Rainfall monitoring network 

2023, January 31. The objective of this workshop was to define technical details about a rainfall monitoring network, to be deployed by the Municipality of Ferrara within the USAGE Project.

Municipality of Ferrara - Environmental Department 

Alessio Stabellini stated Ferrara's priorities: better data governance and citizen participation. In 2023 expected outcome: AVTs acquisitions mainly. In 2024 planning: pluviometers, UHI estimation, action priority UHI and floods. 

See the presentation here.

Urban Planning Department 

Cristiano Rinaldo spoke on the new urban plan "PUG" and climate change adaptation strategy. The council set a limit of a 3% increase in urbanized land cover till 2050. Moving from urban expansion to urban requalification/regeneration, over ~ 70 areas. The PUG  at a neighborhood scale has to be based on green infrastructures (environmental and landscape value) and blue infrastructures (channels of water). There is the possibility to plan with orthophoto (2018 & 2020) to segment green areas with interpretations on the type of vegetation, to quantify ecosystem services. Studies on climate indexes are based on pluviometers and temperature data.

Estimation of the urban permeability, and UHI.

See the presentations here and here.

Hera Group 

Marcello Zanella and Vittorio Crepaldi spoke about wastewater management services related to the challenges of climate change. Ferrara's old Sewerage System was designed for the intensity of storms of yesteryear, which are now outdated due to the increase in intense and frequent events. HERA's last intervention was in 2021 to upgrade street-level drainage.

Consorzio di Bonifica

Laura Montanari spoke about the Main issues related to climate change: floods and droughts. But also water use for agriculture and surface water management. Throughout the province of Ferrara, Consorzio manages the drainage and irrigation network. There is a need for a Decision Support System, to address flood risk that adopts Hydrological and Hydrodynamic Analysis on 48-hour forecasts. Data are acquired from a sparse network of sensors + maintenance Apps where users can add local parameters. Rain gauges + water height at selected location. Nowcasting >> + radar data. DSS was created to handle extreme events but has proven invaluable for both planning (due to historical data) and analysis of events after the fact. We are working on adding irrigation data, for example (water recycling during the 2022 drought). 

See the presentation here.