Preventive approach to reduce risk caused by failure of a rainwater drainage system: The case study of Corato (Southern Italy)

The presence of ancient underground urban drainage system in cities entails serious risks to public safety. Often, the presence of these hydraulic structures is forgotten and their projects missing in public offices. In this work the critical issues of the old urban drainage system of Corato, a city in the south of Italy, are described. In particular, through a targeted identification, acquisition and spatialization of key variables, and subsequent processing in a GIS software, a method for risk assessment has been provided. The choice of key variables was carried out through visual inspections and acquisition of “historical criti-calities” of the urban drainage system. Finally, this paper presents a methodology, calibrated on the old city of Corato, to evaluate the risk caused by the presence of this hydraulic infrastructure, in order to help technicians to define the correct order of operations to be carried out.