Saturday 14 in Lido di Savio (Ra), the 21 in Poggio Renatico (Fe) and the 28 in Lugo (Ra). Anti-flood exercises on Saturday 18 November in Sant’Agata sul Santerno and Imolansacchettamento del sabbia to build coronelle.
Bologna, 13 October 2017 – A citizen who is more aware of climate change and the risks of his territory is a more resilient citizen. In October, three “Life Primes” workshops are scheduled in Emilia-Romagna to involve citizens in flood-prone areas on a path towards greater adaptability and effective response to climate change.
The European Life Primes project “Preventing flood risks by making resilient communities”, of which the Regional Agency for Territorial Security and Civil Protection is the lead actor, comes to life and calls together citizens, public administrators and representatives of the civil society and of the three pilot areas of Emilia-Romagna to work out together the Local Civic Adaptation Plans.
Lido di Savio (Ra), Poggio Renatico (Fe) and four Municipalities of the Santerno Valley (Lugo and Sant’Agata sul Santerno -Ra, Imola and Mordano – Bo) are the three areas chosen as champions because they are respectively exposed to the marine ingressions ( as well as the floods of the Savio), the risk of flooding the river Reno and the potential leakage of the Santerno waters.
The aim of the three workshops is to start a process of management of the hydrological and coastal risk from the bottom through the involvement of local communities, thus increasing their adaptability and reducing the vulnerability to climate change. In this phase, methods of active participation by citizens are experimented with local policies of local government, through the collective construction of “civic plans” that can be integrated into municipal emergency plans.
After an initial presentation of the future climate scenarios for the local area (by Arpae), each workshop continues with an illustration of the results of a survey conducted by the Polytechnic University of the Marche – another Life Primes partner – on the perception of risk in pilot areas. Citizens and stakeholders are then involved in the participatory elaboration of Local Plans of Civic Adaptation: each will compile a quiz focused on adaptation and self-protection actions in the face of the potential danger posed by sea and rivers, under the guidance of some videotutorial. A more proactive phase will allow you to compose your own specific Adaptation Plan and work in a group to select the most effective suggestions.
The workshops are scheduled for Saturday, October 14th at Lido di Savio (Hotel Bahamas, opening hours: 14.30-17.30), Saturday 21st October at Poggio Renatico (at the city’s middle school, 10-13 hours); Saturday 28th October in Lugo (Sala del Carmine del Comune, timetable 9.30-13). Similar participatory moments will also be organized in the other two Regions participating in the project, Marche (pilot areas: Senigallia and San Benedetto del Tronto) and Abruzzo (Scerne di Pineto and Torino di Sangro).
As part of the Life Primes project, two exercises will take place in the morning of Saturday November 18 at Imola (San Prospero) and in Sant’Agata sul Santerno. The mayors of the two towns, together with the representatives of the civil protection system, will receive a red alert message for hydraulic problems on their cell phone that warns of overcoming the pluviometric and hydrometric thresholds of the Santerno river. The evacuation measures of some families living on the banks of the river in Imola and the removal of about eighty pupils from the middle school of Sant’Agata who will have to climb to the upper floor of the building where the lessons are being held, to escape to the flooding of the classrooms on the ground floor. The displaced citizens will converge in a citizen social center (the students will remain in the school structure) to attend a specific training on the alert system in force, the civil protection plans of their municipality, the rules of behavior and self-protection. Weather permitting, volunteers from local associations will eventually involve those interested in some practical exercises for the strengthening of the embankments, from the sacking of sand to the construction of coronelle.