Ex post damage assessment: an Italian experience

In recent years, awareness of a need for more effective disaster data collection, storage, and sharing of analyses has developed in many parts of the world. In line with this advance, Italian local authorities have expressed the need for enhanced methods and procedures for post-event damage assessment in order to obtain data that can serve numerous purposes: to create a reliable and consistent database on the basis of which damage models can be defined or validated; and to supply a comprehensive scenario of flooding impacts according to which priorities can be identified during the emergency and recovery phase, and the compensation due to citizens from insurers or local authorities can be established. This paper studies this context, and describes ongoing activities in the Umbria and Sicily regions of Italy intended to identifying new tools and procedures for flood damage data surveys and storage in the aftermath of floods. In the first part of the paper, the current procedures for data gathering in Italy are analysed. The analysis shows that the available knowledge does not enable the definition or validation of damage curves, as information is poor, fragmented, and inconsistent. A new procedure for data collection and storage is therefore proposed. The entire analysis was carried out at a local level for the residential and commercial sectors only. The objective of the next steps for the research in the short term will be (i) to extend the procedure to other types of damage, and (ii) to make the procedure operational with the Italian Civil Protection system. The long-term aim is to develop specific depth–damage curves for Italian contexts

Comparing post-event and pre-event damage assessment: Information gaps and lessons learnt

Abstract. Post event damage and needs assessment can supply fundamental information to feed risk models, i.e. data to define, calibrate and validate risk models. The lack or low quality of information regarding damage and losses collected in the aftermath of events conditions the quality of pre-event scenarios, thus affecting also the significance and the relevance of cost benefit analyses on mitigation measures to reduce the severity and magnitude of damage that are expected. Data collected in the aftermath of disasters are usually not suitable to this aim. Mostly, data on damage explicative variables (i.e. hazard, exposure, vulnerability and mitigation actions) are missing; damage data themselves can be also unsuitable as they refer to different spatial or temporal scales than those at which damage models work. In such a context, this paper presents results from the European Project IDEA (Improving Damage assessments to Enhance cost-benefit Analyses). The project is a response to the very limited reliability of data currently used to support cost-benefit analyses for natural hazards mitigation. The main objective of IDEA is an improvement of both damage data quality and procedures to collect and manage them. The paper focus in detail on the investigation of how improved damage data can better support the risk-modelling process. To this aim, the flood hitting the Umbria Region (Italy) in 2012 and the earthquake event that stuck the municipality of Lorca (Spain) in 2011 were investigated. Observed damages and damage predictions based on data that were available before the disaster have been compared. The comparison had several objectives: - to verify the reliability of damage models that are currently used for damage estimation and that are proposed in literature; - to identify data gaps in pre-event assessment that could be narrowed by better damage data. This is relevant for showing what data are currently missing in risk modelling but could be obtained at reasonable costs; - to identify sectors for which pre-event damage assessment cannot be carried out or is carried out at the expense of large uncertainties and/or roughness; - to show how improved risk modelling could better feed cost benefit analyses of pre-event mitigation measure

Quella goccia d’Acqua in Più. Pianificazione e rischio idrogeologico

Pubblicazione composta da Libro degli Abstract (formato cartaceo) e Atti di Convegni su C

Assessing adaptive capacity of water management organizations. The case study of the municipality of Tomave (Bolivia)

Climate change is only one of several pressure and drivers, such as natural disasters, improvements in technologies and changing customers’ behaviors that water organizations have to relate and adapt to. This places new challenges (e.g. dealing with increased exposure, vulnerability, and uncertainty) to water management and require water organizations to change their perspective on how to deal with water issues. This paper builds on a literature review to identify dimensions and criteria of adaptive capacity and presents a conceptual framework to assess organizational adaptive capacity. The developed framework has been tested within the Municipality of Tomave (Bolivia). The paper results emphasize the incapacity to transform routines as the context is changing leads to the construction of barriers and to the inability of an organization to support the process of change of the society. In addition, the study emphasis that the development of a working system based on cooperation requires first that an organization acquires skills and adapt its routines to the new working system. Furthermore, the development of a participatory process of planning and implementation of policies would help to reduce the trade-offs and conflicts related to water management. Linked to this, the development of a system for monitoring and evaluation of policies implemented organization can contribute to build an iterative mechanism so to allow a redefinition and improvement of such policies

MIC _ My Ideal City Fostering resilient cities: from centralized to distributed networks hydropower systems

Efficiency, resilience and sustainability for the cities: trajectories and paradoxes The -Habitat, 2006). This could seem a paradox if we notice that the most energy (than resources) consumers societies (and cities) are in the developed contries, in other words the onces who boast an evolution following efficiency paths. Nothing new if we consider what since XX century Jevons and others began to explain within the theories on efficiency and technological improvements (Jevons, 1905) that efficiency is the main cause of increasing production and consumptio