Making resilience of cities operational in a network strategy

Today in Rome, at the headquarters of the Civil Protection Department, "Making the resilience of cities operational in a network strategy" took place. The meeting was held to discuss the support to territories in risk reduction policies and to present some of the good practices put in place by resilient Italian cities.

Notably, the day was an opportunity for the Department to discuss with the municipalities of Milan, Turin, Genoa and the Province of Potenza, which, together with Anci, reported experiences and strategies implemented to make communities and territories more resilient.

The new Civil Protection Code (Legislative Decree 1/2018) explicitly refers to the concept of "resilience of communities", which is introduced in Article 2, explained in Article. 31, and recalled several times in the entire body of legislation.

The concept of resilience is expressed in the ability of a community to understand potential risks, manage them and respond to disasters so as to reduce the effects, both in the short and in the long term. This means minimizing the loss of human life and damage to tangible and intangible assets.

Today, the urban context is increasingly based on the ability to recover and overcome the  emergencies such as the loss of drinking water, deforestation, socio-economic problems.
The traditional formula of risk - used for the first time in 1979 in the document Natural disasters and vulnerability analysis in report of expert group meeting of UNDRO - is now enriched by a further element: the capability, measurable through the actions implemented to enhance it. This includes risk assessment, planning, dissemination of good practices and the involvement of citizens to strengthen the sense of community.

International campaigns such as "Making Cities Resilient", launched in 2010 by UNISDR, and programs such as "100 resilient cities", promoted since 2013 by the Rockfeller Foundation, aim to support local governments and municipalities in being more resilient by highlighting the fundamental role of communication between the administration, the system of civil protection and citizens.

Today, Italy's "Making Cities resilient" counts on the participation of 147 cities, plus Rome and Milan for the "100 resilient cities" programme.

The Department's objective, in this context, is to support local administrations in monitoring and reviewing progress and challenges for the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 and to allow the development of local risk reduction strategies through resilience action plans with an all-of-society approach that effectively connects public, private and citizenship.