INGV is grateful to the Arma dei Carabinieri who will give us hospitality to install new seismic stations in their barracks. We have formalized the birth of a Monitoring Center of the Aeolian Islands, aimed at more effective coordination for the study and surveillance of active volcanoes in the Tyrrhenian Sea.
It is useless and above all wrong to forget the risks because earthquakes will return, eruptions as well: on average at least 20 disastrous seismic events hit Italy every century. We have to ask ourselves if we are doing enough to be prepared for the next emergencies. Are we studying and monitoring these phenomena adequately? I sincerely believe that we should be able to do more, but it also depends on how well we know how to communicate to citizens the importance of investing in research and prevention.
Collecting Earth data is a bit like preparing bricks, but a large pile of bricks does not make a nice building, there is a need for an architect, there is a need for a research project and a physical model that explains the phenomenon, essentially the ability to interpret and understand nature.
As natural resources we have nothing more precious than water and air: by virtue of a collaboration with ISPRA and the regional ARPA, and I thank the President Stefano Laporta for this, we are creating a national hydrogeochemical monitoring network of the groundwater aquifers and springs to detect not only the chemical quality of the water, but also its variations in temperature, depth and flow over time, both in terms of reserves, but also as possible precursors of volcanic and seismic events. In addition to mineral reserves for industry and protection from lethal gases such as radon, we are studying how to create geothermal plants and closed-cycle heat pumps: one project would be, for example, to create geothermal energy and with this desalinate water navy with the reverse osmosis technique, starting from the Aeolian Islands, where the cost of water transported by tankers is always very high.
Understanding how the energy that is unleashed in an earthquake accumulates over the centuries is one of the inevitable and dutiful ambitions of every researcher in this field. The same goes for the dynamics of volcanoes: knowing the chemical composition of magmas, their temperatures and viscosities, the gas content: all parameters that determine the type and timing of eruptions.
Risks and natural resources: these are our objectives, with the ambition of becoming the center of gravity for a European Geological Survey, because in a federation of states joys and sorrows must be shared, like in a family, similarly to the organization in the United States where the American Geological Survey – USGS, is a fundamental research center and the Government reference for natural risks and resources.
INGV is home to two European Eric infrastructures, EMSO for marine areas and EPOS for solid earth, which can represent the glue to start this process of European institution.
Yes, Europe can also be born from this, such as sharing the theme of large migrations, from the choice of a single military defence, to a knowledge policy capable of protecting the values and cultures of the individual European states to aim for a new common horizon, of the birth of a European welfare state, which contemplates a modern relationship with greater respect for nature, defense against risks and sustainable use of resources. Today it is possible, today we have to do it.
Thanks for the collaboration to Casa Italia and to its Head of Department Roberto Marino. Casa Italia represents a great opportunity for a new planning of our future living: buildings more resilient to natural risks and, at the same time, more sustainable from an energy point of view.
The Earth is our home. INGV studies our house, how it is made and how it works. Risks and natural resources are our keywords.
There is no phenomenon on Earth that is not due to a gradient, from temperature or pressure gradients, from electromagnetic gradients to socio-economic gradients. We need to know and, as far as possible, govern these gradients which are the engine of the world.
INGV proposes itself to the Miur for the dissemination at school level of the mechanisms that generate risks and of natural resources, because it is in the education of future citizens that a society prepared to face the future is created.
INGV has come out of a serious economic crisis and has largely solved the problem of job insecurity. Today INGV looks to the future: modernization of monitoring networks, European and international projects, improvement and expansion of the observation system, greater collaboration with the university. Development of research, from the free one of each individual researcher, to that of an institutional body: the three departments of the Environment, Earthquakes and Volcanoes are launching ambitious projects, aimed at studying climate change, the rise of the sea level in the Mediterranean, the structure of the earth's crust and mantle under Italy, of the preparation systems for strong earthquakes, of the pre-eruptive dynamics and of all the consequent scenarios for the ten active volcanoes in our nation.
INGV staff put their heart into their commitment to serving citizens, both during emergency phases and throughout the daily routine of maintaining the infrastructures, in carrying out their research, in building a knowledge society to understand how it is made and how the Earth works, to better enter into the depths of our nature, of our existence, to play a key role in political choices for a culture of prevention from natural risks.
Studying our planet is no less important than understanding the structure of the Universe or of neutrinos: an environmentalist culture and a resilient society must be based on a deep knowledge of the Earth's structure and its mechanisms, precisely to avoid disturbing some balances and making balanced choices for a development that we could try to define as equitable and sustainable.
The world of knowledge cannot have barriers, we must stimulate continuous osmosis between research institutions and universities, between public institutes and industry, at a national, European and international level. The world of research must have similar growth and career paths, such as to allow that mobility, which has become extremely rare in Italy, which is instead the rule in most of the more advanced nations.
As Josè Saramago says, we live in a physical space, but we are inhabited by the memory of our feelings, our places and the people we grew up with. We are our memory. Every citizen brings a wealth of experience that enriches a community. The growth of a nation necessarily takes place through cultural exchange: and I'm not just talking about greater interaction between universities and research institutions, of researchers in Italy from and to Europe, but of mobility and integration with the rest of the world, Africa including the Middle East and Asia. Science has no boundaries and genetic mixing helps create stronger generations: it also applies to culture. The ancient Romans knew it well, the North Americans practiced it successfully and now, in their widespread expansion, the Chinese too.
Precariousness is a phenomenon that must never repeat itself: we must close this page definitively and like INGV we have stabilized 3 personnel units in the last 276 years. There are still 43 so-called "paragraph 2" remaining and we hope that these researchers too will soon find the right place, but it is essential to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, starting a constant enrollment, with subsequent legitimate career progression expectations for all, since the current roles have been blocked for too many years.
We must create a path in which there is an initial preparatory and physiological phase during which the new generations of scientists, technicians and administrators are trained. Yes, because without prepared administrators the research machine won't work, but we also need to drastically streamline the procurement and procurement procedures immediately: last week I was discussing with the Scientific Director of the New Zealand Geological Survey and I asked him how many weeks or months they were used to buy an instrument, or a machine or a desk for the institute: he replied 'a few days at most'. But this dynamism is also present in the other European countries that surround us, France, Germany, Spain. The regulatory superstructure for administrative functioning is a harmful and useless trap because it does not stop any crimes, but paralyzes the system: it is a real national emergency which we must face because we all want to act in the utmost legality and with the certainty that our work, aimed at the good practices of research institutes, is carried out with the serenity necessary to be able to concentrate on the real objectives of a scientific institution: good research and good training, without having to be permanently distracted by a web of rules and taxes that literally make one lose the enthusiasm that animates anyone who works in the world of science, which is the social reason for our being here.
Thanks to all the colleagues who have made and continue to make INGV great.