PAT-SOI will commission further developments of a rainfall-runoff model already in use for the hydrological design of hydraulic works in mountain catchments. Such refinements entail a more confident evaluation of the return periods of extreme discharges in rivers, based on the hypothesis on non-uniform rainfall on the area of interest. This will allow defining the design discharge for new hydraulic works according to the probability of occurrence of extreme events. The estimation of the climatological occurrence of hydrological extremes involves: a) the stochastic generation of physically consistent precipitation fields by suitable statistical techniques; b) the downscaling of precipitation fields simulated by limited area numerical models of the atmosphere in selected case studies corresponding to historical floods. Real-time rainfall-runoff models will be developed for a series of basins in the Province of Trento . Results of the analysis will be stored in a GIS database.

As a further development beyond the HYDROCARE project, the calibration of hydrological models will also lay down the basis for the coupling with meteorological models in view of operational forecasting of floods.

Beyond technical activities, PAT-SOI will take care of disseminating the outcomes of HYDROCARE at regional scale, with particular focus on raising the common public awareness on issues related to best practices in water resource management and on hydro-meteorological risk prevention.