RED ROSES project presentation

RED ROSES aims at preparing and preventing natural disaster risks (floods, landslides and forest fires) in the cross-border region between France and Italy, an area that is particularly vulnerable to this type of hazard. The aim of the project is to encourage cooperation among civil protection authorities and relevant stakeholders in this border area and promote data collection and sharing as well as the use of new ICT-based tools and services to support decision-making procedures in disaster risk management.

OVERCOMING COMPLEX COORDINATION AND INFORMATION SHARING IN A CROSS-BORDER CONTEXT
 

RED ROSES, REsponsive Data ecosystem for Resilient and Operational SEcurity Strategies, is an initiative co-funded by the Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (DG ECHO) of the European Commission, in the framework of the Union Civil Protection Mechanism (UCPM). It aims at developing a cross-border tool for sharing accessible data and information, and at strengthening the capacity of civil protection and other stakeholders to prevent, prepare for, monitor and respond to cross-border natural disasters. 

Launched in March 2023, RED ROSES will be implemented until February 2025 under the coordination of the French Red Cross (CRf) by the Italian Red Cross (CRi), the National Research Council (CNR) of Italy, the French Geological Survey (BRGM) and the University of Paris Dauphine.

Natural hazards, exacerbated notably by the increasing effects of climate change, have a major impact in terms of human lives, natural heritage and economic activity. The occurrence of such events, more intense and recurrent, in cross-border regions raises questions about the ability of civil protection authorities and stakeholders to prevent, prepare for, monitor and respond to such disasters on either side of the border. Such disasters also highlight the difficulty of sharing information in a cross-border context. 

The French-Italian border is particularly affected by the natural disaster risks. Available records on past events testify that the cross-border region between Italy and France has been affected by natural hazard-induced disasters over the past years (landslides, floods, and wildfires) and experienced significant social and economic losses. Specifically, the RED ROSES cross-border study area is geographically located between the Susa and Roya valleys.

In October 2020, a storm (labelled as Alex) resulted in heavy rains and flash floods in the Roya Valley at the French-Italian frontier. A dozen bridges were swept away by the wave, making upstream-downstream communications very difficult. Villages such as Tende, Saorge, Sospel, Breil-sur-Roya in France remained isolated for several days. A certain number of infrastructure, economic and service facilities have been destroyed, both in urban and rural areas. The offices of the town hall of Breil-sur Roya, like everything that was in the flood zone of the town, were devastated and the municipal team had to go settle near the train station, next to the fire station. 

As far as wildfires are concerned, in Italy in the past 20 years 1,100,000 ha of forest have been burnt. Every year an average of 11,000 fires occur, destroying more than 50,000 ha of wood each year. Due to their high potential impact in terms of human lives, commodities, and natural heritage, the cross-border Alpine forest fires require a relatively large amount of resources for fire-fighting and prevention. Secondary damages via other consecutive natural hazards, such as an enhancement of debris flows, erosion, and avalanche danger may occur too. 

In the last years, many steps forward have been made to increase the preparedness of volunteering civil protection organisations to face multi-site and multi-hazard effects. In particular the MERCI project, addressing Multi-site Events Response and Coordinated Intervention. This initiative, co-funded by DG ECHO in 2016, highlighted the complexity to coordinate such events and the need to make available and share a wide array of data and information to strengthen disaster risk management capacities. 

In this sense, RED ROSES, eager to address this need, will : 

1. Provide the cross-border Civil Protection authorities and relevant stakeholders with existing and new data and “user-centred” ICT-based tools, to improve wildfire and hydro-meteorological susceptibility, hazard and impact management strategies; 
    
2. Strengthen a cooperation-based decision making process based on shared data and information, procedures and strategies in disaster risk management in compliance with regional, national and EU rules, protocols and policies; 
    
3. Strengthen cooperation, at an inter-organisational level, by adopting innovative, low-cost, “user-centred” ICT-based strategies, by setting standards in data collection and sharing and promoting a collaborative governance of data; 
    
4. Enhance synergies at a translocal level, among existing systems already in use in each cross-border country, with the final result of improving the effectiveness of disaster risk management procedures.