Analysis of river bed dynamic evolution following a landslide dam

Landslides and debris flows can strongly interact with the river network and its mass transport processes, determining modifications of the river pattern with consequent effects on the hydrodynamic phenomena, alterations of the existing morphologies and possible interferences with anthropic works. Modifications of the cross section geometry and channel slope may produce changes in the sediment budget, with consequent repercussions on the stream evolutionary dynamics and its equilibrium configuration, leading to a new river branch arrangement. In this paper, investigations were carried out on a gravel-bed reach in the middle valley of the Noce River in Basilicata (Italy), which in 2007 suffered a progressive morpho-hydrodynamic change caused by a landslide. Because of the phenomenon complexity, mainly due to the mutual interaction between the landslide and the river transport dynamics, an integrated approach that combines field observations and numerical modelling in a spatial scale and natural environment, rarely available in literature, is suggested. The results highlight a satisfying correspondence between the altimetric profiles obtained through the numerical models and those deriving from the field surveys.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Stima dei danni da vento ai soprassuoli forestali in Regione Toscana a seguito dell'evento del 5 marzo 2015

Il vento è uno dei maggiori fattori di disturbo per le foreste europee e i cambiamenti climatici hanno provocato un aumento di eventi estremi negli ultimi anni. La regione Toscana tra il 4 e il 5 marzo 2015 è stata colpita da una tempesta di vento che ha provocato notevoli danni ai soprassuoli forestali. L’obiettivo di questo lavoro è di sviluppare una metodologia speditiva per la mappatura delle aree danneggiate in termini di superfici interessate, numero di piante atterrate e volume legnoso a terra. Il contributo illustra a tal fine l’utilizzo di dati telerilevati e in particolare le potenzialità dei dati Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS)

Utilizzo di laser scanner e camera digitale aviotrasportati nella progettazione di impianti fotovoltaici

<p>La normativa nazionale nel perseguire le direttive impartite dalla CEE in materia di energia, hai ncentivato fin dal 2007 lo sviluppo delle energie rinnovabili e di conseguenza il sorgere della cosiddetta green-economy ove la Geocart ha deciso di investire nella progettazione di impianti fotovoltaici di microgenerazione, con potenza installata inferiore ad 1 MW. Di particolare rilevanza nella fase di progettazione è risultato un laser scanner ed una camera digitaleintegrati nella piattaforma aviotrasportata MAPPING nel processo di rilievo dei siti individuati come idonei alla installazione di impianti fotovoltaici.</p><p><strong>Using airborne laser scanner and digital camera in the design of photovoltaic power plants</strong></p><p>The design of ground-mounted photovoltaic power plants re-quires a deep knowledge of the territory where people work, mainly if the area of interest has a wide coverage and the survey is not smooth. In this article, it is described the experience gained by Geo-cart in the design of 4-MW photovoltaic solar power plants of micro-generation, developed also by means of airborne laser scanner and digital camera for aerial survey of large scale areas within the Matera and Oppido Lucano’s municipalities in Basilicata.</p

Sviluppo di un DSS integrato per il monitoraggio dell’ambiente costiero

Nel presente lavoro si descrivono i primi risultati funzionali del progetto operativo regionale denominato “Implementazione di un sistema di previsione e prevenzione del rischio idraulico” che è parte integrante del più ampio progetto “MATER” - finalizzato allo sviluppo di una Metodologia di Analisi ambientali e TERritoriali connessa allo sfruttamento di risorse naturali. L’obiettivo principale del progetto “MATER”, durante la fase di start-up, è stato quello di definire un sistema di monitoraggio per la previsione e la prevenzione del rischio idraulico-costiero attraverso la strutturazione e l’implementazione di un Decision Support System (DSS) basato sull’elaborazione di dati radar con particolare riferimento alle nuove missioni satellitari, quali Sentinel-1 e COSMOSkyMed che permettono di produrre informazioni territoriali, quali ad esempio la linea di costa, i movimenti delle coste alte e rocciose, la variazione della vegetazione retrodunale, la localizzazione di sversamenti inquinanti sotto costa, di fondamentale importanza per la tutela dell’ambiente costiero e per la salvaguardia delle attività socio-economiche presenti in tale area. Il DSS, realizzato in ambiente GIS open-source, è espandibile, è basato su cataloghi open-data ed è in grado di gestire e visualizzare sia le informazioni di base, ivi compresi i relativi metadati, sia i risultati di elaborazione e processamento con codici open-source di change-detection, di segmentazione e di modellazione idraulica e morfologica. La definizione del DSS ha previsto nel contempo lo sviluppo di metodologie integrative al monitoraggio sistematico e continuo della costa, lo stesso è stato interfacciato in ambiente WebGIS compatibile con il geoportale della Regione Basilicata (RSDI), attraverso l’integrazione dei dati al suolo e in remoto con tecnologie informatiche Open Source per l’analisi di base e la pubblicazione web di dati geografici, orientando l’applicazione ad una consultazione per l’utente finale semplice ed intuitiva.The earliest and functional results of the regional operative project (OP) named “Implementation of hydraulic risk forecast and prevention system” are showed in the present paper. The OP is one of the fundamental components of the project named MATER. The Mater project is aimed to develop a methodology for environmental and territorial analysis related to the exploitation of natural resources. The main target of MATER, during the start-up step of the project, consists of the definition of a monitoring system finalized to coastal-hydraulic risk forecast and prevention by Decision Support System (DSS) implementation. The DSS is based on new satellite radar data Sentinel-1 and COSMOSkyMed which allow to re-produce territorial information such as coastline, rocky shore displacement, retrodunal vegetation variations, oil spill nearshore detection. The aforementioned information are fundamental to protect coastal environment and to safeguard socio-economic activities existing in the coastal region. The DSS is developed by free and open-source geospatial software, it is extensible, based on open-data catalogues and it is able to manage and to visualize both basic information (and the related metadata) and results come from open-source code change-detection processing and morpho-hydraulic modelling. The DSS is interconnected with a friendly and intuitive WebGIS compatible with the Basilicata Region web geo-portal environment

