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National networking meeting in Bologna, a day full of exchanges, ideas, experiences
Alderman Gazzolo: involving the communities to disseminate the culture of self-protection and prevention
Bologna, 19 June 2018. Good practices for flood risk management, and citizen participation in land management processes. The National Network meeting of the Life Primes project yesterday offered an important moment of confrontation and synergy between European projects and civil protection systems. The conference, organized by the Regional Environmental Management of Emilia-Romagna , saw a first session in plenary in the morning, introduced by Paola Gazzolo Regional Councilor for Civil Protection. “Whoever lives and works in the area every day knows him deeply, he is the bearer of information deriving from everyday experience that is fundamental for the safety of the communities and can therefore provide indications, suggestions and proposals to deal with risks in a more effective and efficient way. facing the consequences brought by the changing climate. This is expected – added Gazzolo – also the new Civil Protection Code: citizens must be involved in the drafting of planning documents and the Civic Plans are a first experimentation of the new rules “. “Our Region – continued the councilor – has revolutionized the way to communicate the alert, making it more direct, fast and immediate thanks to the portal AllertaMeteo Emilia-Romagna: strong progress made, we are applying this tool nationwide. Homogenizing procedures, involving communities to disseminate a culture of self-protection and prevention, even with partnership projects such as Primes, is important because climate change goes beyond administrative boundaries and to tackle it requires network and system action “.
During the morning, other interventions followed that offered suggestions and suggestions for the innovative management of flood risk.
Carlo Cacciamani , head of the National Civil Protection Department, has emphasized the growing risks that the country is running to change the climate scenarios and the solutions and projects adopted at national and local level. Improvement strategies are possible: “federated” support between regions for the transmission and sharing of skills and knowledge; new technological tools for citizens, increasingly refined. Even if this is not enough: an adequate training of citizens on the risks and measures of self-protection becomes more and more necessary. “We need to create a social project, an area of knowledge for educated and informed citizens”. This is the real challenge to get to resilient communities.
After the presentation of the state of the art of the implementation of the Floods Directive in Sweden by Barbro Nalund – Landenmark of the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, Resilience Development and Analysis Department, it is up to the professor Costantino Marmo , from the University of Bologna, telling the risk semantics.
Starting from the studies of Charles J. Fillmore, an American linguist, Marmo has exposed some theories on risk and awareness, or not, on the part of the citizen, identifying the most suitable tools not only for communication, but for training. After all, Aristotle wrote it: “it is the practice that produces the habit of forming”.
It was then the turn of Nikèh Booister of Floodcom, to present his experience in the field of role-playing games applied to improve the communication of risk, which are taking hold in many European countries, with positive results.
The conclusion of the work in the morning was entrusted to Clarissa Dondi , of the Regional Agency for Territorial Security and Civil Protection, project manager of Life Primes who told the development of the project, the next steps and the positive feedback obtained at the level of the European Commission.
The afternoon session was enriched by two separate tables, of discussion attended in the presence of experts and exponents of the civil protection system; the first on information tools to support risk management: how to put the experiences of different projects in the system. The second table, parallel, was centered on the presentation of one of the most relevant activities of the Primes project, Action C.1 “Homogenisation and integration of monitoring and warning systems” at the end of which the “Homogenization Manual” will be prepared. and the implementation of prevention and alert systems “, containing three specific protocols related to data collection and risk assessment, to alerting and information and communication procedures.
The budget in Emilia-Romagna . Civic plans for adaptation with concrete actions proposed by citizens to respond to the challenge of climate change, with civil protection exercises, evacuations and simulations. This is the experimentation initiated by the Life Primes community project which, in Emilia-Romagna, involves the municipalities of Lugo and Sant’Agata sul Santerno (Ra), Imola and Mordano (Bo ) in the Santerno basin ; Poggio Renatico (Fe) in the Reno basin and Lido di Savio in the municipality of Ravenna due to the risk of sea ingression. The activities of the Life Primes project they were carried out through information, awareness and risk training workshops in the three regions involved: in addition to Emilia-Romagna, also Marche and Abruzzo .
Three were civil protection exercises and, with the activation of a specific website , every citizen of the municipalities involved was able to present their proposals to make the territory more ready to respond to the risks to which it is exposed; more than two thousand people were involved.
Presentations are available in the Communication section of this site
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