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Data on air quality collected by the regional network of fixed stations in the most urbanized areas of the Campania region in the south of Italy are examined. Two periods are considered: before and during the adoption of the main directives limiting human activities to fight the spread of SARS-CoV-2 infection. The first period is from the 5th of February to the 5th of March, and the second is from the 13th of March to the 13th of April. Meteorological conditions in the two periods were compared and significant differences were not observed. Therefore, the comparison of air quality data is feasible. During the second period, an intercontinental transport of particulate matter occurred. Data collected during this event (4 p.m. on the 30th of March to 4 p.m. on the 31st of March) were excluded from the analysis. The main reduction of pollutant concentration is observed for NO2 (−48% of the period average). PM10 shows a lower reduction (−17%). The PM2.5 average period concentration was quite constant, while the 98° percentile was reduced by −21%. Ozone shows, on the contrary, an increase in concentration due mainly to an increase in solar irradiation during the 2nd period, but also due to the decrease of NOx concentration. The reduction or the increase of pollutant concentration depends on the category of the station: background, industrial, residential, and traffic. In addition to air quality, the reduction of anthropogenic emissions is also studied. All the information available on the reduction of emissions from transport, industry, heating, and other main emissive sectors were collected. The results give useful insights for the development of air quality management policies that could be adopted when the sanitary emergency will end to guarantee the sustainable development of the Campania region.

During the first months of 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic has affected several countries all over the world, including Italy. To prevent the spread of the virus, governments instructed employers and self-employed workers to close their offices and work from home. Thus, the use of remote working increased during the pandemic and is expected to maintain high levels of application even after the emergency. Despite its benefits for both organizations and workers, remote working entails negative consequences, such as technostress. The present study had a double aim: to test the psychometric characteristics of the Italian translation of the brief version of the technostress creators scale and to apply the scale to investigate technostress during the Covid-19 emergency. The research involved 878 participants for the first study and 749 participants for the second one; they completed a self-report online questionnaire. Results confirmed the three-factor structure of the Italian technostress creators scale and highlighted positive relationships between workload, techno-stressors, work–family conflict and behavioural stress. The role of remote working conditions has been analysed as well. The study provided a useful tool for the investigation of technostress in the Italian context. Moreover, it provided indications for practice in the field of remote working and workers’ wellbeing.

The building sector is crucial in all of the possible net zero scenarios suggested for the European Union. In this area, the Italian situation is exemplary. Italy suffers from an aging and low-performance building stock and needs to increase its annual rate of energy retrofits in order to achieve its 2030 and 2050 targets. Even though since at least 2007, several different incentives schemes intended to stimulate energy-efficiency interventions have been in place, Italy has not been sufficiently able to promote deep retrofits. In 2020, in order to help the economy recover after the lockdowns that were introduced to face the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, the existing incentives were increased to up to 110% of investments for interventions that improved the energy class by at least two grades. This so-called “Superbonus” was also extended to the public social housing sector thanks to a credit assignment scheme. Given the results of this provisional phase, a possible policy roadmap for the energy renovation of the residential and educational building stock in Italy is presented in this paper through an analysis of data related to the implementation of current instruments in terms of number of interventions, investment needed, energy savings and evaluation of potential benefits and costs that can derive from an increase in the current deep-renovation rate. Through definition of a long-term renovation strategy, this paper illustrates how market barriers and other issues in instrument design can be tackled and how policymakers can help to develop a sustainable long-term roadmap for energy-efficient buildings. Beyond the residential sector, public buildings, particularly educational buildings, are taken into consideration as well, as they are places of collective use that represent the social values of fairness and sustainability and can therefore have an exemplary role for private initiatives.

In recent years, interest in the resilience and sustainability of supply chains has significantly increased. In fact, various events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, have highlighted the weakness of global and local supply chains. Further, people are giving increasing importance to concepts such as social well-being, human rights, environmental protection. The maximisation of shareholder value is no longer the only goal for companies. The main purpose of this paper is to answer the following question: is there a strategy to address agri-food supply chains disruptions while revitalising local economies and improving–at the same time–a number of sustainability-related aspects? To this aim, a simulation model is designed, then tested and validated through a supermarket supply chain case study. The results show that disruptions can be exploited to revitalise small local suppliers and simultaneously increase several sustainability indicators from a multi-capital perspective. Several managerial insights are also provided.

The monitoring data of a micrometeorological station in Lecce (Southern Italy, Puglia region, Salento Peninsula) were used with the aim of interpreting the variations in the groundwater level in a shallow aquifer as a function of hydrometeorological forcing. For this scope, the aridity index (AI) was calculated to evaluate the surface-water stress. Although the results indicated a moderate drought during the 2019–2020 hydrological year, a critical situation for the surface hydrological balance in the first quarter of 2020 did not occur. Therefore, the reduction in the groundwater level measured in April can be ascribed to the excessive domestic water consumption that occurred during the lockdown for COVID-19.

COVID-19 may increase the risk of heat-related symptoms during hot weather since vulnerable populations, including the elderly and those with neurological disabilities, must continue to self-isolate, often indoors. Within the chronic neurological patient population, indoor conditions in summer months present a hazard because of impaired and/or altered thermoregulation, including poor hydration status due to both autonomic and behavioral dysfunction(s). To address this increased risk, telemedicine protocols should include an assessment of the patient's environmental parameters, and when combined with physiological data from wearable devices, identify those with neurological diseases who are at higher risk of heat illness. Personalized medicine during times of self-isolation must be encouraged, and using smart technology in ambient assisted living solutions, including e-health to monitor physiological parameters are highly recommended, not only during extreme weather conditions but also during times of increased isolation and vulnerability.

AbstractThe theme is the urban re-qualification, applied in particular to the architectural heritage and the public space. The goal is the ongoing challenge of outlining a new perspective aimed at “common good” and sustainability. The instrument chosen is the “environmental technological design,” understood as a cultural, scientific, and social position, that is, as a position on the role of architecture. The contribution reiterates the urgency of restoring the transformative power of the design mission to the project, too often reduced to a set of technical compilation procedures. In the best cases, a position that is lost in the complication of procedures, in the extension of time, in the waste of economic and human resources. A crisis of the project as “anticipation” of progressive scenarios, precisely in the most acute, ever more serious phase, of the urgency of the reorganization of urban systems, with a view to environmental, social and economic sustainability. Not a recent urgency, today only brought to light, dramatically, by the reality of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Among the solutions, the design experimental research, well beyond the objective of flexibility, up to the notion of “functional indifference,” understood not as shapeless neutrality, but as the maximum functionality of spatial, architectural and urban quality.