Flooding hazard

Tackling the leaks in the transport network with Maria Pregnolato

Vale Cigala April 6, 2021

Road closed because of flooding in Queensland, Australia. Australia. Photo by sandid distributed by Pixabay

Transport networks are crucial to our lives, from commuting to work to reach health care facilities, from the transport of goods to leisure travelling. To quote Robin Chase, an American transport entrepreneur: “Transportation is […] the glue of our daily lives. When it goes well, we don’t see it. When it goes wrong, it negatively colours our day, makes us feel angry and impotent, curta ...[Read More]

Floods in the Anthropocene: the good, the bad and the ugly

Giulia Roder March 22, 2021

Floods and people: Who shapes whom? Credits: Pixabay (free for commercial use, no attribution required)

The interplay between human societies and floods dates back to Old World civilizations. Floodplains have provided the potential for prosperous agriculture and for the development of organised communities and urban cultures. Contextually, flood events have caused millions of fatalities and invaluable economic losses throughout history. Over the past decades, human activities have increasingly alter ...[Read More]

How satellites measuring soil moisture provide a new understanding of rainfall patterns

Luca Brocca, Luca Ciabatta, Christian Massari, Stefania Camici, Paolo Filippucci February 24, 2020

Soil moisture and rainfall are the two fundamental variables in the water and energy cycle and their knowledge in many applications is crucial. For instance, for predicting the occurrence and the magnitude of flood and landslide events the knowledge of the initial soil moisture condition and of rainfall amount is mandatory. In the last decade, some authors have proposed a completely new approach, ...[Read More]

The CRED presents the bill: the socio-economic cost of natural hazards.

Vale Cigala March 20, 2019

Fig. 1 Flood at Trans-en-Provence (Var - France) June 2010, photo credit: Dimitri Defrance (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)

Which type of natural hazard is the most frequent? And which one causes the largest economic losses? Which populations are mainly affected? What are the necessary steps to reduce natural hazards’ impact? If you have ever wondered about any of these questions, you’d be interested to know that there is an institute answering all of them with a series of reports and ad hoc publications. We are ...[Read More]