The Prim Programme: A Regional Plan for Integrated Risk Assessment and Management

Abstract

The Lombardy Region has recently launched a project (PRIM Regional Plan for the Governance of Risk) aimed at an integrated risk assessment as a decision support for local policies of risk prevention and management. The project has been developed and coordinated by the Lombardy Foundation for the Environment in cooperation with universities and research institutions of the region. Eight major risks have been considered: natural (floods landslides, extreme meteorological events, forest fires, earthquakes), technological (relevant industrial accidents, transport of dangerous substances) and social risks (labour accidents, road accidents, urban security). For each of them, hazard factors as well as vulnerability elements for selected targets have been calculated, weighted and combined with proper algorithms in order to obtain GIS-based risk maps with a fine space resolution (1 km(2) square cells). The individual risk maps have been overlapped and integrated, achieving a final integrated risk map capable of selecting the most critical areas throughout the region, to which specific policies of prevention and/or mitigation of the major risks ought to be addressed.