The infrastructure of the electrical system, like other engineering works, is exposed to the risk of floods and landslides, which can cause damage and service disruptions. Additionally, based on the results of currently available climate scenarios, there is generally a trend toward an increase in such risks. The perimeter mappings of areas subject to hydrogeological hazards, provided by the Authorities, while fundamental, do not always provide all the necessary parameters for assessing the expected degree of damage to infrastructure, nor do they contain indications of the potential temporal evolution of such damage due to climate change.

To overcome these limitations, models are needed to simulate cause-effect processes that accurately represent physical phenomena characterized by different spatial and temporal scales. For this purpose, this study first identified a framework capable of effectively connecting different types of models, ranging from hydrological to hydraulic models.

Subsequently, the hydrological model PCR-GLOBWB-2, included in the proposed framework, was tested through an application in northern Italy.

Based on the results obtained, to have a tool capable of increasing the accuracy of analyses and to include an assessment of the risk of triggering surface landslides within the hydrological simulations, a new model based on the mathematical libraries already present in PCR-GLOBWB-2 was developed. This model, called CRHyME (Climate Rainfall Hydrogeological Modelling Experiment), differs from traditional hydrological models by the presence of a sub-model for predicting surface landslides triggered by intense rainfall at the basin scale.

Finally, to complete the identification of other classes of models to be used either in standalone mode or included in the framework, a methodology for estimating rainfall thresholds for landslide triggering was studied, and a test application of the FLORA2D hydraulic model was carried out to estimate the flood hazard of an electrical substation.