MOHYCAM Modified HYdrogeological hazards under complex ClimAte and environmental conditions: Monitoring activities and mitigation strategies
Current status Ongoing (2025-2027)
Funding programme Fondazione Cariplo, Bando 2024 “Territori sicuri – Studiare soluzioni innovative per le comunità a rischio frane o alluvioni”
Project budget 677,735.000
Keywords hydrological risk, climate change, risk management, high mountain areas, local community
Project Overview
Objective
The MOHYCAM project addresses the hydrogeological vulnerabilities of the Belvedere Glacier basin and the Macugnaga municipality, in Valle Anzasca (Italy), by promoting a comprehensive understanding of climate-induced hazards. The objective is to develop an integrated approach, providing the community with effective strategies for risk management and disaster prevention, in view of the increasing frequency of extreme weather events. The project will integrate data from field observations, remote sensing, and probabilistic modelling of extreme events. It will also analyse the community narratives and social perceptions of risk, to ensure active community engagement in co-creating the solutions and collaboratively defining concerted responses to floods and climate change hazards.
Context
In high mountain areas, communities face constant threats from natural hazards, such as rockfalls, debris flows and flooding, leading to serious damages to property and infrastructure and endangering people’s lives. Debris flows are the most dangerous among these hazards, and there is evidence that climate change is affecting their frequency and severity through multiple mechanisms. The Anzasca valley has a long history of hazardous events, with significant examples over recent years: a debris flow event in 2023, which impacted the glacier and the Anza River, and multiple flooding events in 2024, with mobilisation of large amounts of sediment and consequent damages. MOHYCAM aims to assess current and future risks and to design strategies to engage, raise awareness, and train the local community to respond to these risks and reduce damages from future hydrogeological events.
What – Main activities
MOHYCAM integrates scientific expertise with local experiential knowledge, combining technical hazard assessment with the analysis of community narratives and social perceptions of risk. This mutual exchange between expert and experiential knowledge is one of the project’s key innovative contributions. The project reconstructs the community’s historical memory of extreme events and analyses individual and collective responses to floods and climate hazards, while also investigating the long-term geomorphological evolution of the Belvedere Glacier basin, assessing changes in glacial and slope dynamics and sediment mobilisation from past debris flow events. The relationship between meteorological variables and historical debris flow outbreaks is examined to evaluate trends in their frequency and magnitude. A real-time monitoring system will be developed and deployed to enable AI-assisted flood detection and glacier monitoring. The project also identifies and proposes both structural interventions (such as check dams, diversion structures, and riverbank stabilisation) and non-structural measures (including an early warning system) to mitigate debris flow risks. Finally, co-design workshops will actively engage local stakeholders in collaboratively developing flood risk prevention and mitigation strategies for the Macugnaga area.
Who
Led by Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy
Principal Investigator: Prof. Livio Pinto (DICA)
Partners:
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- Politecnico di Milano, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (DICA)
- Politecnico di Milano, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies (DAStU)
- Politecnico di Torino, Department of Environment, Land, and Infrastructure Engineering (DIATI)
- Politecnico di Torino, Department of Architecture and Design (DAD)
- Macugnaga Municipality
Dastu Team: Luca Lazzarini, Andrea Parma, Silvia Marinoni
Research Structure: Laboratorio di Simulazione Urbana ‘Fausto Curti’
Funded by Fondazione CARIPLO