The REDI program
The research is part of the REDI program. REDI (RMIT European Doctoral Innovators) is a unique PhD training program to prepare the leaders of tomorrow. REDI’s 40+ researchers are based with academic and industry leaders across 10 countries and part of a multidisciplinary community. Co-funded by the European Union, REDI creates new research and enterprise links between Australia and Europe and the 60+ partners into the future.
The research
This research is under the grant: POLMI-DC1 - Housing and settlement design and governance strategies for climate change adaptation and mitigation of informal territories. The research takes place from November 2022 to November 2026.
The research project deals with strategies for adaptation and mitigation to flood, to define an assessment and design methodology supporting decision-makers in identifying effective strategies across scales and governance approaches. Previous research supports the need to go beyond sectoral approaches to understand the combined contribution of different measures on the built environment (open spaces, buildings, users), engaging multiple stakeholders and diffused in a territory. Therefore, we aim to test alternatives to the mainstreamed spatially concentrated large-scale solutions, for example, dikes, levees storage basins -which are primarily engineered-based and have known technical and socio-economic limitations, such as high costs, biodiversity disruption, inequality- by turning towards multiscale measures distributed on public and private property. We employ scientific assessment methods and participatory approaches. The results provide decision-makers with transferable methodologies and tools cutting across qualitative and quantitative methods and guidelines for implementation for flood risk management measures.
The team
This research is under the grant: POLMI-DC1 - Housing and settlement design and governance strategies for climate change adaptation and mitigation of informal territories.
The results of this research will be used by the PhD Candidate Francesca Vanelli to obtain a Doctoral Degree in Architecture and Urban Design from RMIT(Australia) and Politecnico di Milano, under the supervision of Associate Professor Paul Minifie from RMIT, and Associate Professor Monica Lavagna from Politecnico di Milano, under a Cotutelle agreement.
Francesca is an Architect, Urban Planner, and Land Specialist. Her thematic interests include land and natural resources management, (peri) urban governance for adaptation, social cohesion, and disasters and conflict risk management. Her past working experience cut across architecture and planning, research and development projects. She graduated cum laude from an MSc. in Urban Management and Development at IHS, Erasmus University, Rotterdam (NL) in 2019, specialising in Urban Land Governance. Here, she completed a thesis on the land titling policy in Tirana, Albania, and its social impact on informal settlers. In 2016, she obtained an MS. in Architecture at the University of Ferrara (IT), with an award for research on the climate-sensitive regeneration of the seafront of Havana, Cuba, with a focus on climate resilience, natural-based solutions and land use planning for redevelopment.