Evaluating and Planning Green Infrastructure: A Strategic Perspective for Sustainability and Resilience
Author(s): Angioletta Voghera, Benedetta Giudice
More info: In the light of the current changing global scenarios, green infrastructure is obtaining increasing relevance in planning policies, especially due to its ecological, environmental and social components which contribute to pursuing sustainable and resilient planning and designing of cities and territories. The issue of green infrastructure is framed within the conceptual contexts of sustainability and resilience, which are described through the analysis of their common aspects and differences with a particular focus on planning elements. In particular, the paper uses two distinct case studies of green infrastructure as representative: the green infrastructure of the Region Languedoc-Roussillon in France and the one of the Province of Turin in Italy. The analysis of two case studies focuses on the evaluation process carried on about the social-ecological system and describes the methodologies and the social-ecological indicators used to define the green infrastructure network. We related these indicators to their possible contribution to the measurement of sustainability and resilience. The analysis of this relationship led us to outline some conclusive considerations on the complex role of the design of green infrastructure with reference to sustainability and resilience.
2019 | Journal Articles
Analysis of Human and Organizational Factors Related Accident Reports Based on Natural Language Processing
Author(s): Shuo Yang, Micaela Demichela, J.Geng, H. Tao
More info: Lacking data has always been a challenging problem for risk analysts on human and organizational factors (HOFs) since the theme comes to birth. Accident reports are an essential source of HOFs information, but they are often in the form of unstructured text, making it challenging to apply the number statistic method directly. The traditional manual coding of accident records could introduce uncertainties and inefficiencies, especially when a large number of records is available. Thanks to the development of the natural language processing (NLP) technique, some analysts have attempted to mine the text of accident reports (Single et al., 2020). A similar approach was adopted to highlight HOFs contributing to the accidents. The NLP and HOFs categories have then been introduced to obtain the critical structure of HOFs related accidents. Furthermore, the approach of text similarities calculation is applied to support the relationship analysis of performance influencing factors (PIF) based on the mining of data of the EU Major Accident Reporting System's (eMARS). In general terms, a framework is proposed to efficiently exploit the information contained in accident records to assess the HOFs elements better to be included in process risk assessment.
2022 | Journal Articles
Evaluation of LENI in a case study of a retirement home
Author(s): Guglielmina Mutani, Edoardo De Nicolò, Laura Blaso, Fumagalli S., Tundo A.
More info: This work aims to propose a case study for the calculation of the energy performance of lighting systems in a retirement home. The proposed methodology evaluates the energy consumption of lighting systems in the presence of daytime lighting and occupancy control strategies with the Lighting Energy Numerical Indicator (LENI). The effect of natural light, the LED sources, the external obstructions, as well as building orientation and shading systems, can influence the energy consumption of the lighting systems. The case study analysed was the “Brancaccio retirement home” located in Matera (Southern part of Italy). The results of this work refer to both annual and monthly energy consumptions, and underline how important it is to evaluate the amount of energy throughout the year in the presence of control systems, given the considerable monthly variation. Furthermore, the LED source is able to significantly reduce energy consumption compared to fluorescent lamps, and this energy saving can be further increased in the presence of control systems.
2022 | Conference Proceedings
Defining a social-ecological performance to prioritize compensatory actions for environmental regeneration. The experimentation of the environmental compensation plan
Author(s): Angioletta Voghera, Benedetta Giudice
More info: Performance-based planning (PBP) is an approach to define a flexible, strategic and site-based scenario for the improvement of the social-ecological quality of the territory. The paper provides an experimentation of environmental compensation within the Italian context that can be traced back to the performance-based planning approach. The experimentation proposed is the Environmental Compensation Plan (ECP) of the Stura di Lanzo River, where the involvement of local stakeholders, environmental evaluation, environmental planning and design have been linked together for the definition of specific renaturalisation and environmental regeneration actions within the context of the River Agreement (RA). The ECP and relative methodological framework are then proposed to select and design priority actions of environmental compensation in different territorial contexts. Finally, some indications to further enhancing ECP effectiveness following PBP approach have been reported.
2020 | Journal Articles
Categorical Multifactor Design to Evaluate Different Operative Parameters During the Bioremediation of Hydrocarbon-Polluted Soil in Early Experimental Stages
Author(s): David Javier Castro Rodriguez, Omar Gutiérrez Benitez, Enmanuel Casals Pérez, Micaela Demichela, Alberto Godio, Fulvia Chiampo
More info: Congresso Nazionale GRICU2022 : book of abstracts
2022 | Conference Proceedings
Territorial Resilience: Toward a Proactive Meaning for Spatial Planning
Author(s): Grazia Brunetta, Rosario Ceravolo, Carlo Alberto Barbieri, Alberto Borghini, Francesco de Carlo, Alfredo Mela, Silvia Beltramo, Andrea Longhi, Giulia De Lucia, Stefano Ferraris, Alessandro Pezzoli, Carlotta Quagliolo, Stefano Salata, Angioletta Voghera
More info: The international debate on resilience has grown around the ability of a community to prepare for and adapt to natural disasters, with a growing interest in holistically understanding complex systems. Although the concept of resilience has been investigated from different perspectives, the lack of understanding of its conceptual comprehensive aspects presents strong limitations for spatial planning and for the adoption of policies and programs for its measurement and achievement. In this paper, we refer to “territorial resilience” as an emerging concept capable of aiding the decision-making process of identifying vulnerabilities and improving the transformation of socio-ecological and technological systems (SETSs). Here, we explore the epistemology of resilience, reviewing the origins and the evolution of this term, providing evidence on how this conceptual umbrella is used by different disciplines to tackle problem-solving that arises from disaster management and command-control practices to augment the robustness. Assuming the SETSs paradigm, the seismic and structural engineering, social sciences and history, urban planning and climatology perspectives intersects providing different analytical levels of resilience, including vulnerability and patrimony from a community and cultural perspective. We conclude that territorial resilience surpasses the analytical barriers between different disciplines, providing a useful concept related to complex problem-solving phenomena for land use planning, opening a new research question: how can territorial resilience be measured, acknowledging different units and levels of analysis aiding decision-making in spatial plans and projects? In attempting to understand a resilient system, quantitative and qualitative measurements are crucial to supporting planning decisions.
2019 | Journal Articles