Out of harm’s way: Planning relocation to reduce people’s exposure to disasters
Planned relocation is gaining traction as a preventive adaptation measure to ensure the safety of people in the face of climate change impacts. Since 2003, the Piemonte Region in Northern Italy has pioneered an anticipatory relocation policy for residential buildings at hydro-geological risk; sharing its experience in a workshop held in Torino on December 12th, 2024, in collaboration with the EU-funded ITHACA project led by the CMCC researcher Elisa Calliari.
As climate change is projected to increase coastal and river flood risk in Europe, planned relocation is increasingly being taken into consideration as a preventive measure to reduce people’s exposure to disasters and environmental change by supporting them to move permanently away from high-risk areas. Given the potentially negative impacts it can have on relocated communities and its high financial costs, it is often considered an option of last resort, when protecting socio-ecological systems appears no longer possible, either technically, socially, or economically.
Since 2003, the Piedmont region in Northern Italy has been pioneering an anticipatory relocation policy for residential buildings at hydro-geological risk. Residential property owners can participate in a voluntary buyout scheme and move to safer areas within the same province with public funding support.
When buildings cannot be relocated due to their historical or social value or because of the peculiar configuration of the urban layout, the regional regulation subsidises vulnerability reduction measures. Piedmont’s anticipatory relocation policy is a unique case in Italy and arguably in Europe, where the measure remains largely framed as a reactive and ad hoc response in post-disaster settings.
The Piedmont region – in collaboration with the EU-funded ITHACA project (planned relocatIon as adapTation in a cHAnging ClimAte) led by the CMCC researcher Elisa Calliari – organised a workshop on December 12 2024 to shed light on the experience of the Region and share insights that can be useful for other localities sharing similar challenges. The workshop brought together around 200 participants, both in-person and on-line, from public authorities in Piedmont and beyond. It allowed for a discussion of the way planned relocation is framed at the Po River district level, especially in the context of climate change adaptation; to discuss how regional regulations have been designed and modified during the years to incorporate lessons learnt; and to hear from on-the-ground experiences from several involved municipalities.
The workshop also provided an opportunity to showcase the result of the research collaboration between the Piedmont region and the ITHACA project, which include the production of a database of planned relocation interventions implemented to date to be added to the Region’s Geoportal and the inclusion of a dedicated case study in the Climate-Adapt platform of the European Environmental Agency.
ITHACA is a research project funded under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions program of the European Union and investigates how planned relocation as a climate change adaptation measure can be integrated into long-term resilient development in Europe.
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The video of the December 12 workshop is available here.