CLIMATOLOGY
FOR PROFESSIONALS
AND URBAN CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION
IN MILAN AREA
ClimaMi has been selected and is present in the national portal of local good practices of adaptation to climate change (Platform GELSO by National Institute for Protection and Environmental Research)
The project
The ClimaMi Project goal is to support the professionals who deal with territory planning and management in the Milan urban area, focusing on the single building as well as on the entire city area, with particular attention to the built environment.
The project aims to implement and provide an operational, solid, organised and updated basis of climate data and information which is necessary as a concrete and essential reference point for adapting to local climate change.
Within the ClimaMi Project, climatologists, architects, engineers and technicians who operate in many different application sectors work together to identify and develop an integrated framework of climate data and information, essential for a multitude of application areas, which can thus benefit from the availability of operational, updated and site related climate indicators: from Energy Management to Rainwater Control and Management, from Urban Planning to Public Health as well as Financial Services and Insurance sectors.
OBJECTIVES AND EXPECTED OUTCOMES
The main objective of the project is the development of a functional urban climatology for the aerological basin of Milan, which helps promoting and making central a more careful and effective consideration of the local climate in urban territory design, planning and management as well as making central the topic of climate change adaptation in cities, in line with current guidelines, policies and regulations at regional and national level.
In order to achieve these objectives as well as the expected effects and results, the multi-year project will produce the following outputs:
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An Information Tool on Urban Climate (SI-CU) to support decisions and to use as an input into design calculations during urban area planning and management activities. Once complete, at the end of the third year, the SI-CU will provide quantitative information on the urban climate of the last decade in the project area and will consist of:
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Climatological Database, searchable by climatic variables, spatial and temporal details, application sectors;
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Application and procedural guidelines, that provide guidance on the meaning and use of climate data and indicators in various application sectors, whose purpose is, among other things, to unify the technical languages in the climate field;
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Climatic Atlas of Air Temperatures, which shows the results of spatial analysis in graphical terms and can be consulted with GIS-like thematic layer display and overlay functions;
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Precipitation Catalogue, dedicated to the spatial and temporal characterisation of the precipitation regime with particular reference to extreme events, intense rain of very short duration, and to the spatial variation of the descriptive statistics of precipitation in the city of Milan and in the entire project area;
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Notebooks on the experimental case studies carried out during the three years of ClimaMi Project;
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Different tools and capacity building programmes (professional refresher courses and technical seminars, information events, news and on/offline publications), customised according to the needs of different targets and articulated according to an increasing degree of in-depth analysis during the different steps of the project.
The medium and long-term effects, deriving from the achievement of the different project objectives and from the realisation of the project outputs, can be estimated as:
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Greater knowledge and greater climatological data usefulness and usability in the applications of current interest in the economic, institutional and social fields;
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Decision-making, design, management and professional activities more influenced by current urban climate and its changes, with a view to adaptation and resilience;
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A more operational declination of environmental sustainability with reference to climate change in territorial planning and programming tools;
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Possible implications on legislation and technical standards (eg definition of heating degree days);
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Increasing levels of knowledge and awareness of the current urban climate change and of the impacts and risks involved in many sectors of daily economic and social life.
Target
The direct targets of the project are:
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Energy, construction-plant, urban planning and public health designer (engineers, architects, town planners, industrial experts, surveyors ...) who work in the Milan area;
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Professionals who carry out management activities in the urban area in the aforementioned sectors (eg condominium administrators, energy utility or water management technicians);
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Local public bodies technicians and administrators;
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The scientific community.
The community (citizens, media professionals…) and the economic operators are indirect targets of the project.
Involved area
The project involves the aerological basin of Milan, including the Milan metropolitan area, the province of Monza and Brianza, and some neighboring municipalities of the provinces of Varese, Pavia and Lodi.
The highlighted spots on the map pinpoints the stations of the Fondazione OMD meteorological network, which are located in the project area and whose data are included in the Climatological Database.
PARTNERSHIP AND STAKEHOLDERS
As the coordinator of ClimaMi Project, Fondazione Osservatorio Meteorologico di Milano Duomo has involved three other prestigious Milanese institutions - which have become project partners - right from the initiation and planning phase:
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Fondazione Ordine degli Architetti P.P.C della Provincia di Milano,
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Fondazione Ordine degli Ingegneri della Provincia di Milano,
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Fondazione Lombardia per l’Ambiente.
The ClimaMi Project is co-financed by Fondazione Cariplo, which is committed to supporting and promoting projects of social utility within art and culture, environment, personal services and scientific research fields.
The partners have all the skills needed to achieve the objectives, in terms of knowledge of the territory, specific technical issues and policy regional strategy.
Sharing experiences and a wide network of contacts, the partners have been able to generate great interest in the project idea, gathering support from many important stakeholders and thus allowing a wide-ranging view and causing a relapse which goes beyond the boundaries of the metropolitan area.
In a formal letter of support and commitment, they actually expressed their willingness to support the project development.
