General informations
The Arno river basin Authority carries out planning and programming activities on land protection and water resources management in the basin of the main river of Tuscany. Up to now we have produced the following plans: Hydraulic hazard – The plan defines specific structural and non structural actions to be carried out for flood risk reduction in the river basin. Land protection plan – Aims to define a planning and programming frame which, in harmony with the present state and the future economic and social development of the territory will tend to minimize the damage involved with hydraulic and geological hazards. Water quality – Defines the actions to be carried out to reach and maintain water quality levels and to protect and manage surface waters. Dredging activities – The plan rules the extraction of materials such as sand and gravel from the river bed, from flood plain and natural floading areas.

Research activities
GEOLOGICAL DATA BASE (1:25.000) collecting the more detailed and updated geological data on the river basin.
LANDSLIDE GEOGRAPHIC DATA BASE reporting data dealing with areas interested by slope instability. The data base is built and upgraded through traditional methods integrated with advanced technologies as radar remote sensing. The study is part of the SLAM project by ESA.
STREAM AND RIVER NETWORK FOR THE ARNO RIVER BASIN an ArcGis based system geared to support water resources applications. The principal features involved a 10x10 DTM corrected for hydrological applications, the vector tree of the hydraulic surface network, stream channel cross sections and cartographic representation where needed. The system is based on ESRI hydro-data model and it is been referred to Tuscany Region standards.
REAL TIME FLOOD PREDICTION SYSTEM – ARTU. The system is based on integration in a single data base of available hydrologic data deriving from different sensor networks operating on the watershed. ARTU provides an efficient user interface for data presentation and supports a number of models to provide an efficient decision making tool for real time warning. Particularly an hydrologic and hydraulic model can estimate water stages in a number of critical sections along the network. Also dynamic rainfall height thresholds are provided together with a quantitative soil moisture model on the whole basin.
DATA BANK OF THE BILANCINO LAKE AREA MORPHO-SEDIMENTARTY ENVIRONMENTS. The bank is an integrated system of geological data with morphological and morpho-dynamic analysis of erosion aiming to the knowledge of sediment production, transport and accumulation.
REMOTE SENSING SUBSIDENCE CONTROL REMOTE sensing technology is used for subsidence control in sensitive areas of the basin. The system is being developed using data acquired by ERS, ENVISAT and RADARSAT satellites.
RIVER MODELLING Hydrologic and hydraulic modelling is being used to identify the areas with high hydraulic hazard and to evaluate the effects of structural and non-structural actions programmed by the Plan on hydraulic hazard on the basin. The model uses mono and bi-dimensional unsteady flow patterns.
CLIMATIC CHANGES. The effect of climatic changes on the basin is a progressive flow reduction on an annual basis. The phenomenon is particularly relevant in the winter and it can be connected with three main elements: the reduction of rain volumes, the decrease of the number of rainy days and the increase of temperature. The Authority is strongly committed on this problem both with research activities and through our plans.
 

Land data management
Knowledge is one of the main activities carried out by the Basin Authority; it includes, among others, collecting, processing, storing and broadcasting data. The importance of this activity is crucial, especially when we consider the increasingly complex environmental, economic and social phenomena that public administrations have to govern: delicate and, very often, conflicting processes. In agreement with the latest laws, data produced by the Basin Authority are available for free through the web without the need for informatic authentication; they are accompanied by appropriate metadata that describe features and using limitations of the data. Through the portal http://www.adbarno.it/gds/ anyone can access pages listing the layers of information available for download, or on-line maps for direct via browser consultation of basin master-plan maps.

Location
Our headquarters are in the very center of Florence, in the Montauti-Niccolini palace, an important historic building. The palace is located in Via de’Servi 15, only few steps from Piazza del Duomo and Piazza Santissima Annunziata.