Author(s)

F. De Martino & F. De Paola

Abstract

In Italy as abroad, the natural risk due to hydrogeological catastrophes is a remarkable problem for the damages produced and for the number of victims (e.g. Messina 02/10/2009 and Ischia 10/11/2009). The realization of structural measures for the mitigation of hydrogeological risk is essential, because of the extreme diffusion of the problem and also to safeguard the people exposed. Detention reservoirs are structural measures for the defense from hydraulic risk. These works allow one to temporarily contain part of the flood volume and then return it, getting an attenuation and a delay of the peak discharge, proper to peak reduction phenomenon. A classical structural measure for the mitigation of the hydraulic risk is represented by the off-stream floodplain storage: areas near to water courses used as storage, escaping volumes of upcoming flood through devices of derivation as, for instance, weirs. In the present paper, the first results of an experimental survey on a physical model, situated in the Laboratory of Hydraulics of the Department of Hydraulic, Geotechnical and Environmental Engineering of University of Naples Federico II, of off-stream floodplain storage are shown. Keywords: flood mitigation, hydrogeological risk, hydraulic engineering. 1 Introduction The natural risk due to hydrogeological catastrophes in lowland areas can be extremely dangerous, particularly if floodplains are intensively exploited. In such areas floods can cause remarkable economic losses and even risk of deaths (Dunn and Deering [7]; Zhang et al. [12]). Given the high level of diffusion of

Keywords

flood mitigation, hydrogeological risk, hydraulic engineering