Final Sediment Outcome from Meteorological Flood Events: A Multi-modelling Approach

Coastal areas are more and more exposed to the effects of climatic change. Intense local rainfalls increases the frequency of flash floods and/or flow-like subaerial and afterward submarine landslides. The overall phenomenon of flash flood is complex and involves different phases strongly connected: heavy precipitations in a short period of time, soil erosion, fan deltas forming at mouth and hyperpycnal flows and/or landslides occurrence. Such interrelated phases were separately modelled for simulation purposes by different computational models: Partial Differential Equations methods for weather forecasts and sediment production estimation and Cellular Automata for soil erosion by rainfall and subaerial sediment transport and deposit. Our aim is to complete the model for the last phase of final sediment outcome. This research starts from the results of the previous models and introduces the processes concerning the demolition of fan deltas by sea waves during a sea-storm and the subsequent transport of and sediments in suspension by current at the sea-storm end and their deposition and eventual flowing on the sea bed. A first reduced implementation of the new model SCIDDICA-ss2/w&c1 was applied on the partial reconstruction of the 2016 Bagnara case regarding the meteorological conditions and the flattening of Sfalassà’s fan delta.