In the capital of the largest island in Italy, Sicily, there is a Section of INGV whose history is even older than that of the Institution. A section stretching out towards the blue of the Tyrrhenian Sea, which over the years has made the sea one of its main objects of study and research. The Palermo Section is a center of excellence of the Institute, home to numerous scientific laboratories where, through geochemistry, 'everything that moves' from Space to the depths of the sea can be observed from a privileged point of view. A point of reference for monitoring the hydrothermal fluids of the Aeolian Islands, the Section is also a scientific partner of the national industrial sector in the search for alternative energy sources. To find out more, we interviewed the Director Francesco Italiano.
Franco, how long have you been Director of the Palermo Section of INGV?
I have been Director for several years now, since September 2016. We are about to finish my second (and last) mandate.
What are the main activities your Section deals with?
I would say those that are our responsibility as a Research Body: from research projects to the institutional activities of monitoring volcanic activity that we carry out for the Civil Protection Department. The latter are certainly the ones that absorb the most time and energy.
INGV was formally established in 1999 with a legislative decree which unified various Italian research institutions under a single aegis, including the Institute of Fluid Geochemistry (IGF) of the CNR, which has become our current Palermo Section. What has changed since then in the research activities and in the work carried out in the Section?
This question fits perfectly, because I was the first researcher hired by the Palermo IGF in 1984, so I can say that I have a substantial historical memory of what that crucial step was. As CNR we operated on four so-called "research lines": geochemistry of fluids for the environment, geochemistry of fluids in volcanic environments, in seismic environments and in geothermal environments. They resembled what are today the three Departments of INGV, Environment, Earthquakes and Volcanoes. What has changed since then? Well at the time we were almost pioneers in the field, there was a climate of great ferment which generated some very personal initiatives by researchers who tried to use the means they had at their disposal (not many, it must be said) to carry forward ideas design, and we were able to transfer the know-how acquired on what would later become the monitoring activities (which at the time were carried out for the National Group of Volcanology, also merged into the INGV).
Today, on the other hand, we have much more economic and technological availability, but we are also much more overwhelmed by a huge range of administrative issues which, in some cases, slow down our scientific work.
How many colleagues are part of the Section?
To date, the Section has 63 staff, 10 research fellows and 10 research associates, with a variable number of trainees and trainees from various Italian and foreign universities.
What does being Director mean to you?
For me, it was a particularly important and heartfelt activity that made it possible to put at the service of the section the experiences gained as a researcher and project manager on an international scale up to the regional one, which is important because it is rooted in the territory. At the time of my appointment, I used all the enthusiasm and energy to try to direct my Section towards a more organic and structured future, with the aim of strengthening the INGV brand thanks to the many skills present in the section. The complex role of leader of a section has not eliminated the need to continue carrying out research activities, through the coordination of projects on an international scale. However, the growing managerial complexity that has affected the entire organization over time has somewhat undermined the initial enthusiasm with a growing load of administrative procedures…an often not very useful distillation of bureaucracy. We Directors are scientific personnel of the Institute, with degrees in Physics, Geology or Engineering: none of us have previous administrative skills. Here, this aspect, often forgotten, is instead in my opinion a crucial point that should be further investigated and, possibly, re-discussed at the government tables to remedy the current situation in which most of the time of a Director (who, as I said, remains first of all a researcher) is absorbed by the resolution of problems exclusively related to the managerial and administrative aspect of the Public Administration.
The Palermo Section also manages numerous scientific laboratories and a dense monitoring network involving Etna, the Aeolian Islands and the islands of western Sicily, as well as infrastructure dedicated to marine research: how does the synergy between Are the research and monitoring activities carried out in these areas important for the development and growth of the Institute?
Well it is certainly very important. The typicality of the Palermo Section is that it comes from a CNR Institute which, as I said, dealt specifically with the geochemistry of fluids: geochemistry is a subject transversal to all sciences, not only to the Earth Sciences, but also to those medical, biological or archaeological, to name a few. Our field activities and our infrastructures affect everything starting from Space, passing through the atmosphere and reaching the Earth and the depths of the sea. The management of all this, together with the activities more properly linked to scientific research and monitoring, allows us to 'interpret' the signals that nature provides us every day through fluids (but we could also say through 'everything that moves' ) in Space, on Earth and in the sea.
This knowledge, in addition to being to everyone's advantage, also has important repercussions in volcanic monitoring and surveillance activities: in fact, it allows us to be able to interpret the phenomena that underlie the increase in volcanic activity, providing fundamental information for risk management by the Civil Protection.
What was, in these years as Director, the most important professional episode that you would like to tell?
More than an episode, I'd like to tell a cascading series of events born out of a way of being, a way of dealing with problems. I begin by saying that in the last 30 years I have also and above all dealt with geochemistry in the marine environment. When there was the submarine explosion of Panarea, in November 2002, the Civil Protection came to pick me up directly at home with a helicopter: I even had a hand in a plaster cast due to a fall inside the crater of Vulcano. I remember that morning they asked me very simply: "What happened?". I looked at them and, just as simply, I replied: "What do I know!", "Why, you're the one who knows everything about Panarea!", "Yup, perhaps, but I've never seen such a thing before". Here, at that moment and from that exchange of jokes, the need arose to give an answer to a purely scientific problem which, however, was also having a heavy impact on the civil protection system. In fact, if that explosion hadn't occurred in the fall but in the height of the tourist season, it would most likely have been a tragedy. It was therefore necessary to try to understand and interpret those signals of nature of which we had only a few clues that were offered to us precisely by the fluids. This work therefore began in 2002 and over time has seen us develop a whole series of systems for continuous data acquisition, such as submarine observatories, for which we have started collaborating with the European EMSO infrastructure: the result, years later, has been that Panarea - unique of its kind in the Mediterranean, but probably also in the rest of the world - has become a center of attraction for many national and international research groups, but also for dissemination. Just think that numerous documentaries have been produced on this island, the last of which will be presented in Rome on 3 July as part of the SalinaDocFest. Even UNESCO for the Ocean Decade has taken an interest in these activities, sending - just a few weeks ago - one of its crews to make a film to be presented to the European Community.
The professionally significant episode for me is therefore this, having managed to pass from the knowledge of natural processes, to the use of this knowledge for the protection of the environment and of man, up to the dissemination made through a cinematography of high level.
Are there any future projects regarding the Palermo Section that you would like to anticipate?
The Palermo Section is currently also involved in our country's renewed interest in geothermal energy which, in consideration of the current contingencies, is moving towards the search for alternative energy sources. I played the role of project manager by looking at scientific research and innovative technologies, through actions of which I am proud. I believe that among the most significant are the construction of physical institutional headquarters (the three-storey building in Palermo and the INGV operational headquarters in Milazzo, the new CED room in Palermo), together with the strengthening of infrastructure for research and communication. What has been achieved with the help and support of Section colleagues has certainly strengthened INGV's identity in the area and I believe it is the basis on which to continue to build and consolidate the cultural identity of the INGV headquarters in Palermo.