Research: Study of extreme rainfall events under climate change scenarios
I am currently ending my PhD in Environmental and Hydraulic Engineering at the Faculty of Civil and Industrial Engineering developing a project on the study of extreme rainfall events under climate change scenarios. The intensification of the hydrological cycle due to climate change can lead to an increase in extreme precipitation events resulting in increased hydraulic risk of flooding or malfunctioning of urban drainage systems. The research project therefore focuses on defining a methodology for assessing the pluvilal flooding risk in urban areas, considering the interaction with the existing drainage system.
The PhD course, in this context, has allowed me to gain a wide knowledge of modelling and Optimization of urban drainage networks, thanks also to the two collaborations carried out during the Doctoral school. The first one was with the host company, Acea Infrastructure S.p.A., where I completed a six-month internship in which I learned key concepts of sewer basin modelling in EPASWMM and InfoWorks ICM environments. The second collaboration, however, with the foreign research organization IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, where I had the opportunity to participate in a six-month special programme in "Research in Hydroinformatics - Urban Drainage Modelling".
The project structure is as follows:
- Introduction on climate change and intense urbanization, on the definition of pluvial floods and their risk in urban areas and on the urban drainage system modelling
- Optimisation of the incoming hydraulic load to the sewerage system treatment plant
- Definition of Design Synthetic Hyetograph determination procedure for hydraulic analysis of a sewerage system with Intensity Duration Frequency Curves estimation for Rome urban area
- Definition of structural measures for flood risk assessment: a model-based optimization approach for optimal management of an urban drainage system
- Definition of non-structural measures such as urban pluvial flooding dynamics maps
- Definition of nature based solutions (NBS) for the assessment of regional Hydraulic and Hydrological Invariance regulations and economic implications for Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems implementation in Italy