Simulation of the January 2014 flood on the Secchia River using a fast and high-resolution 2D parallel shallow-water numerical scheme

The capability of a GPU-parallelized numerical scheme to produce accurate and fast simulations of floodings induced by levee breaches in large domains, adopting high-resolution digital terrain maps, is investigated. The good predictive skills of the presented 2D shallow-water model were proven with regard to the inundation caused by a levee breach that occurred on the Secchia River, Italy, in January 2014. The numerical computations were carried out on a domain of about 180 km2 adopting a Cartesian grid of approximately 7.2 M cells with size 5 m. The results of the simulation were validated against several field data and observations, including a high-resolution synthetic aperture radar image. A ratio of simulation to physical times of about 1/15 was achieved; this kind of simulation tool opens up new perspectives in the devising and implementing of flood event management strategies for civil protection purposes and with the aim of minimizing the economic loss.