Education and Research

Prof. Roberto Ranzi, University of Brescia, Italy

Position

  • 2005-date Professor of Hydraulic Structures and of Riverbasin monitoring and restoration, University of Brescia

  • 2000-2005 Associate Professor, University of Brescia.

  • 1993-2000 Assistant Professor, University of Brescia;

Education

  • PhD in Hydraulic Engineering at Politecnico di Milano, Itay (1994)

  • Graduated cum laude in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Politecnico di Milano, Italy (1990)

  • Internship at the Institute of Hydrology, Wallingford (UK) during his Master studies

  • Internship at the Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, during his PhD studies

Research topics

His main field of research, conducted first at Politecnico di Milano under the supervision of Prof. Renzo Rosso who was his Master and PhD Advisor, and then of Prof. Baldassare Bacchi at the University of Brescia, is the modelling of the space-time variability of hydrological processes, mainly precipitation, radiation, heat and moisture fluxes, snowmelt and ice-melt runoff, flood formation and routing, especially in mountain watersheds and under anthropic changes and climate scenarios. On the applied engineering side, he studied methods and criteria for the design of flood retention basins, for the determination of the design storm in urban and agricultural basins, and hydrological models coupled with mesoscale meteorological models for flood forecasting. Application of remote sensing to the monitoring of soil moisture, snowpack and glaciers and of meteorological radars for the determination of the areal reduction factor of storm and for rainfall nowcasting is another subject of his publications.

He chairs the "Climate Change" Working Group of IAHR-International Association for Hydro-Environment Engineering and Research and chaired the “Applied Hydrology” Working Group of IAHR.

Is member of the Commission on Cartographic Heritage into the Digital of the ICA-International Cartographic Association

Is National Coordinator in the "ASEA-UNINET" network

He has been National Representative in the Management Committee of the COST Action ES-1308 "ClimMani".

As chairman of the Hydrology Working Group in the Mesoscale Alpine Programme he coordinated the numerical and field experiments of hydrological interest within the MAP-Special Observing Period campaign that took place in the Alps in September-November 1999 and coordinated hydrological aspects of the MAP D-PHASE 2007 experiment, a WMO-WWRP Forecast Demonstration Project. He contributed to the EU-funded RAPHAEL-Runoff and Atmospheric Processes for flood Hazard forEcasting and controL project (contract ENV 4-CT97-0552) and is Principal Investigator for the Italian Alps in the GLIMS-Global Land Ice Monitoring from Space Project. He has been Principal Investigator for the Research Unit of the University of Brescia in several research projects with public (e.g.European Commission FP7 KULTURISK, Italian National Research Council, the Ministry of Education, University and Research, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Italian Space Agency) and private funding. He is maintaining the meteorological stations at the University of Brescia and the eddy-correlation station of Cividate Camuno, maintained from 2001 to 2008 the Passo della Lobbia Alta (3020 m asl) station on the Adamello Glacier. He contributed to the design and implementation of several hydrological laboratory and field experiments (TOCEX, MASMEX, BelvederEX, MandronEX, CividatEX). Member of IAHR, IAHS, EGU, SII-Italian Hydrological Society, CGI-Italian Glaciological Committee, AII-Italian Hydrotechnical Association, GII-Italian Group of Hydraulics. He was member of the Founding Committe of the Italian Hydrological Society and of the Scientific Association “Giulio De Marchi”. He has been reviewer of several international Journals, including J.Hydrology, Water Resour. Res, J.Geophys. Res., J. Hydrol. Engineering ASCE, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., Hydrol. Proc., Hydrol. Sci. J., J.Flood Risk Management, Nordic Hydrol., J.Hydraulic Res., J. of Glaciology, Annals of Glaciololy, Remote Sens. Env., Water Resour. Man., Geogr. Fis. Dinam. Quat., Meteorol. Zeitschrift, Science of the Total Environment, Water, Climate and Development, Int. J. of Disaster Risk Science, Int. J. of River Basin Management, J. of Mountain Science and L’Acqua.

Since 2012 he is member of the Editorial Board of Hydrology Research, official Journal of the Nordic Association for Hydrology, the British Hydrological Society, the German Hydrological Society and the Italian Hydrological Society and since 2016 he is member of the Editorial Board of KSCE-Journal of Civil Engineering

Keywords

  • hydrology; civil engineering; water resources; hydraulic engineering; mountain hydrology; environmental engineering; snow and glaciers; flood forecasting; remote sensing; hydrometeorological monitoring systems; weather radars; Areal Reduction Factor of storms.

Major Research Projects

1999 Mesoscale Alpine Programme-Special Observing Period Experiment (National Research Council)

2001-2002 Italian Glaciers Monitoring from space (ASI-Italian Space Agency)

2003-2004 Algorithms for land classification with microwave monitoring (ASI-Italian Space Agency)

2005-2006 Effects of climate change and minimum instream flow standards on hydropower generation capacity (CESI)

2006-2008 Study of a hydrogeological system to assist flood control in the Red River delta (Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Vietnam’s Ministry of Science and Technology)

2006-2007 Drought forecast and mitigation (Ministry of University and Research)

2008-2009 CARIPANDA-Climate Change and water resources in the Adamello Natural Park (Fondazione CARIPLO)

2010-2012 Water resources assessment and management under climate change scenarios in mountain area (Ministry of University and Research)

2010-2011 Hydrometeorological monitoring and forecasting for flood control in the Ca river basin (Laos-Vietnam (Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Vietnam’s Ministry of Science and Technology)

2011-2013 KULTURISK-Knowledge-based approach to develop a cULTUre of Risk prevention (European Commission - 7th Framework Programme Grant 265280)

2015-2017 COST Action ES-1308 "ClimMani" - National Representative in the Management Committee

2015-2017 ERASMUS KA2 - Environmental Protection and Natural Disasters

2015-2017 HYMEUR-HYdrometeorological Modelling for Environmental qUalitycontRol Grant from Central European Initiative

2017-2018 STUDIO DEGLI AFFLUSSI E DEFLUSSI DEL LAGO DI COMO NEL PERIODO 1845-2016, Consorzio dell'Adda

2018-2021 FLORIMAP "Smart FLOod RIsk MAnagement Policies” -Fondazione Cariplo

2020-date: "Sviluppo di una piattaforma di monitoraggio e supporto alle decisioni per la gestione del sistema di bacini idroelettrici del Thai Binh e Fiume Rosso (Red River 2)" AICS-Agenzia Italiana per la Cooperazione allo Sviluppo

2020- date “Caratterizzazione del regime di frequenza degli estremi idrologici nel Distretto Po, anche considerando scenari di cambiamento climatico”, finanziato dall’Autorità di Bacino Distrettuale del Fiume Po/Po river Water district

2020- date “Accordo di collaborazione scientifica per la redazione di una ricerca conoscitiva sulla dinamica delle colate detritiche nella Val Rabbia e nel bacino del Torrente Blé, in Valle Camonica”, finanziato dal CNR-IRPI di Torino/National Research Council