Long term planning of flood risks and processes of urbanistic development: the case of the Basilicata region (southern Italy)

The River Basin Authority of Basilicata (AdB) is an interregional agency dealing with land protection and the planning of water resources. Its territory (which covers an area of about 9000 km in the south of Italy) is very abundant in environmental resources, but also very fragile and extremely rich in hydrogeological disturbances such as landslides and floods, due to its geological, geomorphological, hydrological and hydrogeological peculiarities. In this context the River Basin Hydrogeological Management Plan (PAI), which includes a Landslide Management Plan and a Flood Risk Plan, assumes a great importance since it is the regulatory instrument by which rules and actions dealing with land protection are planned and programmed. From 2001 to the present, the Flood Risk Plan has been upgraded yearly, applying more and more meticulous hydrological and hydraulic mathematical models and using a gradually improved knowledge of the topography of the territory. Within this process of continuous upgrading, new studies and researches have been started with the DIFA (Department of Environmental Engineering and Physics) of the University of Basilicata in order to classify different planning domains and ties taking into account the hydraulic depth and the flow velocity as suggested in the European Directive on the assessment and management of flood risks (2007/60/EC). In this paper the preliminary results of these studies are anticipated and the modern and innovative formulation of the Hydrogeological Safety Plan of the AdB, which tries to overcome its typical nature evolving from a set of rules and restraints into an instrument to suggest new ideas for a sustainable economic and urbanistic development, is explained.