ReNDiS - National List of Land Defence interventions

In 2000, the Ministry of Environment and Land Protection appointed APAT (Italian Environment Protection and Technical Services Agency) to monitor urgent interventions for the reduction of the hydrogeological risk, as per Legislative Decree no. 180/98 (“Decreto Sarno” converted with amendments into Law no. 267/98). In order to develop this activity, with the purpose of creating a synergy between the land defence bodies concerned, APAT developed the ReNDiS project (National List of Land Defence interventions). It is aimed at creating a digitalized archive of all interventions against hydrogeological instability.
The ReNDiS project aims at providing a tool that can give contantly updated information of the works and resources involved both in a global way and with reference to specific geographical environments.
This is provided to administrations, involved in planning and organizing land defence interventions. The List consists of an “information system” that can manage different data and information coming from different bodies and is integrated by a web interface that was specifically developed to share and publish the acquired data on internet. Through the geographical interface, users can view interventions referring to a specific area and request the database to provide a statistical report corresponding to certain characteristics, types and quantities of interventions and instabilities. Data contained in the ReNDiS are currently limited to projects funded in accordance with Legislative Decree no. 180/98 and subsequent amendments and additions. In future, the intention is to include also data of interventions funded by other means (regional laws, ordinances, etc.). This will be possible after having defined the agreements required to set up a shared “system” with other bodies that carry out land defence interventions. Currently, the database is structured on data collected during monitoring interventions, as per Legislative Decree no. 180/98, as well as other sets of sample data taken from databases of the Bacino del Po Authority (interventions as per Law no.183/89) and of the Department of Civil Defence (interventions as per Civil Defence ordinances). This information was specifically arranged and an an archive system architecture was developed with the relative software, based on open source products (postgreSql). At the same time, an interface was developed to insert and consult geographical information on interventions.
The interface has been structured in such a way that it can be accessed in different ways according to the type of user. It allows the public consultation of a partial set of information by registering as basic user while bodies involved in the interventions can access as qualified users, obtaining all information on their specific interventions with partial rights to amend data. Rights to manage the system are given to bodies holding the primary archives, for their respective area of jurisdiction.
The integration and sharing of data, within the framework of the ReNDiS project, will enable an improvement in the efficiency of land defence monitoring and planning action as well as the development of specific environmental indicators to be used in natural risk environmental reporting. At the moment, the final version of the internet interface (ReNDis-web) is about to be completed. This will be published once the access authorization criteria and the relative registration procedures have been defined and approved.