Publications de Paolo Perona | EPFL Graph Search

Experimental quantification of hydrodynamic effects on plant cutting roots development

This paper focuses on the development of azimuthal root asymmetry in plant cuttings and related effects on the resistance to flow erosion in poorly cohesive sediment. We aim to differentiate the effects that hydrodynamic forces acting on the plant (cutting ...

CRC Press2025

Assessing the Weighted Usable Area for the Habitat Suitability of brown trout (Salmo trutta L.) in rivers

Giovanni De Cesare, Paolo Perona, Giulio Calvani, Francesca Padoan

To address the global loss of biodiversity in freshwater environments, understanding river habitat requirements for key species, such as brown trout (Salmo trutta L.), is crucial. The Habitat Suitability Index (HSI) aids ecologists in identifying preferred ...

CRC Press2025

On the duration of flood hydrograph using the Compound Poisson Process approximation

Paolo Perona, Giulio Calvani

River engineering projects are usually designed based on the peak discharge concept. However, some river processes depend on the shape and duration of the flow hydrograph, and their modelling is particularly relevant for designing protection and retention ...

CRC Press2025

Mean hydrograph event from exact ensemble averages of stochastic trajectories

Paolo Perona, Giulio Calvani

The design of hydraulic structures, flood protection systems, and river management strategies often relies on the peak-flow discharge associated with a specific return period. However, many river processes are related to the shape and duration of the entir ...

Elsevier BV2025

Uncertainty analysis of field trials of low-cost Bi-TiO_2 -P25 solar photocatalyst for sustainable water treatment

Paolo Perona, Giulio Calvani

Solar photocatalysis has the potential to reduce chemical and microbial contaminants in water and make it safer for consumption in an effective and sustainable manner. This has been studied and proven well under laboratoryscale conditions. In our previous ...

2025

Mapping groundwater-related flooding in urban coastal regions

Paolo Perona, Montana Marshall, Emmanuel Qays Dubois

Coastal urban environments are facing an increasing risk of flooding from both surface water and groundwater due to globally elevated water levels, causing substantial socio-economic damages, threatening livelihoods, and hindering economic development. To ...

Elsevier BV2025

Stochastic optimization to maximize water supply index in conjunctive use of surface and groundwater

David Andrew Barry, Paolo Perona

Systematic operation of water resources systems requires rules that consider the uncertainties affecting system performance. Here, stochastic dynamic programming (SDP) is used to structure and solve a full-scale surface and groundwater conjunctive use mode ...

Elsevier BV2025

Hydraulic drive framework on habitat suitability enhances movement bias of brown trout in stream networks

Giovanni De Cesare, Paolo Perona, Giulio Calvani, Francesca Padoan

Freshwater ecosystems face increasing threats from human activities and climate change, thus requiring efforts to reduce impacts and prevent further deterioration. Restoration projects for riverine environments often rely on hydraulic, habitat, and metapop ...

2025

Towards unified scaling relationships for gravel-bed and sand-bed rivers

Paolo Perona, Giulio Calvani

Laboratory flume experiments and field investigations demonstrated the existence of dynamic equilibrium conditions for river channels, according to the hydraulic (flow discharge, water depth) and morphological (bed slope, grain size distribution, cross-sec ...

2025

Performance and accuracy of cross‐section tracking methods for hydromorphological habitat assessment in wadable rivers with sparse canopy conditions

Giovanni De Cesare, Paolo Perona, Robin Schroff

This article investigates the performance and accuracy of continuous Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) position tracking for hydromorphological surveys, based on a comprehensive river restoration monitoring campaign. The a ...

2024

Ecological and biogeomorphological modelling of brown trout (Salmo trutta L.): Hints for improvements

Giovanni De Cesare, Paolo Perona, Giulio Calvani, Francesca Padoan

The loss of biodiversity in freshwater environments is becoming an increasing problem globally. As a result, many tools have been developed and improved to reduce this decline. However, there is still a need for the identification and evaluation of precise ...

Wiley2024

Nature-based solution enhances resilience to flooding and catalyzes multi-benefits in coastal cities in the Global South

Jérôme Chenal, Paolo Perona, Charlotte Grossiord, Montana Marshall, Emmanuel Qays Dubois

Coastal cities are facing a rise in groundwater levels induced by sea level rise, further triggering saturation excess flooding where groundwater levels reach the topographic surface or reduce the storage capacity of the soil, thus stressing the existing i ...

2024

Splitting probabilities and mean first-passage times across multiple thresholds of jump-and-drift transition paths

Paolo Perona, Giulio Calvani

We apply the stochastic-trajectory analysis to derive exact expressions for the mean first passage times of jump-and-drift transition paths across two or more consecutive thresholds. We perform the analysis of the crossing statistics in terms of dimensionl ...

2023

Dynamic environmental flows using hydrodynamic-based solutions for sustainable hydropower

Giovanni De Cesare, Paolo Perona

Water diversions from rivers and torrents for anthropic uses of the resource alter the natural flow regime. As a measure, environmental flows have been prescribed and often are enforced by law to follow policies (e.g., minimal flow, proportional redistribu ...

CRC Press/Balkema2023

River delta eco-morphodynamics under changing scenarios: The case of Lake Turkana, Kenya

Paolo Perona

In this work we explore the impact that changes in local climate and river hydrology have on the morphody-namics of a river delta, particularly focusing on the evolution of the delta generating at the lake inlet. We investigated the case of the delta in th ...

2023

Experimental characterization of root-reinforced riparian sediment deposits in a restored and widened river course

Giovanni De Cesare, Paolo Perona

The Arbogne River is located mainly in the Swiss canton of Fribourg. The River was meandering through the plane at a very low gradient and several exceptional historic floods with large sediment accumulation are mentioned. After important river training wo ...

2023

Fulfilling Riverscape – a creative interdisciplinary approach

Giovanni De Cesare, Paolo Perona, Sylvie Tram Nguyen

Hydrological, water technological, managerial and human induced processes affect aquatic, amphibian and terrestrial organisms and their habitats, far beyond the main channel of a river. This Riverscape includes diverse riparian habitats which vary in space ...

2023

Mechanistic 2D flow-erosion modelling of vegetated river banks

Giovanni De Cesare, Paolo Perona, Massimiliano Schwarz

We present a simple, vertically-explicit 2D model of river bank erosion that also takes the effect of sediment stabilization by plant roots into account. The model is solved in quasi-analytical form for an exemplary non-stationary hydrograph temporal signa ...

2023

Eco-morphodynamic carbon pumping by the largest rivers in the Neotropics

Paolo Perona

The eco-morphodynamic activity of large tropical rivers in South and Central America is analyzed to quantify the carbon flux from riparian vegetation to inland waters. We carried out a multi-temporal analysis of satellite data for all the largest rivers in ...

Nature Research2023

Applicability of the landscape evolution model in the absence of rills

David Andrew Barry, Paolo Perona, Seifeddine Jomaa, Andrea Rinaldo, Mohsen Cheraghi, Andrea Cimatoribus

Despite numerous applications of physically-based models for incised landscapes, their applicability for overland flow on unchanneled surfaces is not known. This work challenges a widely used landscape evolution model for the case of non-uniform rainfall a ...

2022