Special Session 17

Agricultural activities are subject to a plethora of risks of different kinds and nature. Properly handling such risks is extremely important given the potentially catastrophic impact at the economic level they may cause to the stakeholders. Naively, in this sector most of the risks are related to adverse meteorological and environmental conditions. To properly assess and mitigate the possible risk issues it is crucial to be able to monitor the relevant factors influencing their actual occurrence. This entails the access to a suitable set of measured data.

This special session deals with the problem of risk management in agriculture, focussing in particular on new methodologies that exploit measurements systems to assess and accordingly manage risk issues.

Research topics suitable for this special session include, but are not limited to:

• Measurements-driven methodology to mitigate the risk related to adverse weather events;
• Development of new insurance products (e.g. parametric or index based insurance solutions based on measurements);
• Measurements for risk mitigation in agriculture (e.g. measurements for: smart irrigation/fertirigation/pesticide treatments, smart solutions to fighting frost, etc.).

Alberto Garinei graduated in Mechanical Engineering at University of Perugia (Italy), where he was Researcher in Applied Mechanics until 2010. He has over 20 years of experience in applied research projects and is Full Professor in Mechanical and Thermal Measurements at Guglielmo Marconi University of Rome – IT (www.unimarconi.it). He is BOD member and CSO at Idea-Re S.r.l. (www.idea-re.eu). He is in the Italian Ministry of Economic Development registers of Qualified Managers for Technological Innovation and of Technological Innovation Experts. His main research activities comprise measurement techniques, sensors and devices for mechanical and thermal measurements, decision support systems for smart city, smart land and smart agriculture.

Dr. Simone Severini is professor in agricultural economics and policy at the University of Tuscia, Viterbo (Italy), delegate of the Rector for international relations and president of the Italian Association of Agricultural and Applied Economics (AIEAA). He has extensively worked in the field of policy analysis and evaluation assessing the impact at farm level of measures such as direct payments, agri-environmental schemes, and risk management policies. He is working on farm risk management as well as on the resilience and sustainability of farming systems. He coordinates a national PRIN project named: “Towards a holistic approach to sustainable risk management in agriculture”.