Following severe flooding in 2007, a decision was taken in 2012 to explore nature‐based solutions in 250‐km2 river catchment in the southern Cotswolds in the United Kingdom. The project involves working with landowners to create in channel, riparian, field, and woodland structures aimed at attenuating high flows or increasing infiltration rates to reduce flood risk. After 3 years, it is clear that the threshold for effectiveness requires the implementation of measures throughout large areas of the upstream catchment. Early results suggest that social, as well as natural, capital has been enhanced through the project. What is clear is the beneficial role of working with multiple stakeholders to implement natural flood management on a catchment wide scale. In this sense, the project has adopted a comanagement approach that brings together the knowledge of hydrologists, ecologists, farmers, woodland owners, and the local community to implement locally agreed solutions within a broader project framework. This paper will outline the initial findings and the governance structure within a theoretical framework of comanagement and suggest how this type of framework is suitable for a range of nature‐based solutions across Europe. However, the challenge remains in capturing the multiple benefits that such projects offer as these are often missed through conventional approaches such as cost–benefit analysis. The paper concludes by presented along with a potential way forward for a proof of concept for nature‐based solutions.
Evaluation of social vulnerability (SV) against natural hazards remains a big challenge for disaster risk reduction. Spatiotemporal analysis of SV is important for successful implementation of prevision and prevention measures for risk mitigation. This study examined the spatiotemporal pattern of SV in Italy, and also analyzed socioeconomic factors that may influence how the Italian population reacts to catastrophic natural events. We identified 16 indicators that quantify SV and collected data for the census years 1991, 2001, and 2011. We created a social vulnerability index (SVI) for each year by using principal component analysis outputs and an additive method. Exploratory spatial data analysis, including global and local autocorrelations, was used to understand the spatial patterns of social vulnerability across the country. Specifically, univariate local Moran's index was performed for the SVI of each of the three most recent census years in order to detect changes in spatial clustering during the whole study period. The original contribution of this Italy case study was to use a bivariate spatial correlation to describe the spatiotemporal correlation between the threes annual SV indices. The temporal analysis shows that the percentage of municipalities with medium social vulnerability in Italy increased from 1991 to 2011 and those with very high social vulnerability decreased. Spatial analysis provided evidence of clusters that maintained significant high values of social vulnerability throughout the study periods. The SVI of many areas in the center and the south of the peninsula remained stable, and the people living there have continued to be potentially vulnerable to natural hazards.
This chapter presents experiences and results from the INTERREG Italy-Austria Project RiKoST-Risk communication strategies. The project is a collaboration between partners from research and public authorities and aims at improving target-group-oriented risk communication in South Tyrol (Italy) and Carinthia (Austria). Risk communication plays an essential role for risk governance and may address different aspects and fulfill various purposes, from informing about natural hazards, generating acceptance and awareness for structural and non-structural measures, to triggering participation, increasing resilience, and supporting the development of a risk-competent society. To be effective, risk communication needs, firstly, to acknowledge the needs of different target groups and, secondly, to develop approaches, tools and contents that are most suitable to reach and involve them. This chapter describes the results from different activities carried out in the project: a population survey to better understand people’s risk perception and their knowledge about natural hazards, the information channels they use and trust; awareness raising activities in different municipalities; interactive lessons and a workshop in schools; stakeholder workshops. Our results show that that existing non-structural protection and prevention measures, especially Hazard Zone Plans, are little known among the population, that trust in the responsible authorities is high and that there is a need for a risk dialog through different risk communication activities at different stages to provide targeted information on how individual citizens can contribute to risk management. The chapter concludes on how the presented results can be used by public authorities and policy makers to innovate risk communication strategies and to initiate a risk dialog with the overall aim to improve risk governance at local level.
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