HYDRAULIC-HYDROLOGIC MODELLING FOR SUPPORTING WATER RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Water resources management is one of the strategic and key themes in European Community policies. Promoting an efficient and sustainable use of water resources through a multi-sectoral planning that includes scientific, technological, socio-economic, environmental and agricultural aspects means to face the actual critical issues, i.e. droughts and floods, but also the future effects of climate change. This strategy could be facilitated where water level is monitored; however, such data are scarce, often not completely reliable and registered on large rivers. For this reason, the research team of Agricultural Hydraulics DiSAA has always been involved in scientific studies focusing on development, calibration and application of hydraulic-hydrological models for predicting the streamflows at ungauged areas. In this publication, thanks to the collaboration with the researchers of the Research Institute of Geo-Hydrological Protection (IRPI) of the CNR-Perugia, the rainfall-runoff model MISDc (Modello Idrologico Semi-Distribuito in Continuo) has been tested on 63 hydrometric stations in the western Po basin with excellent performance compared with the available observations. The encouraging results on such a large area demonstrate how hydrological tools can replace the lack of measurements to improve both the flood forecasting and the water resources management for the irrigation. 

Figure: Schematization of the rainfall-runoff model MISDc for predicting discharge from meteorological data.

REFERENCES

Cislaghi, A., Masseroni, D., Massari, C., Camici, S., & Brocca, L. (2020). Combining a rainfall–runoff model and a regionalization approach for flood and water resource assessment in the western Po Valley, Italy. Hydrological Sciences Journal, 65:3,348-370 [DOI: 10.1080/02626667.2019.1690656].