online workshop – Risk Governance of cross-border severe weather events under climate change: from Vaia storm, to Germany/Belgium Floods and beyond

In the framework of the TRANS-ALP Project, EURAC Research, together with EPC srl and ARPAV, organized this online workshop to arise awareness and foster discussion on the risk arising from severe hydro-meteo events in the context of Climate Change. It was the occasion to highlight and analyse potential similarities between past and recent disasters, like Vaia, Central Europe floods, and other, as a hint of what might happen in the future, taking into consideration the most recent data and estimations about climate change.

The workshop was held online and consisted on two sessions of high-level panellists’ speech, plus a guided discussion with Q&A session open to inputs, feedbacks and ideas from the audience.

The event was addressed to researchers, practitioners and policy makers in the fields of risk and disaster forecast, prevention, management, assessment, but also to local authorities, civil protection operators, climate change researchers, and to the general public.

PROGRAMME AND SPEAKERS

AGENDA:
9.00 – 9.15: Introduction
Goals, content and speakers (Massimiliano Pittore, EURAC research, TRANS-ALP Coordinator)
9.15 – 10.00: Past experiences of extreme hydro-meteo events in Europe
The 2018 Vaia Storm (Gianni Marigo, ARPAV)
The Como Lake floods (Paola Parravacini, ARPA Lombardia)
The 2021 Germany/Belgium floods (Benni Thiebes, DKKV)
10.00 – 10.10: Break
10.10 – 10.55: Reflections on extreme hydro-meteo events – Perspectives and limitations at European Level
Collecting impact data (Tiberiu Antofie, JRC)
Governing Risk between mitigation and adaptation (Marc Zebisch, EURAC)
EC and DG Echo perspectives (Gaetano Vivo, European Commission)
10.55 – 11.10: Q&A session
11.10 – 11.20: Break
11.20 – 12.00: Panel Discussion

The Workshop was held online on September 30, 2021

Workshop Recordings

THE TRANSALP PROJECT

The TRANS-ALP project aims to develop an integrated methodology for multi-hazard risk assessment and impact forecasting for mountainous regions at cross-border scale, in order to further advance the decision-making processes and support transnational cooperation along the disaster management cycle in the EU. Severe Storms are addressed as representative examples of complex hazards with cascaded/compounded components (such as floods and landslides) for which a lack of risk assessment and operational protocols has been observed in Alpine regions.

ALL 4 CLIMATE INITIATIVE

This event was part of the official All4Climate – Italy 2021 program. All4Climate – Italy 2021 encompasses a line-up of climate events paving the way to September’s Pre-COP meeting in Milan as well as November’s COP26, hosted by the UK in partnership with Italy. In this context, All4Climate aims to foster proactive dialogue on approaches, good practices and challenges related to climate change and deliver on the objectives of the Paris Agreement.  This initiative was launched by the Italian Ministry for Ecological Transition in collaboration with the World Bank Group’s Connect4Climate and with the participation of the Lombardy Region and the Municipality of Milan.

The workshop was organized within the framework of the TRANSALP Project, funded by the European Commission. The goal of this workshop was to highlight potential similarities between VAIA and the recent disasters, as a hint of what might happen in the future.