Department of Excellence on Climate Transition (2023-2027)

DIATI has been confirmed “Department of Excellence” for the period 2023-2027 with a new project regarding climate transition, becoming the first department in Italy in Area 08.

The project climate_transition@polito (ct_@polito) is an extension of the previous project cliamte_change@polito, which was also funded by the Ministry of Education, University and Research with the resources for the Departments of Excellence for the five-year period 2018-2022.

Project climate_transition@polito

The constant environmental and socio-economical changes caused by climate change have pushed us towards the research of new solutions able to mitigate and prevent the global impact of this phenomenon.

The main goal of the project (ct_@polito) is to place our Department at the centre of the research of digital and technological solutions geared to meet the challenges and to take the opportunities offered by the climate transition.

ct@polito project’s resources will allow the upgrade of the initiatives developed by the previous project climate_change@polito increasing laboratories’ activity, strengthening the departmental IT infrastructure and putting in place an open science approach that will establish the creation of a public system designed to share data and create a living lab.

RESEARCH

The digital and technological strategies developed by ct@polito cover five macro-topics:

Climate risks: responding to territory and production activities’ fragility, especially in an urban setting;

Resilient agriculture: implementing solutions able to respond to climate forcings in agriculture from the perspective of sustainable intensification;

Mode of transport and low impact infrastructures: improving efficiency and decreasing the environmental impact in these sectors;

Strategic raw materials for the industry: promoting the implementation of sustainable exploration and production techniques, circular economy, re-use, substitution and decarbonisation;

Sustainable energy mix: increasing the energy production on local scale reducing the negative effects on the climate and rebalancing the supply and demand.

EDUCATION

ct@polito is committed on multiple fronts to improve the educational offer increasing the technological and digital skills for the Master’s Degree programme in Environment and Land Engineering, improving university’s policies to invite external professors and to upgrade Postgraduate School’s activities regarding the topic in question through scholarship provisions. Finally, research results dissemination actions will be carried out and public engagement strategies will be implemented.

 

IMPACT ON SOCIETY

Among the project’s expected results:

  1. Supporting local communities and infrastructures’ resilience
  2. Support systems for decisional processes
  3. Developing monitoring systems, early warnings and short-term forecasting
  4. High level of technological maturity (TRL) in the agricultural and industrial field
  5. Mode of transport optimisation solutions