Automatic Filtering and Classification of Low-Density Airborne Laser Scanner Clouds in Shrubland Environments

The monitoring of shrublands plays a fundamental role, from an ecological and climatic point of view, in biodiversity conservation, carbon stock estimates, and climate-change impact assessments. Laser scanning systems have proven to have a high capability in mapping non-herbaceous vegetation by classifying high-density point clouds. On the other hand, the classification of low-density airborne laser scanner (ALS) clouds is largely affected by confusion with rock spikes and boulders having similar heights and shapes. To identify rocks and improve the accuracy of vegetation classes, we implemented an effective and time-saving procedure based on the integration of geometric features with laser intensity segmented by K-means clustering (GIK procedure). The classification accuracy was evaluated, taking into account the data unevenness (small size of rock class vs. vegetation and terrain classes) by estimating the Balanced Accuracy (BA range 89.15–90.37); a comparison with a standard geometry-based procedure showed an increase in accuracy of about 27%. The classical overall accuracy is generally very high for all the classifications: the average is 92.7 for geometry-based and 94.9 for GIK. At class level, the precision (user’s accuracy) for vegetation classes is very high (on average, 92.6% for shrubs and 99% for bushes) with a relative increase for shrubs up to 20% (>10% when rocks occupy more than 8% of the scene). Less pronounced differences were found for bushes (maximum 4.13%). The precision of rock class is quite acceptable (about 64%), compared to the complete absence of detection of the geometric procedure. We also evaluated how point cloud density affects the proposed procedure and found that the increase in shrub precision is also preserved for ALS clouds with very low point density (2). The easiness of the approach also makes it implementable in an operative context for a non-full expert in LiDAR data classification, and it is suitable for the great wealth of large-scale acquisitions carried out in the past by using monowavelength NIR laser scanners with a small footprint configuration

Development of an Integrated SDSS for Coastal Risks Monitoring and Assessment

The first results of the regional Operative Project (OP) “Implementation of hydraulic risk forecast and prevention system”, as part of the extended operative programme MATER aimed to develop a methodology for environmental and territorial analysis related to the exploitation of natural resources, are shown in the present paper. The main target deals with the development and implementation of a Spatial Decision Support System (SDSS) platform for coastal risk forecasting and prevention through the integration of multisource satellite data (Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2 and COSMO Sky Med) coupled with post processing open source hydrodynamic models. The processing results include the coastline and back-dune vegetation mapping, rocky coast movements detection as well as new landfills, buildings and spills derived by the implementation of innovative images segmentation techniques, multi-band change-detection and PSInSAR (Persistent Scattered Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar) typologies. The SDSS provides significant advantage of cyclical production and/or updating in phase with satellite data acquisition frequency. Further, through self-consistent applicative tools, provided with proper graphical interface developed in IDL and integrated in SDSS, it is possible to display and automatically extract the coastline sequence from Sentinel-1 data, compare two shoreline acquisitions, even if multi-sources, and calculate the coastal erosion and aggradation. Finally, some interoperable tools for morpho-hydrodynamic modelling assimilation have been developed and implemented in order to reproduce flooding risk scenarios for the coastal resilience assessment at different return time. For such a purpose, in the start-up phase, Delft3D (Deltares- NL) was employed for storm surge modelling, coastal morphological evolution and coastal inundation analyses. The SDSS is interconnected with a friendly and intuitive WebGIS compatible to the Regional Spatial Data Infrastructure

