Integrated environmental monitoring towards the development of a decision support system for the urban canals of Padua, Italy

Current social needs demand for a multifunctional management of urban water systems, ensuring a full provision of ecosystem services by urban streams. This type of multi-objective management must be supported by model-based decision support tools, whose development relies on a very good knowledge of the hydraulic and ecological features of water systems. The LASA group of the University of Padua conducted an integrated environmental monitoring work on the network of urban canals of Padua (NE Italy), to understand the hydraulic and ecological processes in the system and collect the data required to develop a modelling tool to simulate them. Monitoring results evidenced a negative impact of wet-weather flows from combined sewers on the environmental status of the canals, and detected a significant influence of the hydraulic management on their water quality status. A preliminary model formulation to simulate drainage dynamics in one of the key nodes of the local hydraulic network gave promising results. Collected information will represent the basis for the future development of a decision support system accounting for the different ecosystem services provided by the urban canals of Padua.