Historical Storminess and Hydro-Geological Hazard Temporal Evolution in the Solofrana River Basin—Southern Italy

Precipitation extremes have always been part of the Earth’s climate system and associated multiple damaging hydrological events (MDHEs), the simultaneous triggering of different types of phenomena (landslides and floods), affect an always-increasing portion of human settlement areas. This paper aims to investigate the relationship between the temporal evolution of severe geomorphological events and combined precipitation indices as a tool to improve understanding the hydro-geological hazard at the catchment scale. The case study is the Solofrana river basin, Southern Italy, and the focus is on four of main municipalities severely affected by natural disasters. Data for about 45 MDH events, spanning 1951–2014, have been collected and analyzed for this purpose. A preliminary monthly scale analysis of event occurrences highlights a pronounced seasonal characterization of the phenomenon, as about 60% of the total number of reported events take place during the period from September to November. Following, a statistical analysis clearly indicates a significant increase in the frequency of occurrences of MDHEs during the last decades. Such an increase appears to be related to non-stationary features of an average catchment scale rainfall-runoff erosivity index, which combines maximum monthly, maximum daily, and a proxy of maximum hourly precipitation data.