Equipping the TRENT2D model with aWebGIS infrastructure: A smart tool for hazard management in mountain regions

Mountain regions are naturally exposed to extreme floods and climate change has worsened this exposure. Therefore, incisive actions and strategies to safeguard urbanized areas are always more undeniable. In recent years, reliable mathematical models for hyperconcentrated flows and debris flows have been developed and used to plan hazard protection and mitigation strategies successfully. However, the increasing trustworthiness of advanced modelling implies higher complexity and larger computational burdens, with a greater request of high-performing hardware. Therefore, new solutions should be found, in order to overcome these drawbacks and encourage a widespread diffusion of best practices and best available technologies not entailing excessive costs in risk-management field, as the UE Flood Directive (2007/60/EC) requires. In this work, a smart and easy-to-use solution is proposed and applied to the TRENT2D model, which is a state-of-the-art 2D model, simulating debris flows and hyperconcentrated flows. This model was converted into a service and equipped withWebGIS technology, developing a complete, flexible and user-friendly working environment. This solution allows geographically referenced input and output to be managed straightforwardly. Moreover, computational burdens are transferred from the user hardware to a high-performing server, also enhancing model accessibility. To avoid work fragmentation, also a GIS-based BUWAL-type hazard-mapping procedure was implemented in the same working environment. In this way, research activity and professional needs are brought significantly closer, encouraging the diffusion of good practices.