OPEN ACCESS
One-third of the annual natural disasters and economic losses, and more than half of the respective victims are flood-related. Knowledge and advanced scientific tools play a role of paramount importance in the strain of coping with flooding problems. The paper, after a brief discussion of the terms hazard, vulnerability, and risk, presents the governing equations for 1D, 2D, and 3D models, together with examples of their applications and discussion of the carried out results. It is shown that 1D models can be used only in very particular cases, but actually they are still the most reliable and robust of all the models; wide spread use of 2D models is justified by the relatively easiness in their use, and because the time consumption is still quite reduced. As for 3D models, their use in environmental hydraulic is still limited to very peculiar cases, because of the difficulties encountered in their use and the impressive time consumption they require, which in the largest cases necessitates the dramatic simplification of the topography or of the turbulence models that implies poor quality results.
case studies, flood hazard, mathematical models
[1] Duivendijk, J. van: Manual on Planning of Structural Approaches to Flood Management. ICID Guideline: New Delhi, India, 2005.
[2] Einstein, H.H., Special lecture: Landslide risk assessment procedure. Int. Symposium on Landslides. C. Bonnard (ed.) Landslide, 2, pp. 1075–1090, July 1988.
[3] De Wrachien, D., Mambretti, S. & Schultz, B., Flood Management and Risk Assessment in Flood-prone Areas: Measures and Solutions Accepted on Irrigation and Drainage, fi rst published online: 23 jul 2010, DOI: 10.1002/ird.557.
[4] Lax, P.D. & Wendroff, B., Systems of conservation laws Comm. Pure and Applied Mathematics 13, pp. 217–237, 1960. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/cpa.3160130205
[5] Garcia-Martinez, R., Gonzalez-Ramirez, N. & O’Brien, J., Dam-break fl ood routing Chap. 4 in D. De Wrachien & S. Mambretti (eds.) Dam-break. Problems, Solutions and Case Studies, WITPress: Southampton, 334 pp., October 2009, ISBN 978-1-84564-142-9. [6] FLOW-3D User Manual – Ver. 9.4, Flow Science, Inc.: Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2009.
[7] Da Deppo, L., Opere per la salvaguardia del fi ume Vomano, Relazione Idraulica, Regione Abruzzo, August 2004 (in Italian).
[8] Vreugdenhil, C.B., Numerical Methods for Shallow-Water Flow, Kulwer Academic Press: Dordrecht, Boston, London, 1998.