CIMA Research Foundation

CIMA Research Foundation has long lasting experience in weather and climate related events, mainly focused in flood and forest fire risk prediction, modelling & evaluation, tackling the problem in its multifaceted essence. CIMA supports the Italian Civil Protection Department in the National Platform For Disasters Risk Reduction and, at International level, UN-ISDR and the WMO Associated Program on Flood Management(APFM). In general CIMA promotes a holistic approach taking into account social, cultural, economic and educational factors as essential part of vulnerability. Specific attention is devoted to systemic vulnerability both in the direction of flood and forest fire risk and in its interaction with industrial risks on the territory. CIMA has developed research solutions with special focus on difficult-to-model environments such as the Mediterranean and the Alpine catchments, stressing the synergic role of models and observations. Building on its expertise on Hydro-meteorological chains CIMA also provides support to researchers working into soil slip prediction for enhanced Early Warning Systems (EWS) performance and reliability. Achievements in flood risk assessments and risk, hazard and exposure evaluations have been developed with emerging observation techniques from space-borne sensors. New methods and approaches are searched in order to perform virtual surveys, with the effort of identifying the vulnerability of infrastructures, buildings or activities and to estimate physical and functional damages.