Post Un-Lock. From Territorial Vulnerabilities to Local Resilience
Author(s): Grazia Brunetta, Patrizia Lombardi, Angioletta Voghera
More info: This open access book builds a framework that holds together numerous open issues in territorial planning: from the understanding of territorial, landscape, environmental and climatic dynamics to the analysis of local vulnerabilities, to the use of modern survey techniques to support planning. What is the role of urban and regional planning in achieving the sustainable development goals of our communities considering the major issues posed by the COVID-19 pandemic in urban planning? And how do these medium- and long-term objectives interact with the needs that the emergency has given rise to? Post Un-Lock—from territorial vulnerabilities to local resilience—aims to provide the reader with a useful key to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic can be seen as a catalyst for a restart based on the concepts of sustainability and resilience. In fact, the COVID-19 experience evidences the need to propose a planning system able to integrate multiple scales according to an interdisciplinary approach focused on in-depth knowledge of the territorial risks and vulnerabilities. Besides, with the contribution of the new technologies, it is able to rethink spaces on a neighbourhood scale, conceived as a "local resilience unit" that ensures the population high standards of safety, liveability, and accessibility to proximity services. In this view, planning is increasingly concerned about social aspects and the well-being of communities, supported by indicators and evaluation tools. With the proposal of the concept of local resilience unit, Post Un-Lock takes a step forward towards the definition of a new paradigm of local planning and a topic for urban regeneration.
2023 | Book Editing
Modal Identification of Structures with Interacting Diaphragms
Author(s): Rosario Ceravolo, Erica Lenticchia, Gaetano Miraglia, Valerio Olivia, Linda Scussolini
More info: "System identification proves in general to be very efficient in the extraction of modal parameters of a structure under ambient vibrations. However, great difficulties can arise in the case of structures composed of many connected bodies, whose mutual interaction may lead to a multitude of coupled modes. In the present work, a methodology to approach the identification of interconnected diaphragmatic structures, exploiting a simplified analytical model, is proposed. Specifically, a parametric analysis has been carried out on a numerical basis on the simplified model, i.e., a multiple spring–mass model. The results were then exploited to aid the identification of a significant case study, represented by the Pavilion V, designed by Riccardo Morandi as a hypogeum hall of the Turin Exhibition Center. The structure is indeed composed of three blocks separated by expansion joints, whose characteristics are unknown. As the main result, light was shed on the contribution of the stiffness of the joints to the global dynamic behavior of structures composed of interacting diaphragms, and, in particular, on the effectiveness of the joints of Pavilion V."
2022 | Journal Articles
Design and Modeling Renewable Energy Communities: A Case Study in Cagliari (Italy)
Author(s): Guglielmina Mutani, Yasemin Usta
More info: Renewable energy communities (RECs) are non-profit organizations made up of members who join to produce and exchange clean energy for sustainable development. This work analyzes different REC scenarios, considering energetic, economic, and environmental perspectives. The case study is a typical condominium of eight apartments with a low energy class in Cagliari (Italy). This study considers the condominium with different energy efficiency levels before and after retrofit interventions together with solar technologies to produce energy. Future scenarios include both the share of energy between the eight apartments within the condominium and a REC composed of two neighboring condominiums. At condominium scale, results showed better outcomes in aggregating the energy share from the PV generation into a single point of sharing (PoS). In the REC scenario with a neighboring building, and after retrofit interventions, the self-sufficiency index was increased by 26% with a decrease of 23% in GHG emissions, which shows the importance of having retrofitted and smart buildings boosting the renewable energy sources in achieving a more sustainable built environment. The methodology of this work with a new software can be a useful decision-making tool to test the effectiveness of RECs and it can be applied to building, neighborhood, or district scales.
2022 | Journal Articles
Ecosystem Service Assessment in Land Use Planning Decreasing Territorial Vulnerability. A Critical Exploration of Planning Problems Starting from the Land Take Regulation in Piedmont Region, Italy
Author(s): Ombretta Caldarice, Stefano Salata
More info: Ecosystem Services (ES), that are the benefits that the soil provides to communities, represents a new paradigm that supports the transition of urban planning towards the environmental approach.
The utilization of ES during decision-making phases is crucial to make an ex-ante evaluation of the environmental, and socioeconomic too, effects of land use changes. ES assessment supports the preliminary measurement of ecosystemic trends due by land use changes both biophysically and qualitatively. Nonetheless, even if the biophysical analysis of ES achieved optimal results, it has been less explored how to fill the gap between the theoretical evaluation of ES and its practical implementation for urban design solutions. The interest of ES at the international and academic stage is therefore high since one of the most prominent critics that come from the institutional debate is that ES assessment is practically weak and insufficient to provide an operational framework for an operative utilization in land use planning.
The manuscript, which is a research product of the project “Measuring Resilience” of the Responsible Risk Resilience Centre (R3C) of Politecnico di Torino, will consider the abovementioned issues analysing the recent Regional legislative framework of the Law 302/2018 “Norme urbanistiche e ambientali per il contenimento del consumo del suolo” in the Piedmont Region. The manuscript forwards a theoretical reflection on how the operational utilization of ES can be actively and practically used to support land use planning especially performing ecological compensation for new urbanizations.
