Ligurian Terraced Landscape and Geomorphic Hazard: GI monitoring and modelling

Gerardo Brancucci, Guido Paliaga

POLIS Department, Faculty of Architecture - University of Genova (IT)

The relationships between the hinterland and the coast are direct and strong in a territory like the Ligurian region. The area is characterised by a peculiar geomorphic asset with strong steepness of the slopes and short hydrological basins. This aspects are the main reason of the high geomorphic hazard of the area, particularly as regards floods along the coastlines.
The transformation of the territory induced by man along the past centuries to obtain terrain suitable to farming has induced actually a raising of the geomorphic hazard. The man made terraces are spread along all the area from the coastline to the hinterland.
Presently the abandon of the terraces and the lack in managing particularly the flow of the rainfall runoff between them, cause the erosion processes to destroy those structures worsening the geomorphic hazard.
The aim of the project is to establish a process of focusing on the more vulnerable areas and then to provide a planning tool to contrast the abandonment and the lack of maintenance of the territory.
GIS is an essential tool to assess and compare all the parameters involved in the quantitative analysis and to focus on the relationships between the dynamics of the slopes and the flood hazard along the coastline.
The planned project will make use of 3D modelling techniques, morphometric analysis of the surface and of surveyed data concerning the state of conservation of terraces to obtain the final model. This approach will allow the evaluation of the natural factor of the geomorphic hazard and of the one related to the modification of the slopes induced by the man.