Application of a New Maintenance Priority Index to Support Watershed Management

The monitoring and management of channel control structures have become fundamental in the present scenario of climate change, symbolized by extreme events. Finding the most important zones for action planning is becoming more and more important in mountain basins. The present assessment of the state and functionality of torrent control structures can help with the establishment of management plans for watersheds, determine how effective the current strategy of action is, and encourage a more thorough decision-making process. The goal of the current research is to implement the highly quick, easy-to-use, and straightforward Maintenance Priority index (MPi) which offers a status report on the condition of the torrent control structures within the mountain basins. Technicians that regularly monitor torrent control systems spread over multiple basins can quickly determine the functionality and state of the structure by employing simple field markers. It enables them to consistently update the database with operations that are both financially and logistically feasible. Furthermore, utilizing topographic data, such as multi-temporal Digital Terrain Models (DTMs) and geomorphic change detection analyses, to combine an updated MPi with sediment morphology dynamics assessments over an extended time window may provide more comprehensive and quantitative information. These sometimes undeveloped or poorly considered factors can be utilized to rank the maintenance intervention in order of importance and evaluate the long-term effectiveness of the established torrent control measures. Decision-makers can then use these relevant signals to determine where best to allocate resources, identify better solutions, and handle maintenance tasks.