{"id":471,"date":"2019-11-04T17:14:48","date_gmt":"2019-11-04T16:14:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cimafoundation.org\/2019\/11\/12\/cima-research-foundation-at-the-science-festival-of-genoa\/"},"modified":"2022-09-29T08:18:35","modified_gmt":"2022-09-29T08:18:35","slug":"cima-research-foundation-at-the-science-festival-of-genoa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/news\/cima-research-foundation-at-the-science-festival-of-genoa\/","title":{"rendered":"CIMA Research Foundation at the Science Festival of Genoa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On Saturday, November 2nd, Luca Ferraris, CIMA Research Foundation’s\npresident, gave a talk about storms and floods hitting the coasts of the Mediterranean\nSea<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the origin of the violent storms hitting the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea? Is it possible to forecast them, and to forecast what will the effects on the ground be? Have they always occurred? And how can they be influenced by climate change? On Saturday, November 2nd, within Genoa’s Science Festival<\/a>, Luce Ferraris, professor at the University of Genoa and president of CIMA Research Foundation, answered to these and other questions in a conference entitled “The traps of the water”. Giancarlo Sturloni<\/a>, science communicator and expert in risk communication, moderated the conference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"

A moment of the conference. On the left, Giancarlo Sturloni, science communicator; on the right, Luca Ferraris, CIMA Research Foundation’s president<\/em>
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The atmospheric processes underlying storms and floods<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Now in its 17th edition, the Genoa’s Science Festival was\nthis year dedicated to the subject “Elements”. Water, in the ancient\ntimes, was one of the most important elements, source of life as well as of danger.\nGenoa, as other cities on the Mediterranean Sea, knows this very well. The strong storms<\/strong> during the fall, as the\nones occurred in the last weeks, caused and are still causing victims and\nextensive damage. It is the water that the Geoan songwriter Fabrizio De Andr\u00e9,\nin a song dedicated to the 1970’s flood, defined as “black hitting strong,\nkicking the doors down”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This water has a very particular origin. It comes from\nan encounter between the cold air coming from the Po valley and the hot air\ntaken by winds as the scirocco. The storms deriving from this encounter, when\nobserved from the satellites, are characterized by a V-shape  – a highly localized structure, which\ndischarges huge amount of water on a restricted area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let’s imagine discharging the same amount of water in\nthe same area of a swimming-pool or of a bathtub. In the swimming-pool, the\neffects would be scarcely visible, while the bathtub would be quickly full.\nThis is the mechanism explaining why the strong and localized storms have particularly pronounced effects on small\nbasins<\/strong> as the Ligurian ones, often hit by floods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Past history and future prospective of storms<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

It is commonly thought that these are relatively\nrecent phenomena. Ferraris explained that a research in the literature of the ‘800\nCentury allows us to see that this is not completely correct. In the prints and\nin the texts of the time is in fact possible to recognize the same storms as\ntoday, with the same effects on the ground. What has changed over time is,\ninstead, the urbanization of our cities<\/strong>.\nThis is particularly evident in Genoa. Until the half of the ‘800 Century, the\ncity was mainly developed around the harbour, and torrents like Bisagno and\nFerreggiano, now sadly famous for their floods, were surrounded by the\ncountryside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"

Have the strong storms hitting the Mediterranean coasts always existed? Our perception makes us think that they are a quite recent phenomenon, also because in the past the instruments were not sophisticated enough to record them as precisely as today. A research in the literature and the graphic production of the mid ‘800 suggests that strong storms and floods have always accompanied the history of the region<\/em>
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Already in the 1940 the city was completely changed.\nThe urbanization grew, and the Bisagno torrent was hidden underground,\nsurrounded by public and private buildings. Within this context, the effects of\na flood become more relevant, putting at risk people, houses, shops cars in the\nstreets and in the underground parking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The climate change has a role, too, in influencing storms and associated floods. As suggested by a study<\/a> conducted by CIMA researchers in 2017, it is possible that the frequency of storms will increase in the next 30 years, with their intensity remaining the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Civil protection and active participation of citizens<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This is the knowledge that science has today, on storms\nand their possible affects on the ground. How to use this knowledge for a more\nefficient civil protection? How to avoid other deaths and damage? It is around\nthis questions that the dialogue between Sturloni, Ferraris and, not least, the\npublic evolved. One of the most important aspects emerged in the discussion was\nthe role of the active involvement of\nthe citizens<\/strong> in civil protection strategies. Since the introduction of the\nmeteorological alert, alerts are considered not only a tool for technicians but\nalso a fundamental communication instrument for warning the population about a\npossible risk. Possible, not sure, because despite the development of the\nmodelling used for the forecasts, we still can’t have the total certainty that\nthere will be a storm, how strong it will be and in which that exact area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To face uncertainty<\/strong>\nis not simple but it\u2019s a fundamental aspect to be understood by technicians in\ncharge for the risk management, administrations and by citizens which must be\nan active part of the risk management. To know (and to take seriously) the\nalerts, to put in place auto-protection behaviours, to know which are the zones\nat risk: these are all actions required from all of us in order to avoid the\ndisasters of the past and to grow as risk resilient communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The conference was a moment to think about these\nthemes. It was also an important moment\nof exchange<\/strong>, thanks to the moderation by a communication expert and the\ninteraction with the public, which allowed to combine strictly scientific\nknowledge with the needs and the perspectives of whom is not from the sector\nbut still has to deal with it every time that, for example, there is an alert.\nThese are the type of exchanges that CIMA Research Foundation looks forward for\nits research in civil protection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Saturday, November 2nd, Luca Ferraris, CIMA Research Foundation’s president, gave a talk about storms and floods hitting the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea What is the origin of the violent storms hitting the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea? Is it possible to forecast them, and to forecast what will the effects on the ground […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":459,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[103],"class_list":["post-471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-events"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cimafoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}