The hydrological characteristics of the vajont valley

Abstract

In this paper a study on the hydrology of Vajont creek, in northern Italy, is presented. The Vajont creek is dramatically known because of the disaster which occurred in 1963, when, before the dam located on the creek between the towns Erto and Casso started its operation, a huge landslide detached from the Toc mountain, falling in the reservoir during the filling stage. Consequently, a water wave overtopped the dam. Although the dam is still there, the damage caused by the wave was so high that this disaster is remembered as one the most dramatic in a very long time. As just a little has been said about the hydrology of the water resources system planned at the time of the dam design, the volume of water, which could have been used if the system were realized, is here estimated by use of a storage-yield curve theory and it is compared to the amount of water that can really be nowadays exploited, that has been in turn estimated by a hydrological model proposed in 1996.