RETURN (Multi-Risk Science for Resilient Communities under a Changing Climate) is a project funded under the Italian PNRR (Piano Nazionale Ripresa e Resilienza – National Recovery and Resilience Plan) and lasting five years (December 2022 – November 2025); specifically, it is an extended partnership funded under Mission 4, Component 2: From Research to Enterprise.
The project aims at improving the entire disaster risk management cycle. It aims to apply new methodologies and strategies for monitoring, assessment, prediction, prevention and mitigation of natural and man-made events, acting specifically to improve resilience, as well as adopting a holistic, interdisciplinary and problem-solving approach.
How does the project work?
The general purpose of the RETURN project is to promote scientific research aimed at achieving a better understanding of environmental, natural and anthropogenic hazards as well as the relationships between human activities and environmental effects, the improvement of techniques for forecasting hazards and preventing and mitigating their effects on the environment, and the adaptive capacity of systems. The project activities contribute to the development of a supply chain from research to the technological development of final products and services. The RETURN Foundation, composed of the project partners and the Italian Civil Protection Department, was formed to implement the project.
The RETURN project consists of a Hub that coordinates the activities of 8 Spokes that collectively contribute to the achievement of the main objectives. The Spokes of RETURN are divided into 4 vertical Spokes VS (VS1 – Water, VS2- Ground instabilities, VS3 – Earthquake and Volcanoes, VS4 -Environmental Degradation), 3 cross-cutting Spokes TS (TS1- Urban and Metropolitan Settlements, TS2 – Multi Risk Resilience of Critical Infrastructures, TS3 – Communities’ resilience to risks: social, economic, legal and cultural dimensions) and one diagonal Spoke (DS – Science Underpinning Climate Services for Risk Mitigation and Adaptation).
What are the expected results?
- Better understanding of environmental, natural and anthropic risks, as well as their interrelation with the effects of climate change
- Enhance risk prevision and methodologies for prevention, adaptation and mitigation
- Develop new methodologies/technologies for monitoring
- Foster a more efficient and sustainable use of data, products and services
- Strengthen the bridge from research to final products while transversally enhancing the competences, technological transfer, and service integration
What does CIMA Research Foundation do?
We participate in the activities of five spokes, two vertical spokes (VS1 and VS4 for the forest fire part), two cross spokes (TS2 and TS3) and the diagonal one on climate services, as well as being part of the coordination activities of the RETURN Hub.
In more detail, in Spoke VS1 – Water, concerning the issue of water-related risks, we have the coordinating role on the issue concerning droughts and an active role on the issues concerning floods and droughts, taking into consideration the possible effects of climate change. In Spoke VS4 – Environmental Degradation, CIMA Research Foundation focuses on issues related to forest fires, specifically assessing how innovative monitoring techniques and modeling approaches can improve knowledge of terrestrial ecosystem dynamics and interactions with forest fires under climate change scenarios. We will also study strategies for wildfire risk prevention and mitigation considering the value of forest management.
With regard to cross-cutting spokes, in Spoke TS3 – Communities’ resilience to Risks: Social, Economic, Legal and Cultural Dimensions, we have the role of co-leader, working alongside the University of Florence in scientific coordination. Specifically, activities will cover the study of co-design approaches and policy making based on community involvement, the definition of innovative tools to assess the effectiveness of risk mitigation, new models of education and communication to increase resilience to risks, and the study of legal and ethical aspects related to risk management.
In the Spoke TS2- Multi Risk Resilience of Critical Infrastructures we will then deal with defining and characterizing asset systems, dynamically mapping the impact of natural and climatic hazards on the infrastructure systems and assessing the multi-risk of infrastructure networks and assets.
Finally, in Spoke DS – Science Underpinning Climate Services for Risk Mitigation and Adaptation, CIMA Research Foundation has the role of WP Leader. We will specifically work on the definition of a decision support system to integrate hazard indicators into decision making for mitigation and adaptation to specific hazards, and on the generation of hazard indicators based on state-of-the-art, high-resolution climate scenarios to support hazard assessment at multiple scales. In addition, we will implement a high-resolution regional climate model that enables convection for weather scenario generation and uncertainty assessment for climate and weather scenarios.
