Research Project on Climate Change and GHGs control in the Lombardy Region – KYOTO EXTERNALITIES 1
This project aims at providing all the ingredients (databases, scenarios, policies) for the control of greenhouse gases in Italy’s Lombardy region.
Research Line Externalities is one research strand of the Kyoto Project, a two-years research funded by Fondazione Lombardia per l’Ambiente, Regione Lombardia, APAT and Ministero per l’Ambiente e la Tutela del Territorio, aimed at addressing vulnerability and climate change mitigation and adaptation policies in Lombardia.
Other research strands include:
- Climate – study of the evolution of climate and of current tendencies in Lombardy with respect to the frequency and intensity of extreme climate events;
- Inventory – completion and updating the emissions inventory of GHGs considered by the Kyoto protocol and EU directives;
- Monitoring – tuning of monitoring networks of GHG emissions and of net carbon flows between atmosphere, soil and agro-forestry systems in Lombardy;
- Externalities – assessment of health, economic and environmental externalities due to current and future climate change;
- Scenarios and Policies – study of changes in emissions following from different economic growth scenarios and alternative mitigation policies.
The partners of FEEM in Research Line Externalities investigate the socio-economic dimension of vulnerability to climate change in Lombardia, drawing an overall synoptic vulnerability framework, and focusing on vulnerability in the regional natural ecosystem and road infrastructures.
FEEM instead is responsible for two climate change impact studies, respectively on the regional health and agricultural sectors.
With regard to the health impact study, during the first year of research activity FEEM intends to study the relationship between climate factors, in particular changes in temperature, and the health status of the local resident population, with the objective to estimate the potential impact of climate change on the mortality and morbidity rates of the local population. The analysis is based on the consideration of micro data both on health events (deaths, in patient episodes, emergency admissions) and on daily observations of air temperature, humidity and pollution. Also, social and economic characteristics of the study population are considered. Methodologically, at first we intend to use Generalized Additive Models (GAM), extremely flexible in dealing with a number of covariates, to be chosen among daily average temperature, maximum daily temperature, daily temperature range, humidity, concentration of pollutants, social and economic variables. At a second stage we intend to use varying coefficient models, which are well suited to deal with interactions between pollutant concentrations and weather.
With regard to the agricultural sector impact study, during the first year of research on the project FEEM intends to identify and select the relevant crops in the most vulnerable areas of the Region. Crop simulation models are then applied to estimate the potential impact of extreme climate events on the crops. Following the sensitivity analysis, an economic assessment of vulnerability is carried out.
During the second year of research activities an economic valuation of the most effective adaptation options in the health and agricultural sector is developed, using a cost-benefit analytical framework.