The University of Padua inaugurates the Impact of Climate Change Study Centre in Rovigo

19.09.2023

With a focus on interdisciplinary research, risk assessment training, land changes, climate projections, High Performance Computing (HPC), Cloud and Big Data technology, the new University of Padua Climate Change Study Centre in Rovigo will act as a provider of climate change study and services for academic research groups. Offering open access data to local, national and international bodies, the Study Centre will support decision-making processes based on the impact of climate change.

University of Padua Deputy Rector Giancarlo della Fontana explains, “Climate change is a pressing and challenging topic that calls upon us to consider and identify concrete and innovative solutions so that we may combat its dramatic consequences. The establishment of a study centre dedicated to climate change is an important step for our university and a source of great pride. We will serve our society by bringing together the many different skills that the University of Padua has developed as a response to the growing attention of students who are increasingly enrolling in courses that address climate change.”

Vice President of the Cariparo Foundation, Giuseppe Toffoli states, “Long anticipated by our Foundation and the University of Padua, this Centre is a concrete example of how public and private institutions can bring forth winning synergies that combine and make available research and the applicable translation of results to the national and international community. Beyond this, the Master's Degree Course in Water and Geological Risk Engineering will train the professional figures of tomorrow capable of preventing and/or coping with the impacts of climate change, which unfortunately, continues with ever more frequency. Finally, choosing Rovigo is a strategic move as this area benefits from its obvious territorial vocation. The province of Rovigo is a pragmatic example of a reclaimed area and the Po Delta is the symbol of a highly modified natural system. Both of which have been exposed to climate changes and whose effects are far from being quantified as they require solid information and subsequent strategic actions.”

The Centre will focus on developing highly urgent and topical research activities as a means to translate climate projections into concrete terms for future planning. By leveraging the international disciplinary excellence expressed by the support of the three University departments of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering (ICEA), Geosciences, and that of Land, Environment, Agriculture and Forestry, the Centre will be a point of reference on all subject related climate change. Such a point of reference will serve not only the University, but for the entire province of Rovigo and River Po Delta, with research and projections at a national and international level.

Thanks to the Cassa di Risparmio di Padova e Rovigo Foundation and the University of Padua, the Centre will host young researchers as they carry out their activities in Rovigo. The Centre will mobilize a large Board of Researchers, with at least 20 scholars from the three Departments interested in the initiative. Its multidisciplinary scope will range from water engineering, mathematical modelling, geosciences, to agricultural sciences and forestry. Each discipline represents the possible research directions taken towards the impact of climate change in the province of Rovigo and within the Po Delta region. 

The goal of the Centre is to make research results freely available by supplying climate services to other University research groups and for local, national and international bodies that will be able to use the data generated in their decision-making processes.