Extreme events in Venice and in the North Adriatic Sea: 28–29 October 2018

Abstract

Predictions and monitoring of sea level events have always been very challenging issues aimed at protecting, enhancing and improving the marine environment, especially in the North Adriatic Sea and in the Venice Lagoon, that are increasingly exposed to the flooding risk from storm surges, well known as Acqua alta phenomenon. In this framework, a deep analysis of extreme events has been developed, to characterize this storm surge in terms of its rareness and intensity; the Generalised Pareto Distribution and the generalised extreme values methods have been applied to obtain sea level return period and return level. Moreover, the operational sea level forecasting system running at ISPRA in the framework of the SIMM—Sistema Idro-Meteo-Mare is here presented; it is based on two different methods, the deterministic hydrodynamic finite elements numerical model SHYFEM and a statistical one. It provides forecasts up to 96 h depending on the spatial resolution and input data configuration. In this work, a deep analysis of the 29th October 2018 storm surge event and the application of the described system are presented. This integrated system is, in fact, a very useful tool to support the management of the marine environment and its resource, in particular regarding the coastal zone planning, protection and management, and to support the mitigation and rescue actions.