Landslide and flood: Economic and social impacts in Italy

Abstract

We conducted an analysis of the damages caused by the natural disasters which have occurred in the last 60 years in order to demonstrate that prevention costs much less than repairing the damages, without considering the loss of human lives. Between 1951 and 2009, the total cost of the damages caused by landslides and floods in Italy, revalued on the basis of ISTAT indexes 2009, amounts to more than 52 billion euros, approximately one billion euros per year. The Ministry of Environment estimated at approximately 40 billion euros the financial need to mitigate the risk of landslide and flood. The annual available funding allows the mitigation of landslide and flood risk in over 100 years. On the other hand we are forced to use Civil Protection's funds to address emergency caused by landslides or flood at least once a year in Italy: these funds, if used for prevention, would mitigate risks in wider territories and to avoid the loss of lives, optimizing the cost-benefit ratio. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013.