Building Disaster Resilient Futures: Exploring the C2IMPRESS Project in the Lens of City of Egaleo, Greece

Published by Dimitra Panou on February 21, 2024February 21, 2024

The Municipality of Egaleo, situated in Western Attica and bordering the municipality of Athens, spans approximately 6.5 km2 and is home to around 70,000 residents. Like the rest of Attica and Greece in general, Egaleo is frequently affected by earthquakes, which, depending on their intensity, can cause damage and destruction to infrastructure and buildings. Closed underground streams and rivers (e.g., Kifissos River) make the terrain highly susceptible to earthquakes as well as floods. Finally, another factor affecting the municipality is the extreme temperatures in recent years, with exceptionally high temperatures during the summer (temperatures can reach up to 45℃) and relatively low temperatures for the region during the winter, when snowfall is becoming more frequent. The city is in the process of re-evaluating the Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plan (SECAP) and setting the policy-making goals for the next decade.

The municipality, in collaboration with three other CSAs (Ordu, Turkey; Centro Region, Portugal; Balearic Islands, Spain), spearheaded the C2IMPRESS project. This initiative aimed to implement an innovative framework for understanding natural hazards and multi-dimensional vulnerabilities, encompassing physical, economic, health, and social impacts. These CSAs also focussed on designing a new polycentric risk governance framework, engaging stakeholders from public, private and civil society sectors.

The panel of speakers at this webinar will provide and discuss an in-depth exploration of the C2IMPRESS project, shedding light on its core principles and innovative approaches; and about the C2IMPRESS’s social and technical innovation tools that are providing the knowledge to produce an Integrated Climate Change Adaptation and multi-hazard Disaster Management Framework cross-cutting plan for Egaleo.

With these social and technical innovations -as novel processes and products- the C2IMPRESS project is determined to provide better understanding and public awareness on multi-hazard risks, the associated multidimensional impacts, vulnerabilities and resilience of extreme weather events in the Municipality of Egaleo.