A Sustainable Approach to Flood Protection Engineering within the Aniene River Valley Linear Park

The Aniene River Valley Park project is focused on flood mitigation, ecological quality restoration, urban, sub-urban and rural areas enhancement. The Aniene River Valley (one-million inhabitants) has archeological, historical, natural potentials including the villas of roman emperors, the springs used for the water supply of the city of Rome and Middle Ages Castles and is undergoing extensive urbanization of its riverine areas. The project strategy is centered to a sustainable river valley development under the different constraints, approaches the various functional, social, esthetic, natural points of view and is focused on structural measures that are used to control the flow of water both outside and within urban settlements, within the context of an integrated approach to urban flood risk management. The expected results of the project are: restoration of river corridor’s ecological quality, highlighting specific river potentials and resources, allowing an optimal level of sustainability of the territories involved conjugating, flooding, leisure planning and safeguard of the water supply. The realization of the River Park is an important step towards flood protection because if properly maintained and brought to life it’s the limit to improper and widespread land use.