Assessment of direct rainfall and flood-induced damage to land transport infrastructure using two-dimensional HEC-RAS 6.6 rain-on-grid simulations

Giada Varra (), Çağrı Alperen İnan (), Renata Della Morte (), Mario Tartaglia (), Andrea Fiduccia (), Alessandra Zammuto (), Ivan Agostino () and Luca Cozzolino ()
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Giada Varra: University Parthenope of Naples, Isola C4
Çağrı Alperen İnan: CMCC Foundation – Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change
Renata Della Morte: University Parthenope of Naples, Isola C4
Mario Tartaglia: Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane S.p.A
Andrea Fiduccia: Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane S.p.A
Alessandra Zammuto: Rete Ferroviaria Italiana (RFI) S.p.A
Ivan Agostino: Rete Ferroviaria Italiana (RFI) S.p.A
Luca Cozzolino: University Parthenope of Naples, Isola C4

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 2025, vol. 121, issue 15, No 14, 17615-17645

Abstract: Abstract This study explores the application of the Rain-on-Grid approach within the two-dimensional (2D) Hydrologic Engineering Center’s River Analysis System (HEC-RAS, version 6.6) for a selected area (~ 230 km2) of the Low Calore River catchment in Southern Italy, which was heavily hit by an extreme rainfall event on October 14–15, 2015. This event, lasting about 17 h, triggered a range of geo-hydraulic phenomena, including extensive flooding of the Calore River, with physical damage to the railway infrastructure. The hydrodynamic model was used to reconstruct the effects of the observed rainfall event by including relevant processes such as spatially distributed rainfall, upstream discharge input, infiltration losses, and flow propagation across hillslopes and within the Calore River. The results demonstrate that 2D Rain-on-Grid HEC-RAS simulations, which account for the minor tributary network, can reproduce realistic correlations with recorded damage to linear transport infrastructure. The comparison with a traditional fluvial flooding approach, where a given discharge hydrograph is used as the only input to the hydrodynamic model, shows that the traditional approach fails to evaluate the activation of the minor tributary network, leading to an underestimation of potential infrastructure damages, and the inability to explain observed damages. These results suggest that hazard maps should explicitly model pluvial and compound pluvial-fluvial flooding when assessing risks to transportation networks. However, the findings also highlight certain limitations, including the need for more detailed and spatially distributed input data and increased computational time.

Keywords: HEC-RAS 2D; Direct rainfall; Rain-on-grid; Flood hazard mapping; Damage; Railway; Fluvial flood; Pluvial flood; Rainfall-runoff modeling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1007/s11069-025-07484-w

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