Socio-economic local effects of extreme windstorms in Europe: the case of Vaia, in Italy

The climate change related issues are involving a broad variety of complex topics: this work aims at focusing in particular on the consequences of extreme climatic events, drawing the attention especially towards the analysis of windstorms affecting European natural and human systems and how their effects are managed at institutional, economic and societal level. The urgency of this analysis and the need of shading light on such complex and little explored topics takes its move from a recent heavy windstorm known as Vaia, which in October 2018 hardly hit southern Alps and especially whole North-East of Italy, destroying more than 5.8 million cubic meters of wood, largely devastating the alpine ecosystem. Within the last thirty years, Europe has faced the occurrence of several extreme windstorms, but not much it is known about post-event management and how their effects influence the institutional, economic and social systems of the hit areas. The broad aim of this research work is attempting to answer such key questions, by providing a literature review concerning some of the extreme phenomena that hit Europe during the last three decades and by analysing and comparing the methodologies and resources offered by the management approaches applied for the different windstorm examined.