Automatic Filtering and Classification of Low-Density Airborne Laser Scanner Clouds in Shrubland Environments

The monitoring of shrublands plays a fundamental role, from an ecological and climatic point of view, in biodiversity conservation, carbon stock estimates, and climate-change impact assessments. Laser scanning systems have proven to have a high capability in mapping non-herbaceous vegetation by classifying high-density point clouds. On the other hand, the classification of low-density airborne laser scanner (ALS) clouds is largely affected by confusion with rock spikes and boulders having similar heights and shapes. To identify rocks and improve the accuracy of vegetation classes, we implemented an effective and time-saving procedure based on the integration of geometric features with laser intensity segmented by K-means clustering (GIK procedure). The classification accuracy was evaluated, taking into account the data unevenness (small size of rock class vs. vegetation and terrain classes) by estimating the Balanced Accuracy (BA range 89.15&ndash;90.37); a comparison with a standard geometry-based procedure showed an increase in accuracy of about 27%. The classical overall accuracy is generally very high for all the classifications: the average is 92.7 for geometry-based and 94.9 for GIK. At class level, the precision (user&rsquo;s accuracy) for vegetation classes is very high (on average, 92.6% for shrubs and 99% for bushes) with a relative increase for shrubs up to 20% (&gt;10% when rocks occupy more than 8% of the scene). Less pronounced differences were found for bushes (maximum 4.13%). The precision of rock class is quite acceptable (about 64%), compared to the complete absence of detection of the geometric procedure. We also evaluated how point cloud density affects the proposed procedure and found that the increase in shrub precision is also preserved for ALS clouds with very low point density (&lt;1.5 pts/m2). The easiness of the approach also makes it implementable in an operative context for a non-full expert in LiDAR data classification, and it is suitable for the great wealth of large-scale acquisitions carried out in the past by using monowavelength NIR laser scanners with a small footprint configuration

L’esperienza immersiva di «QUIRINALE 3D VR» La ricostruzione 3D in realtà virtuale del Piano Nobile del Palazzo del Quirinale

QUIRINALE 3D VR is a software for the navigation in virtual reality of the Quirinale Palace. It is the result of an innovative 3D reconstruction project developed by the Italian companies Geocart and Digital Lighthouse aiming to the enhancement of the Quirinale through the most innovative techniques of Digital Heritage field. The project, based on the integration of existing methodologies and novel processes for cultural heritage digitization supported by computer graphics, has created a unique result in terms of user involvement, also by means of immersive experience

Monitoraggio e modellazione dell'evoluzione morfologica di un corso d'acqua ostruito da una colata di terra

Il trasporto di massa prodotto da frane e colate detritiche, interagendo con la rete idrografica naturale, può determinare modificazioni dell’assetto fluviale, con conseguenti ripercussioni sull’evoluzione dei fenomeni idrodinamici, alterazione della morfologia preesistente e possibili interferenze con le opere antropiche. Nella memoria vengono descritte le indagini condotte sul fiume Noce in Basilicata, in un tronco alluvionato pedemontano, che nell’anno 2007 ha subito un progressivo cambiamento morfo-idrodinamico per effetto dell’invasione di una colata di terra. La complessità del fenomeno ha suggerito un approccio di tipo integrato che combina osservazioni in campo con le risposte di modelli numerici idro-morfologici. I risultati mostrano un buon accordo tra le variazioni altimetriche del fondo alveo,ottenute dai modelli, e quelle derivanti da misure in situ

Analysis of river bed dynamic evolution following a landslide dam

Landslides and debris flows can strongly interact with the river network and its mass transport processes, determining modifications of the river pattern with consequent effects on the hydrodynamic phenomena, alterations of the existing morphologies and possible interferences with anthropic works. Modifications of the cross section geometry and channel slope may produce changes in the sediment budget, with consequent repercussions on the stream evolutionary dynamics and its equilibrium configuration, leading to a new river branch arrangement. In this paper, investigations were carried out on a gravel-bed reach in the middle valley of the Noce River in Basilicata (Italy), which in 2007 suffered a progressive morpho-hydrodynamic change caused by a landslide. Because of the phenomenon complexity, mainly due to the mutual interaction between the landslide and the river transport dynamics, an integrated approach that combines field observations and numerical modelling in a spatial scale and natural environment, rarely available in literature, is suggested. The results highlight a satisfying correspondence between the altimetric profiles obtained through the numerical models and those deriving from the field surveys