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Background: The success of vaccination campaigns against COVID-19 infection is vital for moving from a COVID-19 pandemic to an endemic scenario. We aimed to unravel the influence of the risk perception of epidemics along with individual and contextual factors on adherence to COVID-19 vaccination campaigns in Italy and Sweden. Methods: We compared the results of two nationwide surveys carried out in August 2021 across four domains of epidemic risk perception: perceived likelihood, perceived impact on the individual and perceived individual and authority knowledge. The roles of individual and contextual determinants were also explored. Results: The survey included 2144 participants in Sweden (52.3% women) and 2010 in Italy (52.6% women). In both countries, we found that trust in authorities was one of the main drivers of this process, with two-fold increased odds of being vaccinated. Being highly educated and having a higher relative income were associated with a higher adherence to the vaccination campaign (for relative income OR = 1.44, 95% CI 1.23–1.67 in Sweden and OR = 1.18, 95% CI 1.04–1.34 in Italy; for education OR = 1.90, 95% CI 1.30–2.77 in Sweden and OR = 1.47, 95% CI 1.09–1.97 in Italy), whereas a right and centre-right compared with a left and centre-left political orientation was negatively related to vaccination adherence (OR = 0.41, 95% CI 0.25–0.67 in Sweden and OR = 0.47, 95% CI 0.33–0.68 in Italy). Conclusions: Increasing trust in authorities, along with an equal global distribution of vaccine doses, can contribute to accelerating vaccination campaigns around the world and, in turn, to move towards an endemic scenario.

School closure has been a common response to COVID-19. Yet, its implementation has hardly ever been based on rigorous analysis of its costs and benefits. We aim to first illustrate the unintended consequences and side effects of school closure, and then discuss the policy and research implications. This commentary frames evidence from the most recent papers on the topic from a public-health epidemiology and disaster risk reduction perspective. In particular, we argue that the benefits of school closure in terms of reduced infection rates should be better compared with its costs in terms of both short- and long-term damage on the physical, mental, and social well-being of children and society at large.

Supplemental material, sj-docx-2-sjp-10.1177_14034948221099410 for COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in Sweden and Italy: The role of trust in authorities by Elena Raffetti, Elena Mondino and Giuliano Di Baldassarre in Scandinavian Journal of Public Health

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-sjp-10.1177_14034948221099410 for COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in Sweden and Italy: The role of trust in authorities by Elena Raffetti, Elena Mondino and Giuliano Di Baldassarre in Scandinavian Journal of Public Health

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-sjp-10.1177_14034948221099410 for COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in Sweden and Italy: The role of trust in authorities by Elena Raffetti, Elena Mondino and Giuliano Di Baldassarre in Scandinavian Journal of Public Health

Supplemental material, sj-docx-2-sjp-10.1177_14034948221099410 for COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in Sweden and Italy: The role of trust in authorities by Elena Raffetti, Elena Mondino and Giuliano Di Baldassarre in Scandinavian Journal of Public Health

In a rapidly changing world, what is today an unprecedented extreme may soon become the norm. As a result, extreme‐related disasters are expected to become more frequent and intense. This will have widespread socio‐economic consequences and affect the ability of different societal groups to recover from and adapt to rapidly changing environmental conditions. Therefore, there is the need to decipher the relation between genesis of unprecedented events, accumulation and distribution of risk, and recovery trajectories across different societal groups. Here, we develop an analytical approach to unravel the complexity of future extremes and multiscalar societal responses—from households to national governments and from immediate impacts to longer term recovery. This requires creating new forms of knowledge that integrate analyses of the past—that is, structural causes and political processes of risk accumulation and differentiated recovery trajectories—with plausible scenarios of future environmental extremes grounded in the event‐specific literature. We specifically seek to combine the physical characteristics of the extremes with examinations of how culture, politics, power, and policy visions shape societal responses to unprecedented events, and interpret the events as social‐environmental extremes. This new approach, at the nexus between social and natural sciences, has the concrete advantage of providing an impact‐focused vision of future social‐environmental risks, beyond what is achievable within conventional disciplinary boundaries. In this paper, we focus on extreme flooding events and the societal responses they elicit. However, our approach is flexible and applicable to a wide range of extreme events. We see it as the first building block of a new field of research, allowing for novel and integrated theoretical explanations and forecasting of social‐environmental extremes., Key Points We conceptualize unprecedented extremes as social‐environmental processes shaped by institutional, political, and economic changeAs social‐environmental extremes become more frequent, there is an urgency to unravel their genesis and the possible societal responsesThis approach is the first building block of a new field of research in social‐environmental extreme event forecasts

