Fiber optic-based sensing revetment technology for monitoring hydraulic protection embankments

In the last decades, many lowlands belonging to the Po Plain in Northern Italy have been flooded several times, as a consequence of the collapse of minor-river levees, as in the case of the tremendous flood events that hit the Emilia-Romagna Region in May 2023, where over 20 levees failed inundating a very huge area. The preservation of the levee integrity represents, therefore, one of the major issues for the Emilia-Romagna Civil Protection Agency, which financed our research on an innovative levee monitoring technology based on an anti-erosion revetment equipped with Fiber Optic Sensors. A test site of this solution has been implemented on a levee stretch by the town of Modena in Spring 2023. The system got over positively the flood events of May 2023 by detecting the evolution of the flood wave. Data interpretation is still ongoing. The paper presents and discusses some results of the experimental investigation carried out so far.