Il premio Paolo Bernardi 2026 è stato vinto dal progetto:
“SHAPE-EWS: Synthetic Hyetograph Approximation of Precipitation Events for Pluvial Flood Early Warning System and Risk Management”
a cura del dott. da Giulio Paradiso e del dott. Mohammad Rasoul Sedaghat Rad
Urban expansion and the resulting increase of impervious areas have increased the risk of pluvial flash floods, which are typically triggered by short, intense precipitation. Consolidated approaches for extreme rainfall event analysis are based on the use of hyetographs of given shape (rectangular, so-called Chicago, …) obtained by intensity-duration-frequency curves (IDF). While these traditional tools ensure safety margins, they inherently average out maximum rainfall peaks and oversimplify crucial rainfall dynamics like temporal intermittency and the actual storm shape.To overcome this gap, this project proposes an innovative methodology to generate realistic design hyetographs and translate them into an Early Warning System (EWS)-oriented operational framework. Utilizing high-resolution historical series, the study analyses critical rainfall events lasting from 15 minutes to 3 hours, considering that in urban areas, concentration times are typically shorter than one hour. The workflow is structured in sequential phases: after building a robust sub-hourly database, continuous rainfall is divided into independent events to extract real hyetographs. Subsequently, catchment characteristics are extracted through Google Earth Engine and GIS from online topographic, hydrographic, land-cover and urban datasets, including slope, drainage area, imperviousness, built-up fraction and green-area fraction. The responses of urban catchments are then simulated using a physics-informed Nash IUH framework, supported by Machine Learning techniques to link rainfall patterns and catchment descriptors to hydrological response indicators. Finally, through a constrained deconvolution process, equivalent synthetic hyetographs capable of reproducing peak discharge and time to peak are derived. The methodology is applied to locations in Piedmont and Sicily, exploring its suitability to capture hyetograph characteristics in two different climates. By synthesizing into hyetographs the temporal variability of precipitation, including pauses and multiple peaks, the project will support uncertainty-aware, site-specific pluvial flood warnings and improve flood probabilistic analysis.
Il Premio Paolo Bernardi, istituito nel 2024 e sostenuto da CAE SpA, è dedicato alla memoria dell’Ing. Bernardi e alla sua significativa carriera nel campo dell’idrologia operativa e della strumentazione idrologica.
Il premio è rivolto a progetti di ricerca collaborativi proposti da giovani soci in regola per l’anno 2026. Il premio è rivolto a progetti di ricerca applicata per l’avanzamento della pratica operativa nell’ambito delle soluzioni non strutturali basate sul monitoraggio in tempo reale dei fenomeni per la gestione e mitigazione del rischio dovuto a eventi idro-meteorologici estremi e per la gestione delle risorse idriche.
I candidati devono indicare, nell’email di invio della proposta (da non inviare tramite PEC), la volontà di partecipare alla selezione per il Premio Paolo Bernardi e allegare il relativo modello di domanda, specificando se la stessa proposta. Lo stesso gruppo di ricerca può partecipare anche al bando per il premio Melone.
La scadenza per la presentazione delle candidature è fissata al 12 maggio 2026.