Regione Toscana - Sector for Innovation and Research, Department of Economic Development

The Sector for Innovation and Research in the Tuscan regional government has an annual budget of around 45 million euro and a staff of 22 people. Since 2002 over 600 regional projects have been financed under various programmes and the sector has participated in 25 European projects, 6 as coordinator. The Regione Toscana is committed to developing a knowledge-based society and the Sector for Innovation and Research works towards this particularly through technology transfer, reinforcing partnerships between the main innovation actors.
The Sector for Innovation and Research is in charge of four measures on the regional SPD (Single Programming Document) which have financed projects since 2002 on the themes of: Financial Engineering, Innovation in SMEs, Industrial Research and the Information Society. The same sector has also been responsible for two Regional Programmes of Innovative Actions co-funded by DG REGIO of the European Commission (RPIA ITT Technological Innovation in Tuscany and RPIA VINCI – Virtual Enterprises and Organisations).
The Sector’s experience in European funded projects includes the 6th Framework Programme,  INTERREG IIIC and IIIB MEDOCC and ERIK, the European Regional Knowledge Based Innovation Network co-funded by DG REGIO. Particularly relevant to the environmental phenomena studies are: OSIRIS FP6-project, HYDRANET, GRINFOMED+MEDIFIRE, HYDOPTIMET e DESERTNET INTERREG IIIB-MEDOCC projects. The technical activities for these projects are principally developed by LaMMA: a  Regional Laboratory for Meteorology and Environmental Modelling. "Integration of climatic/socio-economic information with remote sensing data in order to elaborate indicators of sensitivity to desertification "

The aim of the pilot action of the Region Tuscany, carried out by the Biometeorology Institute of the Italian National Research Counsil (CNR-IBIMET), has been to evaluate the sensitivity to desertification in the territory of the Region by integrating climatic and socio-economic data with historical series of remote sensing data. The specific objectives of the action have been the following:1. Study and improvement of the methodologies for remote sensing land analysis (NOAA-AVHRR images) to evaluate the historic series of the vegetation index;2. Climatic study on the territory of Tuscany;3. Integration of the indicators determined by means of the NDVI and climatic analysis with socio-economic data in order to identify sensitive areas to desertification.Then a sensitivity carthography has been produced using the MEDALUS approach, where specific climatic and socio-economic aspects have been deepened.  High resolution remote sensing (Landsat TM) was used to obtain produce detailed analysis on the most sensitive areas (Grosseto Province), on the basis of NOAA-AVHRR data.

Contacts:

Simone Sorbi – Phone no.:0039 055 490555 - Fax: 0039 055 4382426 E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Lorenzo Genesio Phone no.: 0039 055 3033711 - Fax: 0039 055 308910 E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it - web site: http://www.ibimet.cnr.it/Case/desertnet/