Flash Floods in Liguria

Water is a resource, water can be a danger: torrential rains lashed Liguria late Tuesday, causing flash floods that killed some people .In the Mediterranean region many cities are located in flood-prone areas and millions of people are exposed to inundation risk. For this reason issuing early flood warning to the population is crucial in order to mitigate the impact of the hazardous event in terms of human lives and property loss.
The solution to this problem relies on the knowledge of meteorological and hydrological processes that lead to flood formation. However, small and medium catchments, with areas inferior to 1000 km2, typical of Mediterranean and Alpine environment, have concentration times that do not reach 12 hours; such a short time does not allow the population to react following standard alert procedures . Thus, at these, or smaller, scales, rainfall forecasts becomes crucial. The use of limited-area meteorological models (LAMs) that provide precipitation forecasts on scales of about 100 km2 in a few hours is a common approach ; however, obtaining reliable predictions from numerical models at these resolutions is still difficult. To overcome this problem, CIMA Foundation developed the RainFARM statistical technique  to downscale models of precipitation to the resolution needed for hydrological applications .