Telling the story of environmental fragility: techniques for investigating problems and solutions in at-risk areas

This workshop focuses on the concept of “territorial fragility,” understood not only as geophysical or environmental vulnerability, but also as social, economic, and institutional weakness that leaves certain areas particularly exposed to risks and less able to prevent, respond, or rebuild. The aim is to provide journalists with concrete tools to report on these fragilities accurately, using data as well as systematically collected information from the territories themselves. Participants will be shown how to use major data sources in practice: from geospatial databases (Copernicus and others) to the national environmental data geoportal managed by ISPRA, from climate data (CMCC) and agricultural datasets to various socio-economic sources and regional or municipal open-data platforms. The workshop will address how to interpret and verify data, integrating them with field observations and different methods of listening to and gathering information from local communities. Through a series of case studies, we will explore the concrete use of such data to report on extreme events such as floods and landslides, as well as long-term phenomena like depopulation of inland areas or industrial pollution. We will reflect on how journalism can cover landslides in the Apennines, coastal subsidence, fragile engineering infrastructures, agricultural desertification, and major cases of industrial contamination with profound impacts on health and the environment—often worsened by systematic cover-ups, negligence, or disregard by public and private actors, as in the case of PFAS in Veneto or the failure to remediate SIN, the national priority contaminated sites. Finally, we will consider how to use data not only to document risks, but also to highlight potential solutions—ranging from risk mitigation measures to full adaptation systems, for example in response to extreme weather events or chronic drought.