Mapping Citizens' Knowledge and Perception. What Support for Flood Risk Planning? Some Tips from Brindisi Case Study.

Flood risk management strategies are of paramount importance in ensuring the safeguard of people and assets. It is now widely recognized the importance of defining adequate nonstructural measures in coping with flood risk to be implemented in urban planning tools. The importance of evaluating citizens’ knowledge and perception of risk represents a key factor in order to support the decision-making process of planning mitigation activities. However, attempts to map this information are still far from a complete formalization. In this study an integrated approach combining historical events news and survey-collected information about flood risk perception for the city of Brindisi (southern Italy) is described. Collected information has been analyzed and georeferenced in order to define and provide three different layers of maps, each highlighting a peculiar aspect of flood risk. The mutual analysis of these layers allows to detect interactions between different aspects of risk management and can constitute a precious source of information for implementing flood risk mitigation strategies in urban context.