By 2050, climate risk exposure for the vast majority of Italy's infrastructure of all kinds — roads, airports, electrical grids and so on — will increase in a fairly serious way: looking ahead, roughly 3 in 4 infrastructure assets could be at risk, meaning 80 of the 108 combinations between infrastructure type and hazard among those analysed by "Adattiva – Scenari di rischio climatico e resilienza infrastrutturale", the research by Eoliann presented on 13 October at the Chamber of Deputies on the occasion of the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction. The 108 combinations arise from cross-referencing 18 infrastructure categories with six types of hazard: floods, landslides, heavy rainfall, drought, wildfires and wind gusts.

How the Adattiva study was conducted

The research compares the current situation with that of 2050 under an intermediate climate scenario (defined as SSP2-4.5), in which emissions fall but not enough to meet the targets of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which aimed to keep the increase in the planet's average temperatures to +1.5 degrees above the pre-industrial era — a target already largely missed, according to experts. Around 26,000 kilometres of infrastructure and nearly 52,000 public technical structures are considered, spanning the energy, transport, telecommunications and industrial plant sectors. The estimates are produced using Eoliann's Airis platform, which uses geospatial data, physical models and artificial intelligence, drawing on publicly available network data (OpenStreetMap).

For each piece of infrastructure, exposure, expected damage and service disruption are measured as three distinct things: an at-risk area does not necessarily suffer damage, and damage does not necessarily lead to a shutdown, because alternative routes and restoration times matter. Furthermore, the scenario assumes no human intervention in terms of restoration or adaptation: it takes as given that the climate changes and that nothing is done. What emerges, by 2050, is ultimately the picture of an "intermittent" Italy — that is, as Eoliann chief executive Roberto Carnicelli explained, a country "that switches on and off because of these events".

The most vulnerable sectors

Among the research findings that stand out most immediately is the fact that the electricity grid is the most vulnerable to landslides, a problem afflicting the entire Italian territory: 67.6 per cent of high-voltage stretches and 69.2 per cent of medium- and low-voltage ones would almost certainly go completely out of service in a country that counts 680,000 recorded landslides. For transport, it is floods that weigh most heavily, accounting for 73 per cent of expected annual physical damage to airports, 48 per cent for railways and 46.8 per cent for motorways. In telecommunications, damage is split almost equally between floods (36.9 per cent) and landslides (36.7 per cent).

Liguria is the hardest-hit region

Liguria is confirmed — as news reports frequently bear out — as the territory most exposed to overlapping risks: by 2050, according to Adattiva, 89.3 per cent of the assets analysed in the region would be exposed to high levels for at least two hazards (2.19 on average per asset), ahead of Calabria (2.04) and Valle d'Aosta (2.02). This does not mean the events will occur simultaneously, but that the same networks will have to be prepared for different threats. By type of hazard:

• Floods: most affected are Emilia-Romagna, Veneto, Lombardia and Friuli-Venezia Giulia. Eight regions move up a hazard class and none moves down.
• Extreme rainfall: twelve regions deteriorate. Calabria moves from class 6 to class 9, while Piemonte reaches class 10.
• Landslides: most exposed are Liguria, Trentino-Alto Adige, Calabria and Valle d'Aosta.
• Wildfires: thirteen out of twenty regions move up a class and none moves down; among the most exposed are Basilicata, Sardegna, Marche and Molise.
• Wind: among the most exposed are Valle d'Aosta, Umbria, Molise, Calabria and Sardegna.
• Drought: all regions reach the maximum class: according to the report, what is today an abnormal drought tends to become the norm, to the point that the scale no longer allows regions to be distinguished from one another. For Carnicelli, it will no longer be an extreme event but an "ordinary" one.

The need to adapt

According to Carnicelli, reasoning on the basis of what has happened in the past "is not enough": the heaviest risks today are not guaranteed to be the same in 2050, and there is no single national model that works everywhere — territorial analyses are needed. Laura D'Aprile, head of the Sustainable Development department at the Ministry of the Environment, identified the National Adaptation Plan as the framework for action: it provides for more than 360 measures, 70 per cent of which are cost-free because they concern governance and coordination.

But it would need a framework climate law to speed up implementation. Since February, a national observatory involving 16 administrations has been working to reconstruct how much has been spent so far — no simple task, given that funding is fragmented. For D'Aprile, however, the issue is also an economic one: infrastructure that is not climate-resilient "is not safe", and if a strategic asset fails, the country's competitiveness suffers. From 2027, Eoliann will run a permanent laboratory on climate resilience, open to road, rail, electricity grid and telecommunications operators to share technologies and adaptation strategies. Participation will be free of charge, with the costs borne by the company.