As well as many other urban areas in Mediterranean Europe, the City of Naples has already faced a remarkable climatic variation compared to the historical reference period from 1971-2000. In the last few years, there has been an increase in minimum and maximum temperatures, seasonal precipitation patterns have shown an increasing alteration between extreme unexpected events and periods of drought. Furthermore, the City of Naples is also affected by coastal floods combined with the effects of ongoing sea level rise, as well as storm surges and heavy rainfalls.
Considering the implications of past events, the impacts and cascading effects could be mortality increase and hospitalization cost increase due to longer-lasting and increasing heat waves, damage to buildings and open spaces with an increase of restoration costs, disruption of transport infrastructures by land and sea, disruption of utilities like electricity, sewage disposal and so on and also economic losses like in tourism, or the third sector in general.
KNOWING the right mitigation and adaptation measures
We need to adapt and to mitigate our GHG emissions at the same time. Therefore, the University of Naples “Frederico II” is investigating the interplay of adaptation and mitigation strategies in a new Horizon Europe project called KNOWING. The project allows us to analyze and evaluate, simultaneously, all climate change-related risks that affect the City of Naples, in an attempt to identify cost-effective solutions bringing social, environmental and economic co-benefits and also reflecting local community’s priorities and needs in a resilient development perspective.
The main targeted service to be tested is the SECAP service, to support the current transition of the Napoli SEAP (Sustainable Energy Action Plan) into SECAP (Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plan) that, compared to the first one, establishes more ambitious goals in terms of reduction of GHG emissions (40%), production of renewable energy (32%) and energy efficiency improvement (32,5%) by 2030 within an integrated approach to climate change mitigation and adaptation.
KNOWING what to do
We expect the KNOWING project will bring benefits to the City of Naples as it will enhance urban planning and design strategies facing coastal flooding, pluvial flooding and heat waves risks together, and also improving dialogue/interaction between local authorities, scientific community, private sectors and citizens.
For further information stay updated and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter
