Our Past

In the mid-80s the then Minister of Civil Protection Giuseppe Zamberletti gave way to the National Research Groups, on volcano risk, earthquake risk, and risk of floods and landslides. The study of strategies for the mitigation of risk from flooding and landslide was entrusted to Franco Siccardi, current President of CIMA Research Foundation, whom led this line of research until 2004, when the National Groups completed their task.
 The evidences emerged from that studies, as early as the late ´80s demonstrated the inadequacy of many of the hydraulic systems in our country, highlighted the exposure to floods in the historical centers of our cities, and have shown the magnitude of the hydro geological risk. Such evidences were the starting point for the construction of the National Civil Protection System and the non-structural policy of mapping areas at risk and alert the population. The System was directed first by Zamberletti, then by Franco Barberi, Guido Bertolaso and now by the head of the DPC Franco Gabrielli.

The events, which over the years have led up to the creation of CIMA Research Foundation match and intertwines in many ways with the history of the National Civil Protection, of which the National Group for the Prevention of Hydro Geological Disasters, and then CIMA, as University Research Centre (now known as Foundation), was the Institutional Scientific Adviser.

There is another strand of experience and knowledge which converges into CIMA Research Foundation: it is the activities of study, research and development of forecasting models and technologies which have been conducted for over twenty years in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Genova and in the Inter-university Research Centre on Environmental Monitoring, in Savona.

CIMA Research Foundation is a scientific institution with twenty years of research and field experience. The experience of our researchers is the link between a great past and a great future for the development of scientific observation and its numerous applications in the field of natural hazards and environmental change.