In the metropolitan area of Genoa severe extreme events such as extreme precipitations (>180mm/3h) were observed 10 times during the last decade while the same phenomenon, in the same area, occurred "only" 13 times in the previous 70 years. Between years 2010 and 2014 it suffered four severe flash-floods and several landslides, which caused 8 victims and millions of euros in damages. After the two most recent flooding, the City gained an increased awareness of its urban pattern fragility and the urgent need of adaptive measures to address this kind of extreme events and any other threat related to the climate change effects and started a path on these issues. The recent infrastructure breakdown and collapse (Ponte Morandi 14 august 2018 - 43 victims, millions of euro in economic losses) and the severe storms-surge/downburst that hit the coastal territory (October 2018) boosted even more the political commitment to redraw the territorial assets. Different but coherent measures, conceived and funded, through different but complementary sources in an integrated approach to the themes of urban resilience and risk reduction will be the basis of the new process. Besides more structural and physical measures needed by the City of Genoa, there are already active 10 European projects with related pilot cases connected to resilience and risk reduction themes. Moreover, since June 2017 the City coordinate the Climate Adaptation Partnership belonging to the Urban Agenda for the EU, in which JRC represent one of the partner and actively support the implementation of some of the 11 actions approved by the DGUM on 14 November 2018. Recently the Municipality envisage an organizational asset in a dedicated office on Resilience and Climate Adaptation matters that launch its Inclusive Resilient Strategy Path on 20th November 2018.
In the frame of all these activities, one of the main goal is to adopt a systematic approach, especially on risk assessment processes and on related knowledge of different hazards, including deeper analysis of vulnerability and exposure through recognition, census and information, allowing the engagement of exposed population before and during an event, and post-event.
In particular, in order to find the best urban adaptive solutions (which can benefit both adaptation and mitigation policies) to cope with:
- Extreme temperature and drying trend, which can affect urban area with heat wave, warm spell, drought, water scarcity, wildfire and urban boundary fire, invasive species, and habitat for disease vectors;
- Extreme precipitation and change in flood regime that cause urban flooding and flash flood, landslides, debris flow, changing in total precipitation, storm wind, impact on urban water supply infrastructure and water quality, supply chain disruptions, power outage, loss of communication, and transport interruption;
- Sea level rise that can expose coastal cities, port facilities and industries located on low-lying coastal areas to sea flooding, storm surge and erosion.
The Municipality would like to find, within the collaboration with JRC, the proper establishment of correlation among different dataset of heterogeneous origin(multi data source). It will contribute adding its own dataset to the JRC database finding new and dynamic interactions with global trends related to climate resilience and urban safety and security.
The interest is to compare general European data on natural and anthropogenic risk exposures respect the local context, using a standard methodology to analyze them and the interconnection at district / neighborhood level.
Final objective is to support the decision making process through a shared common baseline emerged from comparative results displayed on a user friendly web based platform to enhance the knowledge of the phenomenon and their impacts at local to national and EU level.