Innovative tools for planning and timely responding to floods in urban areas (RainBO)

The RainBO Life project focuses on the improvement of knowledge, methods and tools for the assessment and forecast of the impacts of extreme precipitations and flash floods for small and medium water courses in urban areas.

To this purpose, a webGIS modular platform for local administrations has been developed to provide information from observed data, forecasts and models before (‘Planning support’ mode) and during (‘Event management’ mode) extreme events of precipitation in vulnerable river basins. On the platform weather data are collected from traditional and innovative monitoring systems (i.e.: microwave link), while precipitation and hydrological forecasts are simulated by operational and newly developed models.

Valuable features of the platform are the two hydrological forecast operational chains for small rivers/creek and for medium rivers and a specific module computing vulnerability maps for the assessment of hydraulic risk based on uploaded local data.

The joint of these different data sources makes the RainBO platform an effective adaptation tool for planning, forecasting and managing hydraulic risk.

The RainBO project is the follow-up of BLUEAP (Bologna Urban Environment Adaptation Plan for a resilient city), a previous European project co-financed by the LIFE Program, ended in 2015 with the setting up of a Climate Adaptation Plan for the City of Bologna