The improvement of historical database on damaging hydrogeological events in the case of Apulia (Southern Italy)

Historical database about landslides and floods are an important tool for the comprehension of the evolution of a study area or for the estimation of risk scenarios as a basis for Civil Protection purposes (BLAHUT et alii, 2011). Many researchers have shown the usefulness of historical data in the study of past events (BARNIKEL & BECHT, 2003; GLASER & STANGL, 2004; PETRUCCI AND POLEMIO 2009). Starting from these milestones, the aim of this work is to collect historical data about DHEs, Damaging Hydrogeological Events (PETRUCCI & POLEMIO, 2003), mainly floods and landslides, in order to improve the existing available databases in the area of Apulia, a southern Italian region . Data about the occurrence of floods or landslides are available consulting historical documents, national databases, scientific publications, technical reports, and all kind of documents from which it is possible to collect information about the occurrence of DHEs. For this study the main DHE database is represented by the AVI (the acronym means Italian damaged areas) database (http://avi.gndci.cnr.it ). The AVI project was a special program promoted by the Italian Civil Protection to gather information on sites hit by landslides or floods in Italy during the period 1918 to 1996. The main sources of data for Apulia were newspapers.