Many studies have shown a growing trend in terms of frequency and severity of extreme events. As never before, having tools capable to monitor the amount of rain that reaches the Earth’s surface has become a key point for the identification of areas potentially affected by floods. In order to guarantee an almost global spatial coverage, NASA Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) IMERG products proved to be the most appropriate source of information for precipitation retrievement by satellite. This study is aimed at defining the IMERG accuracy in representing extreme rainfall events for varying time aggregation intervals. This is performed by comparing the IMERG data with the rain gauge ones. The outcomes demonstrate that precipitation satellite data guarantee good results when the rainfall aggregation interval is equal to or greater than 12 h. More specifically, a 24-h aggregation interval ensures a probability of detection (defined as the number of hits divided by the total number of observed events) greater than 80%. The outcomes of this analysis supported the development of the updated version of the ITHACA Extreme Rainfall Detection System (ERDS: erds.ithacaweb.org). This system is now able to provide near real-time alerts about extreme rainfall events using a threshold methodology based on the mean annual precipitation.

The dependence of rainfall on elevation has frequently been documented in the scientific literature and may be relevant in Italy, due to the high degree of geographical and morphological heterogeneity of the country. However, a detailed analysis of the spatial variability of short-duration annual maximum rainfall depths and their connection to the landforms does not exist. Using a new, comprehensive and position-corrected rainfall extreme dataset (I²-RED, the Improved Italian-Rainfall Extreme Dataset), we present a systematic study of the relationship between geomorphological forms and the average annual maxima (index rainfall) across the whole of Italy. We first investigated the dependence of sub-daily rainfall depths on elevation and other landscape indices through univariate and multivariate linear regressions. The results of the national-scale regression analysis did not confirm the assumption of elevation being the sole driver of the variability of the index rainfall. The inclusion of longitude, latitude, distance from the coastline, morphological obstructions and mean annual rainfall contributes to the explanation of a larger percentage of the variance, even though this was in different ways for different durations (1 to 24 h). After analyzing the spatial variability of the regression residuals, we repeated the analysis on geomorphological subdivisions of Italy. Comparing the results of the best multivariate regression models with univariate regressions applied to small areas, deriving from morphological subdivisions, we found that “local” rainfall–topography relationships outperformed the country-wide multiple regressions, offered a uniform error spatial distribution and allowed the effect of morphology on rainfall extremes to be better reproduced.

The collection and management of hydrological data in Italy has been dealt with at national level, initially, by the National Hydrological Service (SIMN), and at regional level in the last 40 years. This change has determined problems in the availability of complete and homogeneous data for the whole country. As of 2020, an updated and quality-controlled dataset of the historical annual maxima rainfall in Italy is still lacking. The Italian Rainfall Extreme Dataset (I-RED) has recently been created to allow studies to be performed with a homogeneous dataset at a national level. In this paper, the methodological approach adopted to build an improved and quality-controlled version of I-RED (in terms of both the rainfall depth values and the position of the rain gauges) is presented. The new database can be used as a more reliable research support for the frequency analysis of the rainfall extremes. This new I²-RED database contains rainfall annual maxima rainfall of 1, 3, 6, 12 and 24 h from 1916 until 2019, counts 5265 rain gauges and has been corroborated by a re-positioning and elevation-checking of 15% of the stations. A descriptive analysis of the maximum values of the stations, which provides an additional quality check and reveals different intriguing spatial features of Super-Extreme rainfall events, is also presented.

Here we present FOCA (Italian FlOod and Catchment Atlas), the first systematic collection of data on Italian river catchments for which historical discharge time series are available. Hydrometric information, including the annual maximum peak discharge and average daily annual maximum discharge, is complemented by several geomorphological, climatological, extreme rainfall, land-cover and soil-related catchment attributes. All hydrological information derives from the most recently released datasets of discharge and rainfall measurements. To enhance the reproducibility and transferability of the analysis, this paper provides a description of all the raw data and the algorithms used to build the basin attribute dataset. We also describe the approaches adopted to solve problems encountered during the digital elevation model elaboration in areas characterized by a complex morphology. Details about the data quality-control procedure developed to detect and correct errors are also reported. One of the main novelties of FOCA with respect to other national-scale datasets is the inclusion of a rich set of geomorphological attributes and extreme rainfall features for a large set of basins covering a wide range of elevations and areas. Using this first nationwide data collection (available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10446258, Claps et al., 2023), a wide range of environmental applications, with a particular focus on flood studies, can be undertaken within the Italian territory.