Creating the world’s first Weather Risk Free & Climate Resilient area: WeRISE Project

“WeRise” is a medium scale, applied research, cooperative project, initiated in the coastal communities of the central east Italian peninsula, in the coasts of Abruzzi Region. The project aims in evaluating an holistic approach to address existing and future weather and climate risks. The central pillars of the proposed solutions consist in providing hyper-localized, high accuracy weather alerts and climate analysis (50, 100 and 150 years), integrated with all civic activity, from infrastructural project design to urban planning and economic development of the whole region. From an architectural and IT point of view, the project consists in a digital comunication platform that, from one side enables citizens to access high accuracy weather alerts and climatic projections, while give to local governments a power tool to stay connected with the citizens and coordinate activities in cases of extreme weather events and disasters. Of course the system represents also a powerfull approach to disaster preparedness and prevention. WeRise employs a two-phased strategy - an initial pilot application that involves 12 comunities in the cities of Lanciano, San Vito Chietino, Ortona and Francavilla al Mare, followed by a regional scale up designed to integrate around 100K citizens. The pilot phase focuses on deploying and testing technology in a controlled environment, assessing its effectiveness in real-world settings. The project aims to bring a new level of precision to weather alerts and risk management, directly benefiting both infrastructure planning and communities’ safety. Primary goals include enhancing weather resilience at the local level, improving emergency response mechanisms, and supporting informed decision-making in urban planning and economic activities. Initial findings from the pilot phase indicate a significant impact on community preparedness and risk mitigation, promising for broader applications. The project’s next steps involve expanding the tested approach to larger, more diverse regions, with an aim to evaluate and develop a national-scale model to organically manage weather and climate risks in Italy.