Citizens' involvement in land management. The MAppERS project laboratory

The prevention of hydrogeological emergency and territorial management cannot cope only with technical and structural defence measures. A safety and sustainable management concerning cost-effective, environmental and social aspect has to consider a daily and continuous involvement of local communities. Risk knowledge and awareness of territory depict solutions of soft mitigation, transforming local inhabitants from vulnerable elements to actors participating of own security within shared territorial areas. Research Institute for Geo-Hydrological Protection, Italian National Research Council (CNR-IRPI) and Institute of International Sociology Gorizia (ISIG) arranged a DG ECHO financed project. MAppERS(1) (Mobile Applications for Emergency Response and Support) aims to involve citizens and CP volounteers within a complete smartphone app development cycle (design, testing, training and feedback). The expected output is a crowd-sourcing solution based on standardized data collected by human-sensors, like useful system to improve quality on prevention capacity within hydrogeological emergency phases. MAppERS embraces rescue services, local stakeholders agencies with own volounteers added to local trained citizens in pilot areas. Final end-users participate actively in the development cycle, to guarantee a self-based instrument dedicate to their useful requirement. They become mappers of territory as long-term target of community involvement within emergency prevention task. The paper shows methodologies to delineate participation of population in the development cycle as laboratory for future local-based experiences of territorial management.