September 4-7, 2017, Delft, the Netherlands - 25th Meeting of the European Working Group on Internal Erosion.
11
Historical information and advanced tools for flood
protection and structures management
S. Aielli, S. Parodi, S. Pavan & A. Rosso
AIPo – Interregional Agency for the river Po
Keywords: levees, sand-boils, filtration, flood management, data management
The river Po is the main river of Italy, and crosses the entire North Italy from the Western Alps to the Adriatic sea. Its middle-lower course is characterized by an imposing levees’ system, which origins go back to the XVI Century, and which size has been continuously increased until nowadays. As it often occurs, when dealing with earth dykes, this system is subject to seepage phenomena, that can lead to embankments piping if not properly managed. In particular, during last flood events (years 1994 and 2000), about 130 sand boils have been detected, surveyed and controlled. The first organized list of filtration phenomena has been built in 2004 by the River Po Basin Authority (AdBPo), and published in a document named "Catasto delle arginature maestre del fiume Po" (i.e. "Real estate registry of main embankments of the river Po") After the last large flood event of November 2014, AIPo (the Interregional Agency for the River Po, i.e. the public body responsible for levee construction and maintenance), together with AdBPo, felt the necessity to update and integrate this registry, adding specific information about the hydraulic condition (flood height and duration) associated to new sand boils activation or old sand boils reactivation. This paper describes how the collection of historical data, together with most recent information, even from the 2016 flood event, allowed the creation of an information database (DB), with a simple but efficient structure ready to be updated with data from future events. Monographic data sheets containing basic information for understanding every filtration phenomena can be obtained by querying this DB. Main contents are: identification number of the filtration phenomena and/or of the surveyed sand boil; exact location of the phenomena given by geographical coordinates and support maps; time of activation (when known); critical flood height, estimated accounting for maximum flood height without activation and minimum recorded flood height with activation; any other available information (e.g. size curve of the transported material, soil characteristics, stratigraphy of the subsurface, etc.). At the conclusion of this work, the aim is to demonstrate that the proper organization of all these information, together with the interpretation of the interactions among hydraulic factors and local soil characteristics, can help the deep phenomena’s understanding, and make the DB a useful tool for levees’ hazard analysis, allowing a modern and efficient management of earth embankments and other flood protection structures.
S. Aielli, S. Parodi, S. Pavan & A. Rosso
AIPo – Interregional Agency for the river Po
