Are flood protection infrastructures designed according to risk management criteria?

Flooding constitutes the most frequent and one of the most destructive natural disasters, and every year it affects millions of people worldwide causing loss of life, disruption of commerce and financial networks, loss of business continuity and essential services. Even in Italy, floods represent one of the most widespread extreme events, increasingly common and hazardous.

Data from recent Italian reports highlight that the amount of money spent for risk prevention -pre disaster- (330 million per year in average) are not at all comparable to 1.9 billion of euros per year for repair damage and recovery, causing 1:6 ratio between pre- and post-disasters costs.
Hence, the necessity of a deep analysis on the economic and technical criteria used to design infrastructures for flood risk protection. The ReNDiS database (Repertorio Nazionale degli interventi per la Difesa del Suolo – National Database of soil protection measures) offers the data for such an analysis and for a comparison between type of hydraulic infrastructures and the risk maps produced by the District Authority.

 Analysis on the type and costs of hydraulic infrastructures are also performed.  Results show that not always risk management criteria are at the basis of the design of flood protection infrastructures.