Geomatica e Dinamica fluviale

In recent years, GIS software, especially the open source ones, released under the GNU license - General Public License, are very popular and users can enjoy free and unlimited time software updates without any license fees. These software have numerous plugins available, created by the developer community, which allow you to expand their standard functions. The Applied Geology Group of the University of Perugia has developed a series of plugins (called “RiverMetrics”), useful in the field of fluvial dynamics studies for morphometric and hydrological analysis aimed at assessing the hazard and risk from riverbed dynamics. The note describes the plugins that allow to evaluate some morphometric indexes, such as the width of the active riverbed, the sinuosity index, the braiding or anastomosing index, the longitudinal profile, the height and width of the bankfull (whose flow often coincides with the “formative flow” of the river), as well as the stream power at each point of the stream. Another important aspect, for which the use of GIS has proved to be very effective, concerns the historical analysis and therefore the monitoring of the significant morphological variations undergone over time by the river, useful for evaluating the rate of the morphogenetic processes.