Policies

Relevant city context

The case study applies to all cities and towns developing a resilience action plan, including activities such as risk assessment and local stakeholder engagement.

Goals: increase engagement in building community awareness on urban resilience with local stakeholders; assessment of systemic risks

The City of Rome are setting an agenda for a resilience action plan, mainly led by the city’s Urban Planning Department,”Risorse per Roma”. It has been a challenge to define and operationalize the complex concept of resilience in the city, and one of the main topics has been to make a systemic risks assessment to identify interdependencies and vulnerabilities. The assessment has been made through interviews and workshops with policymakers, practitioners and local stakeholders of different departments, at both Local and Regional Authorities. Further. Scenarios were used to fuse the discussion during the focus groups, leading to the identification of interdependencies between risks at a local level. As described by the involved stakeholders, one of the greatest challenges was the vicious circles arising from the lack of coordination among sectors of the public administration (e.g. the water management). The challenge is viewed as a particularly challenging issue for the city of Rome, due to the large territory and population under a single municipal jurisdiction.  

Cooperation between stakeholders

Through the multidisciplinary focus groups, the cities municipality, local stakeholders and scientists had the opportunity to develop a mutual learning process based on each other’s knowledge and skills. In developing strategies to promote urban resilience the Urban Planning Department and Risorse per Roma highly appreciated the practical expertise of the local stakeholders involved, as well as the support from scientific partners in the SMR project. Having representation form the people who normally “get the job done” was regarded as highly important for the success of the workshop. Further, the accomplishments of the focus groups indicated the presence of strong political leadership and inter-departmental coordination.  

Outcomes

Discussions from the stakeholder interviews and focus groups contributed to the assessment of systemic risks the city is facing. The municipality and workshop participants felt that discussions led to increased awareness of hazard risk groups and helped improve community and government capacity to identify and implement risk reduction strategies. Eight main areas for further work were identified during the focus groups and are summarized below. Next steps include making priorities and identifying opportunities for new policies and project funding. The final outcome of the project will be to lay the foundations for the establishment of a special Urban Resilience Office, to act as a Control Room for the Resilience policies of Rome.

1. Abandoned Public/Private Real Property: Abandoned Real Property is a cost and a constraint to urban development; this should lead to a re-thinking of public services and new forms of housing and productive activities
2. Cultural Heritage and Natural Resources: Rome has a high number of resources, sometimes poorly integrated into the life of the city; moreover, the impact of climate and anthropogenic risks on fragile, unique and, above all, unreplaceable assets must be considered
3. Vulnerable Population: In terms of social-demographic challenges such as aging population, new immigrants, exclusion, poverty, family ties changes
4. Critical Infrastructures: The city's infrastructure system – namely the public transport system - is highly vulnerable due to uninterrupted heavy stress conditions and the lacking of sufficient redundancy
5. Immigration: The challenge arises from the impact of immigration waves on the ordinary urban management, putting pressure on a public service system already under heavy stress conditions
6. Terrorism: The city has got high symbolic value because of its touristic appeal and its proximity to immigration routes. However, compared to other EU capitals, Rome has no secluded communities, leading to a better monitoring of the territory
7. Climate Change: In the case of Rome, effects of climate change are relevant to increasing flash floods and heat waves. These two risks are amplified because of an aging population and the extremely fragile cultural-historic heritage
8. Governance and Participation: A rational use of significant resources of data, experience, know-how must be developed; the social capital of the city, though abundant in forms of active citizenship, is neither systemic nor adequately recognized.

Resources

Funding for the project has come from EU-project funding (SMR Project) and the 100 RC network. EU SMR funding: 147.000 € approx. (2015- 2018), 100RC funding: 40.000 € approx. (2015-2018)

Other

See here the Resilience Workshop of Rome (“Il workshop di Roma”): http://www.urbanistica.comune.roma.it/smr/workshop-roma2016.html

Relevant city context

It is useful for cities who are working on developing a common understanding of dependencies and collaborative needs between city stakeholders. The workshop methodology can be used at a “Starting” stage, as well as more advanced stages.

Goal

This case study supports the following policies:

P2S3: Develop a common understanding of the resilience approach among stakeholders with the goal of

(L3M1) Promoting a culture of resilience

L1A1: Align, integrate and connect the city resilience plan with national resilience management guidelines with the goal of increasing abilities to better respond and adapt to economic, social, and physical challenges

P1A1: Assess and prioritise risk scenarios and their implications through consideration of risk systemicity (eg using Risk Systemicity Questionnaire) with the goal of developing risk mitigation strategies for highest priority risks at city/regional level

Until 2011 emergency preparedness was based on the principles of liability, conformity, decentralization, which means that the participating entities are expected to be responsible for and perform tasks during a crisis that fall under their responsibility during normal operation. In 2011, following the terror attack on 22 July, a decision was made by the minister of justice and public security to extend these principles to include cooperation.

The implementation of the policy was done through a series of workshops and activities to engage stakeholders in discussions of cooperation and identification of interdependencies of risks. A combination of different methods and tools where used during the workshops, such as, table top exercises, the Risk Systemicity Questionnaire (RSQ) and simulated stress-tests. For example, a stress test of a regional power supply company was performed using the “Long-Term Power Rationing”- scenario to identify direct and cascading effects of long term power outages in the municipality. Key stakeholders and representatives from different services in the municipality took part the evaluation of the effects. In addition, a large-scale exercise was carried out in 2017 with the power outage scenario. The exercise included the power supply company and the crisis management board in the municipality.

Outcomes  

The workshops were believed to be very successful in building an understanding for interdependencies between services, potential vulnerabilities and possibilities to cooperate. These initial workshops have further set an example for future workshops in other infrastructure areas, such as water providers and telecom infrastructure. An additional result based on the outcome of the stress-test and exercise was an action plan to increase redundancy in areas found to be more vulnerable, including for example back-up generators at homes for the elderly. A challenge identified is that not all companies are willing to disclose their vulnerabilities, and forums for discussion and long-term cooperation are essential to build the necessary confidence.

Resources

In connection to implementation of the new principle the municipalities crisis management expanded, including a full-time position in the team. The newly appointed crisis manager coordinated the workshops and activities and costs were split between stakeholders depending on the activity. The stress-test exercise was financed by the power supply company and the cost for the large-scale exercise was divided between the involved stakeholders.

Links

Emergency preparedness principles (In Norwegian)

Information on stakeholder role and responsibility 

Description of stakeholder annual meetings 

Risk Systemcity Questionnaire