The Manises City Council will receive 9 million euros from the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER), according to the resolution of the EDIL DANA Plan call from the Ministry of Finance. This funding will enable the execution of the Integrated Action Plan (PAI), included within the Reconstruction Agenda, unanimously approved by the municipal council last February. The document proposes a new city model for flood risk, aiming to become a benchmark for other municipalities.
The municipal proposal involves designing an autonomous system for disaster prevention, alert, and response, based on scientific knowledge, urban planning, technological innovation, and citizen participation, adapted to the specific characteristics of Manises.
“"We didn't want to create an agenda to rebuild Manises as it was before the DANA, but to build a Manises better prepared for the next one. We have leveraged everything we learned from that emergency to design our own prevention and response tools."
The objective is for Manises to anticipate future floods, detect risks early, protect the population, and respond more quickly, strengthening municipal capacity and reducing vulnerability to torrential rain episodes. To achieve this, the City Council has promoted pioneering work involving municipal technical staff and researchers from the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV) and the University of Valencia (UV).
The project has included scientific and technical studies to accurately understand how water would behave in Manises during extreme rainfall events. Studies on sound and communication for alert systems, drone flights to analyze water flow paths and drainage points, and an analysis of the terrain and water's volumetric impact have been conducted.
All the knowledge gained has allowed for the design of preventive and palliative measures outlined in the PAI's report, supporting the project that has secured this significant European funding to realize the municipality's prevention and resilience model.
