Open AccessUsing Web 2.0 Technologies to Help During Flood Events
Author(s) -
Showstack Randy
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
eos, transactions american geophysical union
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.316
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 2324-9250
pISSN - 0096-3941
DOI - 10.1029/2011eo180004
Subject(s) - flash flood , storm , flood myth , landslide , geography , geologist , debris , orography , meteorology , physical geography , hydrology (agriculture) , archaeology , geology , precipitation , geomorphology , geotechnical engineering
Monday, 4 October 2010, dawned as a typical gray and rainy autumn day in Varazze, a seaside town with 14,000 inhabitants and a complex orography in the northern Italian region of Liguria, about 30 kilometers west of Genoa. With the weather forecast calling for 30 millimeters of rain that day, Massimo Lanfranco, a geologist who is a doctoral student at the University of Turin, had planned to travel to Turin from Varazze. But after driving his child to elementary school, he decided to stay home because the rain had picked up. The storm—with peak rainfall of 30 millimeters in 15 minutes, 96 in 1 hour, and 300 in 6 hours—led to a number of flash floods and debris floods that inundated the coastal plain, destroyed some houses, and caused about 50 landslides in the region but, fortunately, no fatalities. It was one of the worst storms in Italy in the past several decades, according to Lanfranco.