Anagrafe della ricerca

Main objective of the Spoke is to provide a consistent framework for identifying, monitoring, and managing water-related risks, as well as for their reduction under societal, environmental, and climate changes. The spoke will thus address three specific objectives: i) improve the identification in space and time of key physical and societal drivers of changing risk processes, ii) improve risk predictability from short to long time scales, and iii) show the value of the ensuing seamless prediction tools for effective water related risk management. According to this aim, the spoke will develop a validated proof of concept for a Digital Twin to provide an holistic risk management approach to better address tradeoffs and synergies between different water-related hazards, measures, decision objectives, and different temporal and spatial scales. Expected results of the project will be two-sided. On one hand, better capability of predicting hazardous processes in the short term (event-scale scenarios) and in the long term (probabilistic assessment) accounting for societal, environmental, and climate changes. From the other hand, we expect to define strategies which allow decision makers and policy makers to make more informed decisions that consider optimal measures (and combinations of measures) across multiple water-related hazard types. Scientific challenges along such path are undoubtedly significant, but the main impact is expected on society, through a cultural shift in the way we balance costs and benefits of (water-related) risk management: positive economic impacts in terms of (i) a more flexible planning approach for the territory exposed to risks, by compromising constraints and possible uses compatible to hazardous scenarios and (ii) reduced impacts and increased resilience of society and environment.