In the methodological section, the General Land Use Plan of Moncalieri (PRG) will be evaluated testing the ecosystem performance of three ecosystem services (Habitat Quality, Carbon Sequestration, Water Yield) on each land use zone. The calculation forwards an assessment of the most common regulative soil ES in Moncalieri finding and homogeneous distribution in the whole city (Public and Private one). Results indicate that ES can be proactively used to increase the knowledge and the ecosystemic condition of the communities through their utilization for land use planning processes.
The utilization of ES during decision-making phases is crucial to make an ex-ante evaluation of the environmental, and socioeconomic too, effects of land use changes. ES assessment supports the preliminary measurement of ecosystemic trends due by land use changes both biophysically and qualitatively. Nonetheless, even if the biophysical analysis of ES achieved optimal results, it has been less explored how to fill the gap between the theoretical evaluation of ES and its practical implementation for urban design solutions. The interest of ES at the international and academic stage is therefore high since one of the most prominent critics that come from the institutional debate is that ES assessment is practically weak and insufficient to provide an operational framework for an operative utilization in land use planning.
The manuscript, which is a research product of the project “Measuring Resilience” of the Responsible Risk Resilience Centre (R3C) of Politecnico di Torino, will consider the abovementioned issues analysing the recent Regional legislative framework of the Law 302/2018 “Norme urbanistiche e ambientali per il contenimento del consumo del suolo” in the Piedmont Region. The manuscript forwards a theoretical reflection on how the operational utilization of ES can be actively and practically used to support land use planning especially performing ecological compensation for new urbanizations.
In the methodological section, the General Land Use Plan of Moncalieri (PRG) will be evaluated testing the ecosystem performance of three ecosystem services (Habitat Quality, Carbon Sequestration, Water Yield) on each land use zone. The calculation forwards an assessment of the most common regulative soil ES in Moncalieri finding and homogeneous distribution in the whole city (Public and Private one). Results indicate that ES can be proactively used to increase the knowledge and the ecosystemic condition of the communities through their utilization for land use planning processes.
2019 | Journal Articles
Resilient Safer Approach to cope the oily waste generation in industrial facilities: lessons learned from Cuban installations
Author(s): David Javier Castro Rodriguez, Omar Gutiérrez Benitez, José Poma Rodriguez, Dayana Ribassa Ribassa, Orlando Viera Ribot, Emanuel Caslas Perez, Fulvia Chiampo, Alberto Godio, Micaela Demichela
More info: Nowadays, huge quantities of oily wastewater and oily solid wastes are associated with different industrial activities, which not only may harm the environment and human health but also a performance worsening of the installation. The goal of this study was to establish a resilient approach to cope with oily waste generation in industrial facilities. Several lessons learned from Cuban installations studied separately for ten years in the municipality of Cienfuegos were the cornerstone for the model definition. The approach included the development of a novel methodology to address integrated features of loss prevention in the operation of petroleum transport, storage, process, handling, and use. This methodology was designed and improved using the principle of convergence to integrate engineering procedures, standards, technical and management tools. The results from the methodology implementation generated a list of findings translated into industrial failures modes, that can impact both environment and human health. Then, a set of general and specific causes associated including the incidence of the natural events were deployed in different orders. The environmental monitoring around the plants offered a significant sample of points that allowed the spatial representation of how hydrocarbon pollution constitutes a complex network of permanent stress rooted in the territory of Cienfuegos. Moreover, a package of inherently safer solutions was generated as primary prevention, integrating the waste management hierarchy concept. At last, this iterative approach generated a research project to develop a bioremediation technique for the treatment of oily sludge from maintenance operations, which can be neither eliminated for the inherently safer solutions nor disposed to the environment. The lessons learned from Cuban installations enabled the conception of this resilient approach, which represents a framework to improve industrial safety performances contributing to the release reduction of oily waste. In addition, it represents a contribution to increasing the awareness of industrial vulnerabilities in the territorial resilience analysis.
2020 | Journal Articles
Pianificare la post-carbon city per la resilienza dei territori
Author(s): Grazia Brunetta
More info: Negli ultimi decenni stiamo assistendo a scala planetaria ad una debole o pressoché nulla capacità di risposta dei territori agli eventi causati dalla dinamica sistemica in atto del cambiamento climatico. Gli effetti rilevanti del cambiamento climatico sono il prodotto della frammentazione degli ambienti naturali e della crescente vulnerabilità dei suoli, conseguenti alle intense e progressive dinamiche di urbanizzazione in atto. L’attuale modello di sviluppo - prioritariamente fondato sullo sfruttamento intensivo ed estensivo delle risorse naturali - è ancora oggi sostenuto da una dinamica di urbanizzazione in incremento a scala globale, fortemente dipendente da fonti energetiche fossili. Nonostante siano trascorsi trenta anni dalla Conferenza ONU di Rio de Janeiro (1992) che introdusse il concetto culturale di sviluppo sostenibile e portò alla condivisione internazionale della necessità di dare avvio a politiche per ridurre le emissioni di “gas serra”, il concetto di post-carbon city, ovvero di città a neutralità climatica, è relativamente recente nelle strategie internazionali.
2022 | Book Section