Climate Change, urban planning and science: the collaboration is growing

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From the hydrogeological structure plan (Piano stralcio per l’assetto idrogeologico delll’Autorità di Bacino) of the Campania region, Italy, a new arrival: a section dedicated to climate change impacts at the local scale. The CMCC studies (ISC Division, Capua Unit) analyze future scenarios while taking in consideration temperature and precipitation patterns; an analysis that offers new tools for local planning and risk prevention.

Taking action, planning, preventing risks and impacts on territory: it will impossible to address all this without taking into account climate change. The hydrogeological structure plan (Piano stralcio per l’assetto idrogeologico delll’Autorità di Bacino) recently released by the Basin Authority of the Campania region dedicates a section to climate change and its potential impacts for the targeted area while acknowledging and adopting EU and national current regulations. The document represents a real innovation in the field while attesting the first collaboration between the authorities concerned on urban and local planning and the frontier research on climate change. The research on climate change issues provides in fact key and reliable information to policy makers on a topic already recognized as crucial for local planning and management.

In the pages dedicated to climate change, CMCC researchers Paola Mercogliano and Guido Rianna from ISC Division, Capua, show the results of the qualitative analysis of temperature and precipitation anomalies for two future 30-year periods (from 2021 to 2050 and from 2071 to 2100). Applying the COSMO CLM model for two different climate change scenarios researchers investigated sub-daily variations in the concerned area (that is, the central Campania area) while improving the report with some graphic elaborations performed with CLIME, the software designed and developed by the CMCC Impacts on Soil and Coast (ISC) Division.

This work provides decision-makers with information on climate change and its potential effects on local hydrogeological assets that has been never included in a document of the Basin Authority. This information will represent for decision-makers an additional useful tool for local and urban planning, especially considering that municipal administrators have to refer to the Basin Authority plan for district and local management.

From the hydrogeological structure plan by the Basin Authority of the Campania region, it comes a clear example of how the scientific research on climate change could address needs and requirements defined by EU and national regulations while providing tools and knowledge to support complex decisions such as those related to hydrogeological risk and local planning.

See also:

  • The hydrogeological structure plan by the Basin Authority of the Campania region (Piano stralcio per l’assetto idrogeologico delll’Autorità di Bacino della Campania Centrale) is available at this link (pdf)
  • CLIME, the GIS (Geographic Information System) software integrated in ESRI ArcGIS Desktop 10.X and developed by ISC Division – Impacts on Soil and Coast Division to provide users with a simple and fast way to study climate change and evaluate climate features and anomalies (with a special focus on impacts on soil) within any geographical site of interest (provinces, regions, countries, etc).

 

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