Qualitative evaluation of flood induced impacts for roads and railways infrastructures: an operative solution within the MOVIDA project

The Po River District Authority has recently signed a research agreement with 20 Italian Universities and the Italian National Research Council (CNR) for updating the Flood Risk Management Plan, in compliance with the European Floods Directive (2007/60/EC). Specifically, the MOVIDA project envisages the efforts of a research consortium dedicated to flood damage modelling (8 Universities and CNR) to provide an Information System capable to perform an analytical evaluation and mapping of expected damage, overcoming the limitations of present maps where the evaluation of risk remains highly qualitative and subjective.      
Proper damage assessment tools were identified for all the five categories of exposed elements foreseen by the EU Directive: population, infrastructures, economic activities, environmental and cultural heritage, and na-tech sites. A dedicated Open Source Geographic Information System (i.e. QGIS plugin) was developed and transferred to Regional Authorities for flood damage evaluation and mapping to all areas at significant risk in the Po District.    
Focusing on road and railway infrastructures, the methodology proposed adopts information coming from different data sources (Regional Geoportals, Open Street Map, etc.) and allows to qualitatively estimate the potential damage impacts of a flood event. Different impact classes (High, Medium, Low and Null) are assigned in relation to the roads category (i.e., Highways, Main, Secondary, Service, Other) or railways type (high-speed train or not), taking into account both the importance of the infrastructure itself (as well as its topographical characteristics: e.g. tunnel, bridge, etc.) and the magnitude of the expected event (i.e., hazard).
The results enable to spatially identify the extent of the impacted infrastructures and the locations of the flooded railway stations, information necessary to identify potential mitigation and support measures to the competent bodies in the organization of the rescue.