Climate change is intensifying extreme rainfall events, posing increasing risks to historic cities in vulnerable geomorphological contexts. The city of Matera in Southern Italy, with its unique karstic urban landscape, exemplifies the hydrological challenges associated with surface runoff and flooding. This study developed an integrated methodological framework that combines morphological and hydrological analysis, field data collection, citizen testimonies, hydraulic features estimations using community-sourced observations for extreme rainfall and pluvial flood events reconstruction. The framework was applied to analyse recent urban flood events from 2018 to 2024 that severely affected the heritage “Sassi” district in Matera. Among the identified events, the most significant ones were selected for detailed analysis, allowing the estimation of rainfall recurrence (up to 30–50 years return period), surface flow velocities on the order of 4–6 m/s, and water depths of approximately 0.2–0.4 m, as well as the quantitative assessment of flood hazard based on velocity–depth conditions, together with associated direct damages. The results highlight the inadequacy and/or lack of maintenance of current drainage infrastructure as well as the vulnerability of cultural heritage structures built in porous calcarenite rock. These findings underscore the necessity of upgrading stormwater management and alert systems and embedding community participation in risk management planning and education. The proposed approach offers a replicable framework for post-flood event reconstruction which dataset can support the development of sustainable early warning, alerting and decision support system for increasing community resilience in heritage city.
Sasso et al. (Tue,) studied this question.