Speaker
Description
The Emilia-Romagna region in Italy has experienced multiple severe flood events in 2023 and 2024, caused by prolonged heavy rainfall. These events triggered widespread inundations and landslides, severely affecting local populations, economic activities, and territorial balance. The national and international media extensively covered the disasters due to their severity, sparking a public debate on the region’s vulnerability and long-term solutions. While emergency responses focused on immediate life-saving operations, discussions on risk mitigation strategies highlighted both structural and non-structural measures, some of which proved politically sensitive—such as mandatory insurance for businesses.
In the aftermath of these events, extraordinary hydraulic and infrastructural interventions have been implemented, yet their completion is time-intensive and cannot address all vulnerabilities simultaneously. Emilia-Romagna’s highly urbanized landscape, characterized by significant land consumption, exacerbates runoff formation and flood peaks, making water management increasingly complex. The affected communities remain deeply shaken by the disasters and skeptical about the adequacy of institutional responses, questioning whether regional and local authorities, as well as land management consortia, are taking sufficient action to enhance territorial safety.
In this evolving context, the AQUAGREEN project, funded under the European Urban Initiative, was launched in late 2024 as one of 22 selected projects in its call. It aims to test urban drainage solutions, monitoring systems, and early warning mechanisms to manage extreme rainfall events more effectively. Crucially, the project emphasizes stakeholder and citizen engagement, recognizing that post-disaster reconstruction extends over years and that true transformation requires a systemic, distributed risk management approach.
This contribution explores the case of Romagna Faentina, where AQUAGREEN is being implemented, and examines how this local experience aligns with broader international discussions on post-disaster planning. The aim is to identify key lessons and insights applicable to other territories grappling with the urgent need to shift from reactive disaster response to proactive, integrated territorial planning in the face of climate change.
| Keywords | Climate adaptation¸ Disaster resilience, Water management |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
