Community resilience against flood: the case of the LIFE PRIMES project

Natural forces pose threats to human communities. Ongoing changes to the environment worsen these hazards, causing the associated risk to increase. While the number of disasters is observed to decline worldwide, the costs of the disastrous events are increasing, showing how higher and higher human values are exposed and vulnerable to hazards. There is a growing acknowledgement of the need to enhance the resilience of local communities. At the same time, it is important to act accordingly to a common and broadly-shared strategy. International and regional organisations can be very effective in supporting local projects, providing solid knowledge and valuable funds. The European Commission manages the LIFE funding programme, aimed to support projects addressing environmental and climate challenges. It started in 1992 and until now it has supported around 3954 projects Europe-wide. Among them stands the PRIMES (Preventing flooding RIsks by Making resilient communitiES) project, that run from October 2015 to December 2018. The LIFE PRIMES project intended to increase the resilience of local communities against floods by strengthening risk awareness and by promoting the creation of innovative supporting tools. Ten flood-prone municipalities within three Italian Regions were involved in the activities, along with Regional Environmental Institutions, local Authorities and Academic Institutions. The project included assessments of the project’s impacts. Preliminary results show a sensible increase of local communities’ resilience, thus highlighting the success of the PRIMES project and encouraging a further implementation of its methodology in other communities, to help build societies better prepared to cope with extreme events.