Our opinions, kept separate from the facts.

A pothole nobody fixes. A street lamp that has been out for weeks. A broken pavement, a crumbling wall, dumped rubbish.

From today you can put them on the OpenCivTech map, so they stay visible to everyone.

What it's for

• Local transparency: it brings the area's problems together in a single public place, showing location, date added and resolution status.
• Lasting memory: a complaint at the bar is forgotten; a geolocated, dated point stays on record until it's fixed.

Why you need to register

To submit a report you need a free account (name and email). This filter is there only to prevent spam or false content.

• Privacy guaranteed: your name does not appear on the map (only the problem is visible) and your email address is not passed to third parties or used for advertising.
• Free to browse: you don't need to register to explore and follow the map.

How to use it in 4 steps

• Go to the dedicated platform.
• Log in or create an account in a minute.
• Tap the exact spot of the problem on the interactive map.
• Fill in a short title (e.g. "Pothole in via...") and a clear description, then press Send report.

What happens next

• Moderation: before publication, every report is checked by an editor to remove duplicates and spam (so it is not visible immediately).
• Status update: when the work is done, the report moves to "Resolved". The List view lets you filter and search all reports.

Important rules

• Emergencies: this tool does not replace emergency numbers. For immediate danger call 112, the local police or the Municipality.
• Other people's privacy: describe only the problem, not people (avoid names, number plates or private individuals' data, or the report won't be published).

We know Atri because we live here. Let's make the problems visible.

In 2013, speaking from a stage, I said something simple: Atri lacks hotels and we have many bed and breakfasts, but each works on its own and so they can't capture the big tourist flows. We need a network.

The idea was, and is, just one: a network of B&Bs working together, to attend trade fairs with a meaningful number of beds and bring groups to Atri, not scattered individual travellers. Because people who stay the night spend more than those who only visit. And since a new hotel is almost impossible, we start from the resources we already have.

13 years have passed. Words spoken from a stage carry weight, and I've decided to really give it a go.

Today I would add a shared showcase with rotating order, favouring no one. But it's an idea to discuss with the people who work in the sector every day.

Nothing is decided: it's an idea to build together.

• Do you run a B&B, a farm stay or a holiday home in Atri? Write I'M IN in the comments.
• Are you a guest, an association, an operator? Tell me what's needed to bring more people here and make them stay.
• Think it's a bad idea? Say so: I need that as much as a yes.

IMPORTANT: to leave me your contact details, use a private message, not the comments.

Friday evening you arrive in town. The stones of the old centre are still warm from the sun. You have dinner with a dish that has a touch of liquorice in it, and you realise the weekend has begun.

Saturday morning you walk on the Calanchi badlands with a guide, for about an hour. The pale clay opens into deep furrows, and under your feet grows a plant you wouldn't notice at first: Glycyrrhiza glabra. It is the root that gives Atri its most famous black. You stop, look at it, and for the first time understand where it comes from.

Saturday afternoon you walk into a room in the old centre. On screen, and in printed reproductions, the documents appear: a parchment from 1433 with the plant's old name, the Dominican friars who worked it, black-and-white photographs of men and women working in an Atri factory in the 1930s. Then a short video, eight or ten minutes long, shows how the root is processed. You are six hundred years later, and it feels like yesterday.

Sunday morning you go to the factory. Not a museum of still objects: a place where liquorice is still made. You see the heat, the movement, the hands at work. On set days, with the people who make it.

And at the end you stop by the shop. You taste, you choose, you take home a piece of Atri in a paper bag. It's not a souvenir: it's the same liquorice you saw being made.

How it would work

The liquorice museum wouldn't need a big building. It would be a trail spread over five stops: the root on the Calanchi, the documents, the processing, the factory, the shop. One ticket, one online booking.

It would cost little, because it uses places that already exist. The factory that still produces is the strong point: the museum doesn't preserve a finished past, it shows a product that is still made. It sits alongside a digital archive (the RIABITA project already plans one) and can be sold together with Atri's accommodation, as a two-night package with all the stops and a free product.

What is really needed

Something that has been missing so far: a date, a person in charge and a number of visitors to report.

And the actual museum?

The liquorice museum already exists on paper: it appears in the title of works funded with European money. What really happened is in the dossier linked below.

This is an OpenCivTech proposal, not an approved project. Costs are orders of magnitude to be checked with quotes. The people and businesses mentioned are hypotheses until there is a written agreement. The images in the video are AI-generated.

Would you come and do a trail like this? Tell us in the comments. And if you run accommodation in Atri, let us know if you want to join the network.

I tried to put together several public datasets and turn them into something anyone can look up on a map.

The result, in my view, deserves attention.

In the municipality of Atri about 2,255 hectares of land are mapped as landslide areas: about 25% of the municipal territory.

Out of about 400 km of roads analysed, 49 km cross areas mapped as landslides.

If we widen the view to a 50-metre strip around the roads, we get 111.9 km close to one of these areas.

But careful: this does NOT mean that 49 km of roads are sliding.

It means something much simpler: those roads cross land that the available maps have already classified as affected by landslide phenomena. Many of the recorded landslides may be old or dormant.

Which roads?

Among those with the most kilometres inside mapped areas:

• Borea San Domenico — 2.31 km
• SS553 — 1.68 km
• Via San Massimiliano Kolbe — 1.15 km
• Strada delle Terme — 1.12 km
• Strada Provinciale 30 — 1.05 km
• Via Fonte Canale — 0.81 km
• Strada Comunale Cagno — 0.81 km

And here comes the part I find most interesting.

And when it rains?

I've also added to the map a comparison between the rain of the last few hours and a scientific threshold used in studies of rainfall associated with triggering landslides in Abruzzo.

Put simply: the system checks how much rain has fallen in the last 3, 6, 12, 24, 48 and 72 hours and compares it with these thresholds.

At the moment recent rainfall is below the statistical thresholds we are using.

For example, the last 24 hours show 4.4 mm of rain, against a statistical threshold of about 25 mm.

Here too it's essential to understand the meaning: exceeding a threshold does not mean a landslide will happen. It only means that rain of that duration and intensity has been statistically associated with landslides in our region.

On the map you can look road by road

I split the roads into 100-metre sections and cross-checked several factors: recorded landslide areas, slope, badlands and erosion.

Sources include IFFI/ISPRA data, the Abruzzo Region's geomorphological maps, the Copernicus terrain model and OpenStreetMap.

One thing must be clear

This is a civic experiment based on public data.

It is not an alert system.

It does not predict landslides.

It does not say a road is dangerous.

For alerts and to know what to do, refer only to official communications from Civil Protection, the Municipality and AllarMeteo Abruzzo.

This tool tries to do something else: take public data that is hard to read and make it accessible to everyone.

And it can become more useful with the help of those who travel the area every day.

Have you seen subsidence, a landslide or a stretch of road that needs checking?

Report it with the location and, if possible, a photo.

It also serves a very practical purpose: finding out whether the map really matches what happens on the ground.

Open the map, zoom in on your area and see what it shows.

Public data exists. The point is to make it understandable and usable.