Dynamic mapping of flood boundaries: current possibilities offered by Earth Observation System and Cellular Automata

Abstract. Flooding is an ongoing and complex problem in Italy. Very large floods caused inundation of the closest areas to the city centre in Rome in 1937, 1976, 1992, 2005 and most recently in 2008. Rome is located at the bottom of the Tiber River catchment, which cover an area of 16 000 km². Intense precipitations struck the Tyrrhenian Sea side of the peninsula inducing a flood event on the Tiber and Aniene's (Tiber's tributary) basins – which captured the attention of the national and international media. Actually there is no validated model in operation for real-time flood forecasting. This research aims at comparing the Cellular Model CAESAR (Cellular Automation Evolutionary Slope And River) application on a reach of the Aniene River with Earth Observation Systems. The main result expected is the prediction of future channel dynamics on short and medium time scale.