Flood Risk Analysis in the Upper Adriatic Sea due to Storm Surge, Tide, Waves, and Natural and Anthropic Land Subsidence

Abstract

The low-lying coastal areas of the Eastern Po plain bordered by the Upper Adriatic Sea are characterized by environments (lagoons, marshes and river deltas) with a precarious hydrogeological features. In the years to come the setting of these zones will become more critical due to a relative sea level rise caused by global climate warming and natural and anthropic land subsidence, and increased mean sea level due to severe meteo-marine storms. The inundation risk related to these areas and the potential shoreline regression are analyzed in the next 100 years by a GIS procedure. The GIS known as GRASS is applied to account for the variations of both the ground and the sea level obtained from the model package developed in the CENAS project. The size of the flooded areas and the economic loss hazard associated with them are evaluated for the entire coastal profile with a coarser spatial resolution, and at Ravenna, Cesenatico, and Rimini with a more detailed resolution. Several situations are analyzed for different prediction times (at present, in 2050 and 2100), different storm return periods (1, 10 and 100 years), and two anthropic subsidence scenarios.