On November 1994, 6th, a meeting commemorating the 1994 flood event that caused 70 deaths took place. Twenty-five years later, Italy’s leading meteorological experts discussed the advances in forecasting made since then, and the limits that still need to be overcome
On November 1994, a strong flood, which caused 70 deaths, hit the districts of Cuneo, Asti and Alessandria and displaced 2200 people. Now, 25 years later, the University of Eastern Piedmont, in association with the Italian Association of Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, has commemorated the flood with a day entirely dedicated to understanding the advances and the limits still present in meteorology. This should help better the understanding of how the civil protection systems can be implemented.
The meeting, which was open to the public, took place on Wednesday, November 6th, in the auditorium of the Science and Technological Innovation Department (DISIT) of the University of Eastern Piedmont, with Italy’s leading meteorological experts attending. In the two sessions, morning and afternoon, the scientists reviewed the historic event’s atmospheric processes that caused the rains and their effects on the ground. The disaster represented the opportunity to think about civil protection systems and intervention and prevention strategies.
The afternoon was dedicated to the comparison between flood simulations using modern models with the results drawn from models 25 years ago. Antonio Parodi, head of the Meteorology and Climate Department and Weather and Climate Programme director for CIMA Research Foundation, explained how the WRF model, developed only at the end of the 90s, would have been able to forecast the event. “The meteorological model, at 1.5 kilometres scale, coupled with the Continuum hydrological model, can correctly reproduce the Piedmont event and forecast the peak flow rate observed 25 years ago”, said Parodi.
“With this model, we are also able to compare the 1994 flood with the more recent large scale flooding event that occurred on October 21st and 22nd of this year”, added the researcher. “We can observe some interesting similarities between the two floods, both characterized by the presence of strong and persistent storms. Unlike the storm in 1994 the recent event had strong convective features, making it actually more intrinsically unpredictable. Future research will need to focus on this problem”.
“The issues discussed during this meeting are particularly important for the city of Alessandria, as well as for the scientific community”, said Enrico Ferreo, professor at the DISIT and the meeting’s coordinator. “That is why we wanted to involve all the persons operating locally within civil protection and meteo-hydrological forecasting”.