Flood Risk Management Model to Identify Optimal Defence Policies in
Coastal Areas Under Climate Change Uncertainties: Pontina Plain Case
Study
Abstract
Coastal areas are highly vulnerable to flooding, due to hydrological
extreme events such heavy rainfalls and/or storm surges which are
supposed to be increasing in the next future due to the emission in
atmosphere of anthropogenic greenhouse gases. In this study, in order to
assess the future hydraulic risk in coastal regions, as well as, to
identify optimal defense/adaptation policies, a risk analysis model is
developed to calculate the present day and future flood risk, accounting
for climate change uncertainties and mitigation measures. Such model
juxtaposes a number of coupled/nested models as: a) a stacking daily
rainfall downscaling model which combines simulations from multiple
predictive models, as Random Forest, extreme gradient boosting and
Non-homogeneous Hidden Markov Model (NHMM) (Cioffi et al. 2018); b) a
Bivariate Point Process model (BPPM) (Zheng et al., 2014) that
calculates Joint probability density function between extreme daily
rainfall amount and daily extreme storm tide depth; c) a
simulation-optimization model - in which multi-objective GA optimization
model (Deb et al., 2002) and 2D hydraulic model are combined (Cioffi et
al. 2018) - calculates sets of Pareto optimal solutions which are
obtained by defining two optimality criteria consisting in: minimizing
both the cost of the flood defense infrastructure system and the
flooding hydraulic risk. ; d) a mathematical decision model which is
aimed to identify the best policies of mitigation of hydraulic risk and
the timing, taking into account the uncertainties in hydrological
extreme event predictions. The risk analysis model is applied to the
study case of Mazzocchio area which is the most depressed area (about
10000 ha) within the Pontinia Plain, a large reclamation region in the
south of Lazio (Italy), particularly vulnerable to extreme events - as
extreme rainfall amount and sea level rise due to storm surge at the sea
outfall of the river- which in the past caused the crisis of hydraulic
network system with flooding of large areas and collapse of levees. XXI
Century projections of daily rainfall amount and sea level for the RCP
8.5-IPCC scenarios were performed using ensemble of 35 GCM simulations
(CESM1 CAM5 BGC 20C + RCP8.5 Large Ensemble) (Kay et al., 2015).