Development of an early warning system to predict sewer overflow

Flash flooding in our city is still a fairly common phenomenon.Unfortunately, the development of a flash flood forecasting system in urban areas is not a simple and unambiguous procedure.While attending the PhD course in Civil and Environmental Engineering, research activity has been given to realize an urban overflowing prediction system that was best as possible suited to the drainage network of the city of Palermo. With the support of radar data and hybrid hydraulic model for drainage network has been possible to demonstrate the effectiveness of this instrument, while the reduction of residual flood risk has been supported by modern resilience measures

A weather monitoring system for the study of precipitation fields, weather, and climate in an urban area

The possibility to study the precipitation dynamics with advanced and specific tools is an important task of the research activity addressing the understanding, the modeling, and the managing of rainfall events. Over the last years, the hydrology laboratory of the Department of Civil, Environmental, Aerospace Engineering, and Materials (DICAM) at the University of Palermo, has installed several instruments for the monitoring and the study of precipitation within the urban area of Palermo (Italy). The main instrument of this system is the X-band weather radar, which allows monitoring the precipitation fields with high resolution in space and time. This instrument is supported by a rain gauges network of 18 tipping bucket gauges spread over the observed area, a weight rain gauge, an optical disdrometer, and a weather station. The information provided by different devices can be combined in order to integrate different data and correct errors. In particular, the disdrometer is able to provide the drop size distribution (DSD) that is directly linked to the parameters used to transform radar reflectivity to precipitation estimates. Moreover, disdrometer observations can be used to classify the precipitation events. The rain gauges network data is used to apply a ground correction to the radar precipitation maps. Such an operation is useful to constrain the radar estimate to the observed ground precipitation value. Results obtained from a prototypal version of the system, that considers only the main applications designed, are discussed for a study event. Finally, all of the above instruments are embedded in an integrated early warning system able to provide warnings related to possible flood in the urban area of Palermo

A Weather Monitoring System For The Study Of Precipitation Fields, Weather, And Climate In An Urban Area

The possibility to study the precipitation dynamics with advanced and specific tools is an important task of the research activity addressing the understanding, the modeling, and the managing of rainfall events. Over the last years, the hydrology laboratory of the Department of Civil, Environmental, Aerospace Engineering, and Materials (DICAM) at the University of Palermo, has installed several instruments for the monitoring and the study of precipitation within the urban area of Palermo (Italy). The main instrument of this system is the X-band weather radar, which allows monitoring the precipitation fields with high resolution in space and time. This instrument is supported by a raingauges network of 18 tipping bucket gauges spread over the observed area, a weight rain gauge, an optical disdrometer, and a weather station. The information provided by different devices can be combined in order to integrate different data and correct errors. In particular, the disdrometer is able to provide the drop size distribution (DSD) that is directly linked to the parameters used to transform radar reflectivity to precipitation estimates. Moreover, disdrometer observations can be used to classify the precipitation events. The rain-gauge network data is used to apply a ground correction to the radar precipitation maps. Such an operation is useful to constrain the radar estimate to the observed ground precipitation value. Results obtained from a prototypal version of the system, that considers only the main applications designed, are discussed for a study event. Finally, all of the above instruments are embedded in an integrated early warning system able to provide warnings related to possible flood in the urban area of Palermo

A local post-retrieval tool for satellite precipitation estimates

As illustrated by several literature case studies spread around di erent geographic locations, satellite precipi- tation estimates, obtained by means of consolidated algorithms, often result being considerably biased. Moreover observed bias is related to geographic location since particular features such as latitude, presence of coastal areas and climatological and weather regime, a ect performances of satellite estimates. Bias adjusted products that make use of global ground-based precipitation estimates, are available as well but still these datasets may show a relevant bias level. In this study a procedure to bias-adjust satellite precipitation estimates has been devel- oped for the local area of Sicily (Italy) based on rain-gauge network data. Considering that the latency time of satellite precipitation estimates is nowadays very short and close to that of satellite data availability, it has been investigated the possibility of designing a procedure that able to apply the bias reduction to satellite estimates without timely corresponding rain-gauge network data. Therefore, in order to obtain a tool that make available a rst precipitation map estimate, the emphasis has been put on data readiness instead of achieving the best correction result. The developed procedure demonstrate to be able to improve the overall bias performances of examined satellite precipitation data. It is expected that such an approach increases its suitability as the developing of satellite estimates algorithms leads to better a description of rainfall dynamics

USING A X-BAND WEATHER RADAR FOR AN URBAN AREA EARLY WARNING SYSTEM AND THE STUDY OF PRECIPITATION DYNAMICS.

The development and availability of X-band radar instruments occurred in the last years, provides the scientific community of an important tool for the study, the characterization and the operational usage of detailed precipitation information. The hydrology laboratory of the Department of Civil, Environmental, Aerospace Engineering, and Materials (DICAM) at the University of Palermo, has installed a X-band weather radar in the urban area of Palermo (Italy) along with a set of advanced auxiliary instruments that help on exploiting the precipitation information. A raingauge network of 18 tipping bucket gauges spread over the observed area is available for the calibration of precipitation maps provided by the radar. Moreover a weight raingauge, an optical disdrometer, and a weather station are installed in a monitoring site. The information provided by these devices can be combined in order to integrate different data and correct errors. The disdrometer is used to estimate the drop size distribution (DSD) that results being directly linked to the parameters used for the transformation of radar reflectivity to precipitation estimates. Moreover, disdrometer observations can be used to classify the precipitation events. The comparison among traditional tipping-bucket gauges, weight-based raingauge, and disdrometer highlights possible issues related to instrumental errors affecting tipping-bucket gauges. Eventually, the weather station provides other different climatic variables that can be useful to interpret and analyze the rainfall events and to better characterize the same events. Radar precipitation estimates with high temporal and spatial resolutions, can be effectively used for supporting flood forecast analyses. Such an implementation is nowadays explored for different urban areas documented in the literature. In this study, observations from the radar and other sensors are embedded in an integrated early warning system able to provide warning related to possible flood in the urban area of Palermo

Sviluppo di un sistema di monitoraggio per lo studio delle dinamiche meteorologiche nell'area urbana di Palermo.'

9nonenoneLO CONTI, Francesco; INCONTRERA, Antonia; FRANCIPANE, Antonio; PUMO, Dario; FORESTIERI, Angelo; VIOLA, Francesco; ARNONE, Elisa; NOTO, Leonardo; LA LOGGIA, GoffredoLO CONTI, Francesco; Incontrera, Antonia; Francipane, Antonio; Pumo, Dario; Forestieri, Angelo; Viola, Francesco; Arnone, Elisa; Noto, Leonardo; LA LOGGIA, Goffred