The Calp City Council, through the Department of the Environment, and the Institute of Water and Environmental Sciences of the University of Alicante have signed a collaboration agreement by which the Calp council will participate in the Aquasoc R&D project ("Tools for the prevention and management of the social impacts of flooding in coastal areas") within the framework of the State Plan for Scientific Research (Ministry of Science and Innovation).
The main objective of the AQUASOC project is to identify the social impacts resulting from flooding episodes, as well as to establish the social capacities necessary to deal with this type of natural disaster.
Based on the results obtained in the research process, an open-access software tool is designed that allows key actors, such as the technical and political staff of the Calp City Council, to identify priority areas of action for the prevention and mitigation of social impacts of flooding.
The validation and transfer phase of the knowledge obtained will soon begin, with a series of meetings being organised where the results will be presented and guidance on the use of the AQUASOC tool will be offered.
The project is led by the team of professors from the University of Alicante Guadalupe Ortiz and Antonio Aledo. With a duration of three years and funding from the Ministry of Science and Innovation of €101.640,00, this project will address the analysis of adaptive capacities and social impacts in the face of flood disasters in three Spanish case studies (Tenerife, Huelva and Alicante) and two international ones (Louisiana and Recife).