Lo studio propone una metodologia innovativa per la mappatura della pericolosità idraulica al fine di analizzare gli effetti indotti sul rischio alluvionale dalla presenza di una struttura idraulica che consente l’inondazione controllata al di fuori delle arginature maestre (lo sfioratore del Gallo, fiume Reno, Provincia di Ferrara). L’analisi è stata condotta costruendo due mappe della pericolosità idraulica: una prima che ipotizza l’utilizzo di un sistema arginale regolare e continuo, trascurando quindi la presenza dello sfioratore del Gallo, ed una seconda che considera la presenza dello sfioratore e la conseguente inondazione controllata di aree perifluviali. La mappatura della pericolosità idraulica è stata eseguita combinando i risultati ottenuti con la simulazione numerica di numerosi scenari di inondazione. Detti scenari sono stati simulati per mezzo di un modello idraulico bidimensionale agli elementi finiti.

Predicting floods and droughts is essential to inform the development of policy in water management, climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction. Yet, hydrological predictions are highly uncertain, while the frequency, severity and spatial distribution of extreme events are further complicated by the increasing impact of human activities on the water cycle. In this commentary, we argue that four main aspects characterizing the complexity of human‐water systems should be explicitly addressed: feedbacks, scales, tradeoffs and inequalities. We propose the integration of multiple research methods as a way to cope with complexity and develop policy‐relevant science.

Hydrol. Sci. J.-J. Sci. Hydrol.ISI Document Delivery No.: EB2CDTimes Cited: 0Cited Reference Count: 153Ceola, Serena Montanari, Alberto Krueger, Tobias Dyer, Fiona Kreibich, Heidi Westerberg, Ida Carr, Gemma Cudennec, Christophe Elshorbagy, Amin Savenije, Hubert Van der Zaag, Pieter Rosbjerg, Dan Aksoy, Hafzullah Viola, Francesco Petrucci, Guido MacLeod, Kit Croke, Barry Ganora, Daniele Hermans, Leon Polo, Maria J. Xu, Zongxue Borga, Marco Helmschrot, Jorg Toth, Elena Ranzi, Roberto Castellarin, Attilio Hurford, Anthony Brilly, Mitija Viglione, Alberto Bloeschl, Guenter Sivapalan, Murugesu Domeneghetti, Alessio Marinelli, Alberto Di Baldassarre, GiulianoPeople Programme (Marie Curie Actions) of the European Union [329762]; IRI THESys; German Excellence Initiative; EU [603587]IW acknowledges the support of the People Programme (Marie Curie Actions) of the European Union's 7th Framework Programme FP7/2007-2013/(grant agreement no. 329762). TK is funded, through IRI THESys, by the German Excellence Initiative. SC, AM, AC, and ET acknowledge financial support from the EU funded project SWITCHON (603587).Taylor & francis ltdAbingdon; We explore how to address the challenges of adaptation of water resources systems under changing conditions by supporting flexible, resilient and low-regret solutions, coupled with on-going monitoring and evaluation. This will require improved understanding of the linkages between biophysical and social aspects in order to better anticipate the possible future co-evolution of water systems and society. We also present a call to enhance the dialogue and foster the actions of governments, the international scientific community, research funding agencies and additional stakeholders in order to develop effective solutions to support water resources systems adaptation. Finally, we call the scientific community to a renewed and unified effort to deliver an innovative message to stakeholders. Water science is essential to resolve the water crisis, but the effectiveness of solutions depends, inter alia, on the capability of scientists to deliver a new, coherent and technical vision for the future development of water systems.