Istat publishes today the new Municipal Fragility Index (MFI) on the IstatData platform. The concept of municipal fragility implies the exposure of a territory to risks of natural and anthropic origin and to critical conditions linked to the main socio-demographic characteristic of the population and of the economic-productive system.
MFI is a composite index designed to identify areas that are most exposed to certain risk factors and to facilitate the territorial analysis of the phenomenon in a time series.
The composite index is a combination of twelve elementary indicators that describe the main dimensions (territorial, environmental and socio-economic) of municipal fragility.
The methodology used, the Mazziotta-Pareto Index, was designed and implemented by Istat for the synthesis of Equitable and Sustainable Wellbeing (BES).
The index was calculated for the years 2018 and 2019 and it will soon be published for 2021 as well. The methodology assigns to each municipality a measure of the index comparable in a historical series and between territories, using as a reference parameter the value for Italy in 2018, set equal to 100. The values of the MFI, expressed in deciles (where the highest is the most fragile) and referred to the municipal geography effective on 31 December, 2021, allow to identify the most fragile municipalities according to the conceptual framework adopted.
The continuous use of administrative sources to support the construction of statistical registers, the Permanent Population and Housing Census and multi-source data processing will allow to update the composite index on a yearly basis. This will result in an increasingly efficient and timely measure of municipal fragility.
Data can be browsed on the IstatData website (available in Italian and English), by clicking on Data and selecting the category “Territorial features” and “Municipal Fragility Index”. This offers pre-set views of municipalities and allows users considerable flexibility, including the creation of graphs and maps. Furthermore, it is possible to directly access the dashboard Data summary, that summarizes indicators, including a set of graphs and tables, which can also be modeled according to the themes and territories of interest.
All individual indicators are provided with explanatory metadata (descriptions, unit measurements, sources, formulas) and a methodological note that describe how the composite index is defined.