Sustainability after the Thermal Energy Supply in Emergency Situations: The Case Study of Abruzzi Earthquake (Italy)

Recent natural and human-induced emergencies have highlighted the vulnerability of the built environment. In order to immediately answer to people’s needs while managing an emergency, any intervention should be more proactive and take into account renewable technologies that can be applied in anemergency situation. Very few examples of renewable energy systems in emergency situations are presented in the literature and this gap needs to be filled. This paper presents the results of a project on Storage Integrated Solar Thermal Collectors, specifically studied for this kind of situations, carried out during the post-emergency and rehabilitation phases, after the earthquake in Abruzzi (2009). The overall objective of the project was to promote the advance and innovation of sustainable energy systems for the participatory use of renewable sources in post-emergency and rehabilitation phases. To raise the awareness and study the impact on social perception of renewable energy use, a special program was launched by CIRPS (Inter University Research Center on Sustainable Development of ―Sapienza‖ University of Rome) along with L’Aquila municipality within the local population, just a few days after the earthquake. A ―learning by doing‖ methodology was applied to carry out a participatory project, involving the local population and civil society organizations. Conclusions about the analysis of the project outcomes are presented and a set of measures aiming at increasing the renewable energy rates of displaced camps and rehabilitation phase are finally proposed. OPEN ACCESS Sustainability 2013, 5 3514