducing such water risks. By the end of the course, students have the knowledge of the data requirement and methods used for the assessment of river flood and drought risk, in terms of hazard, exposure and vulnerability. Students will also learn about the measures available for mitigating and managing such risks (such as structures for flood defense, flood and drought policies/plans/mapping; forecasting and warning systems). Applied skills: through the development of the assignments, students will apply their knowledge to obtain and process their own real-world meteo-hydrological data and to use them for i) computing meteorological and hydrological drought indicators and ii) estimating design floods.

Course contents

Requirements/Prior knowledge
Basic knowledge in open-channel hydraulics, hydrology and statistics is needed.

Course Contents/Syllabus
- Climate classification.
- Acquisition and processing of hydro-meteorological data to support flood and drought modelling: rainfall fields estimates, errors in measurements; open databases; data analysis and validation; gap filling. Remote sensing of water-related variables (satellites and radar)
- Drought analysis: introduction to droughts (definitions, characteristics, classifications).
- Drought monitoring and warning. Computation of drought indices based on meteorological, hydrological and agricultural (soil moisture and vegetation health) variables. Areal indexes. Blending drought indexes. Bullettins and Drought Monitors and observatories. Drought impacts. Drought risk management.
- Prediction of hydrological design variables and Flood Frequency Analysis (FFA).
- Flood hazard and risk assessment: rainfall-runoff modelling, river flow propagation modelling, flood hazard mapping, flood impacts, damage evaluation, vulnerability assessment.
- Structural and non-structural measures for flood defence: structures for flood peak reduction and for hydraulic conveyance increase; floodplain management; individual protection measures, flood forecasting and warning, managing flood emergencies.

Students are required to develop individual assignments/projects including: acquisition and validation of meteo-hydrological time-series, estimation of drought indices (SPI and SSI), Flood Frequency Analysis.

Readings/Bibliography

There is not a required textbook for the course. Lecture slides, as well as review articles and research papers will be made available in the collection "Virtuale" (virtuale.unibo.it/) for registered students.

Teaching methods

Lectures.

Possibiy seminars with experts (in class or online) and technical visits.

Assignments to be developed individually, through use of specific software (spreadsheets or macrolanguages, such as Matlab or RStudio).

Assessment methods

Student achievement is assessed through:

- a written test including 2/3 open questions focusing on the topics covered during the lectures (students should attend all lectures or obtain the notes from their colleagues when absent). Students may be asked to solve a short exercise.

- an oral assessment where the student defends and discusses her/his report of the home assignments (that have to be delivered to the teacher one week prior to the exam) and the written test is discussed.

To pass the exam, the students are required to master the main theoretical principles and methodologies taught during the lectures. The laude is awarded to students who, in addition to be proficient in all the covered topics and to present top-grade assignments, show to have integrated their knowledge with personal in-depth analysis.

Teaching tools

Handouts on the topics covered in the course, lecture slides, assignments and exercises are published in the University of Bologna collection "Virtuale" (virtuale.unibo.it/) for registered students.

Office hours

See the website of Elena Toth