Research, for CIMA Research Foundation, is necessarily linked to a specific social demand for an advancement of knowledge.
We believe that investment in research is sustainable only if society is willing to commit resources and is encouraged by an awareness of the potentially positive impact it has on the environment, which we understand as the totality of social,economic, climate, chemical and physical factors, in which living things grow and interact.
Changes in the state of the Environment that are of the greatest interest to CIMA are those that reduce or destroy (even temporarily) the availability of resources; they create a strong demand for “civil protection” resulting in conditions of “need” or “poverty, perceived by man as “disasters”. This demand concerns the mitigation of the consequences on the population of these alterations to the environment.
The mitigation of the effects of disasters can be achieved through the identification and understanding of the causes and of the underlying chemical and physical processes; in fact this then leads to the possibility of reliable predictions.
This is why research at CIMA Foundation is particularly devoted to the observation of the environment using the most advanced technologies available and to the reproduction of observed phenomena with physical or numerical models: these are the necessary tools required for the advancement of knowledge of the physical and chemical, as well as social, processes that lead to disasters, either natural or man made.
To achieve its targets, research at CIMA Foundation, for the years 2009/10 focuses on the following topics:
- Predictability of meteorological extremes
- Modelling and prediction of floods and droughts
- Observation of hydrometeorological variables
- Data fusion and Data assimilation
- Modelling and prediction of forest fires
- Dispersion of pollutants in water, soil and atmosphere
- Transportation of hazardous materials
- Marine ecology
The spreading of new ideas and new knowledge achieved by research activities at CIMA Foundation, is made possible through:
