Hydro-geological hazard in Italy as Mapped by the local authorities

A friend gave pointed out to me this morning this map of hydrogeological hazards in Italy, as produced by the local authorities and collected by the Italian Ministry of Italy.  The full map at higher resolution (1.4 Mb) can be retrieved here (I think it is public and can be found somewhere in the Environmental Ministry of Italy). "Carta delle aree ad alta criticita' idrogeologica" means: maps of the area with the highest potential hazards. Red are landslides, blue are flooding, green snow avalanches hazards.

Well, some parts of Italy (as my Province of Trento) are very red and full of hazard. Some others (same hydrological and geological conditions, as the Province of Bolzano and Province of Belluno) are white: almost no hazard at all. (I tend to support the idea, since I was involved in part of its construction, that the hazard map of Trentino was produced with state of art techniques. But I also know that officiers of the other Provinces are also rigorous people. Then ?). The case of Emilia Romagna is also perfect example of this partition.  The Apennines in Emilia (under the Authority of River Po ?) are really red.  The Apennines in Romagna (under the river Authority of Reno River ?) are almost white.
Why these differences ? Different techniques of mapping ? Different "political choices" ?  Different stage of production of the maps (did all really made it) ?

Who knows can give me a clue ?

The microscopic^1 thermodynamics of snow

Listening to Michi Lehning talk, my curiosity was raised by a couple of passages. One of these was the use of mean field theories for describing the snow metamorphism.  Therefore I asked him for a little of literature on the subject. Here below his suggested readings:

I.M. Lifshitz and V.V. Slyozov. The kinetics of precipitation from supersaturated solid solutions. 

J. Phys. Chem. Solids, 19(1-2):35–50, 1961. 

[C. Wagner. Theorie der Alterung von Niederschlagen durch umlÅNosen (Ostwald-Reifung). Z. 

Elektrochem., 65(7-8):581–591, 1961. 

Probably easier in language and style: 

C.W.J. Beenakker and J. Ross. Theory of Ostwald ripening for open systems. J. Chem. Phys., 

83:4710–4714, 1985. 

L. Ratke and C. Beckermann. Concurrent growth and coarsening of spheres. Acta mater, 

49:4041–4054, 2001. 

S.P. Marsh and M.E. Glicksman. Kinetics of phase coarsening in dense systems. Acta Materialia, 

44(9):3761–3771, 1996. 

and with respect to snow: 

L. Legagneux and F. Domine. A mean field model of the decrease of the specific surface area of dry snow during isothermal metamorphism. J. Geophys. Res. Earth, 110(F4), NOV 18 2005.

Looking at the citations chain one can more or less recover most of the literature on the subject. You can also give a look to this more recent post.

^1 microscopic thermodynamics is, obviously, a sort of oxymoron. However, these thermodynamics work at a scale which is much smaller than what we want usually to treat (at field or catchment scale).

Modelling Environments for Biophysical Modelling in Hydrology and Agriculture

Modelling Environments for Biophysical Modelling in Hydrology and Agriculture: Object Modeling System 3 (OMS3) and Biophysical Model Applications (BioMA)

July 9-13, 2012

Joint Research Centre, European Commission, Ispra, Italy

The need for integrated analysis, and the multiplicity of possible goals in analysis which require biophysical modelling, necessitates more than ever the capability of composing modelling solutions of known quality which are transparent to users and consist of reusable model components.

There is a variety of modelling platforms and the number of model components and tools is growing; however, there is little interaction among developers of modelling platforms and the potential community of researchers who may benefit from new techniques and technologies in their work. This workshop is meant to provide this opportunity by illustrating the concepts at the base of two modelling frameworks, and by having a hands-on approach to both. The two modelling environments which will be presented are the Object Modeling System (OMS3) and the Biophysical Model Application (BioMA), briefly described below. Both are operational and allow running complex analyses in the biophysical domains of hydrology and agricultural production. The closing session will include a critical discussion on the concepts and realizations experienced during the week.

More Information on the website of the course.  OMS3 as you can verify from many post:

• uDig got a spatial toolbox
• Going Beyond the Present Stato-of-Art in hydrological modeling
• The JGrass-NewAge system for forecasting and managing the hydrological budgets at the basin scale: the models of flow generation, propagation, and aggregation

is at the core of my modeling strategy. I believe is one of the best way to have a modern approach to do models. So the school will be the occasion to learn about it (for who is already a good programmer)

Judea Pearl Won the Turing Prize

I came to across Judea Pearl book: Causality: models, reasoning and inference in the search for understanding the subtleties of the Bayesian approach to statistics (and statistics in general).  I am  still  studying, and trying hard to understand how his findings can improve my approach to research in Hydrology.   I think that this Turing Prize he got was well deserved, and I did this post  for others to join the list of admirers of his work.

 In his site, videos, tutorial and other good food for thinking, and  "Causal Inference in Statistics: An Overview", Statistics Surveys 3 (2009): 96--146 [Free PDF], a must read for whom interested.^1

^1 For who captured by his work, it could be interesting to give a look to the TETRAD Project.

Modelling catchment-scale shallow landslide occurrence by means of a subsurface flow path connectivity index

This paper extends the concept already introduced in  two previous papers on Hydrological Processes  and Earth Surface Processes and landforms. The idea pursued in the first was that hillslope processes can be conceptualized in order to obtain a topographic index useful for a simple hydrological modelisation of hillslopes. The second paper investigates the role of soil depth and push further the conceptualization, besides introducing some concept of self-organization in the production of instabilities. 

This third paper in row applies the theory above to a case in North of Italy, and tries finally to fill the gap between hillslope modeling and catchment analysis. The paper also introduces the concept of catchment connectivity, which is usually given for granted but it is, indeed, not always present, and build on previou work by Jeff McDonnell and collaborators and Stuart Lane.  Finally the paper investigates the hillslope stability of the basins above.

The model described, CISLAM is available as an OMS component here. 

Michi Lehning: Snow hot and cold, dangerous and beautiful, fragile and persistent

Michi Lehning is one of the leading scientists in  snow and avalanches, and related boundary layer meteorology, research.

He is co-author of  three very good pieces of software:

• Alpine3D
• Snowpack
• MeteoIO

and several papers on the topics he is expert. Recently he worked on the uneven distribution of snow during storms that is very enlightening.  The last March 15, besides being hed of a group at WLSF (here his many projects),  he also became professor at EPFL-ENAC School.
I am writing this to advertise that  his opening lecture at EPFL can be watched and dowloaded here.

Open Topography

The site

http://www.opentopography.org/

hosts free LIDAR data, and tools contained in OpenTopography for their treatment. Data are usually provided in form of points clouds that can be subsequently treated with their tools to obtain DEMs, and in already treated DEMs. They also provide a ciberinfrastructure for the storage and delivery of those data that can be of interest for those who wants to manage professionally a data storage service.
Woth to note is that you can use the jgrasstools for manage them.