Real-time flood forecasting of the Tiber river in Rome

An adaptive, conceptual model for real-time flood forecasting of the Tiber river in Rome is proposed. This model simulates both rainfall-runoff transformations, to reproduce the contributions of 37 ungauged sub-basins that covered about 30% of the catchment area, and flood routing processes in the hydrographic network. The adaptive component of the model concerns the rainfall-runoff analysis: at any time step the whole set of the model parameters is recalibrated by minimizing the objective function constituted by the sum of the squares of the differences between observed and computed water surface elevations (or discharges). The proposed model was tested through application under real-time forecasting conditions for three historical flood events. To assess the forecasting accuracy, to support the decision maker and to reduce the possibility of false or missed warnings, confidence intervals of the forecasted water surface elevations (or discharges), computed according to a Monte Carlo procedure, are provided. The evaluation of errors in the prediction of peak values, of coefficients of persistence and of the amplitude of confidence intervals of prediction shows the possibility to develop a flood forecast model with a lead time of 12 h, which is useful for civil protection actions.