Emilia Romagna: everything was already foreseen (?)

After the flood in Emilia Romagna (the umpteenth one) the words of a songwriter from Emilia come to mind: "everything was already foreseen".

Now, to tell the truth, many people write it, and in fact it is enough to read the BES 2022 report to take note of data that are in themselves eloquent: in the ratio between residents in areas of medium hydraulic danger and the total regional population, the positioning of Emilia Romagna is not only the highest - and therefore the worst - but it also stands at an outlier value, clearly above the percentages recorded for the other Regions: 62.5%, on an average that stops just above 11%.

Source: ISPRA data, Report on hydrogeological instability in Italy: hazard and risk indicators 2021 (BES Report 2022)

It is true that Italy has geological characteristics that expose it to the risk of floods, further aggravated by human intervention linked, for example, to overbuilding, illegal building and the abandonment of upland. It is equally true that the 62.5% of residents in areas in danger of flooding is a much higher figure than those recorded for the rest of the sample: followed by Emilia Romagna, in fact, there are, at a great distance, the Public Administration of Trento and Tuscany, both below 26%.