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Progressive urban density affects city centers especially and results in growing congestion, lack of parking spaces, and increasing environmental costs of transportation, causing increased air pollutant emissions and noise. These phenomena reduce the attractiveness of the city and result in a degradation of the quality of life for its residents. In light of these phenomena, there is a clear need for intelligent management of urban space using new technologies that would be complementary to existing intelligent transportation systems. Expanding information resources obtained from mobile cameras will have a positive impact on increasing the efficiency of transportation management and use of limited space in city centers. It will also have an impact on reducing external transport costs and increasing the quality of logistics services provided in the city. The main aim of the paper is to develop a concept of a transport management system in cities using mobile vision systems mounted on unmanned aerial vehicles. The model will concern the cases of lane occupation by freight vehicles and the analysis of parking spaces in the city in order to improve their management. The results of the developed model will contribute to the automation of the parking space management process and increase the efficiency of the use of city parking space resources.

The assessment of the ‘quality’ of built heritage is a complex transdisciplinary issue, which both public administrations and real estate developers need to carefully consider when making any interventions. Recent international climate regulations underline that currently around 75% of buildings in the EU are not energy efficient. In Italy, those inefficient buildings are more than 50 years old and, if subjected to retrofit interventions, risk being totally transformed and losing their historical value in favor of a more contemporary use. This work aimed to study the residential heritage of the second half of the 20th century in the real estate market and to understand if, how, and in what measure the building and architectonical qualities are recognized and monetized by buyers. The city of Turin was chosen as a study area, and residential building qualities were analyzed using two quality indicators to perform a GWR on market POIs. The results highlighted that housing historical qualities are not homogeneously recognized by the real estate market, in favor of green ones. This work can help both public and private bodies to identify which ‘invisible’ quality residential buildings are immediately exploitable for enhancement strategies, with more respectful retrofitting interventions and a modern protection policy.

Sustainable food supply has gained considerable consumer concern due to the high percentage of spoilage microorganisms. Food industries need to expand advanced technologies that can maintain the nutritive content of foods, enhance the bio-availability of bioactive compounds, provide environmental and economic sustainability, and fulfill consumers’ requirements of sensory characteristics. Heat treatment negatively affects food samples’ nutritional and sensory properties as bioactives are sensitive to high-temperature processing. The need arises for non-thermal processes to reduce food losses, and sustainable developments in preservation, nutritional security, and food safety are crucial parameters for the upcoming era. Non-thermal processes have been successfully approved because they increase food quality, reduce water utilization, decrease emissions, improve energy efficiency, assure clean labeling, and utilize by-products from waste food. These processes include pulsed electric field (PEF), sonication, high-pressure processing (HPP), cold plasma, and pulsed light. This review describes the use of HPP in various processes for sustainable food processing. The influence of this technique on microbial, physicochemical, and nutritional properties of foods for sustainable food supply is discussed. This approach also emphasizes the limitations of this emerging technique. HPP has been successfully analyzed to meet the global requirements. A limited global food source must have a balanced approach to the raw content, water, energy, and nutrient content. HPP showed positive results in reducing microbial spoilage and, at the same time, retains the nutritional value. HPP technology meets the essential requirements for sustainable and clean labeled food production. It requires limited resources to produce nutritionally suitable foods for consumers’ health.

In contemporary urban logistics, drones will become a preferred transportation mode for last-mile deliveries, as they have shown commercial potential and triple-bottom-line performance. Drones, in fact, address many challenges related to congestion and emissions and can streamline the last leg of the supply chain, while maintaining economic performance. Despite the common conviction that drones will reshape the future of deliveries, numerous hurdles prevent practical implementation of this futuristic vision. The sharing economy, referred to as a collaborative business model that foster sharing, exchanging and renting resources, could lead to operational improvements and enhance the cost control ability and the flexibility of companies using drones. For instance, the Amazon patent for drone beehives, which are fulfilment centers where drones can be restocked before flying out again for another delivery, could be established as a shared delivery systems where different freight carriers jointly deliver goods to customers. Only a few studies have addressed the problem of operating such facilities providing services to retail companies. In this paper, we formulate the problem as a deterministic location-routing model and derive its robust counterpart under the travel time uncertainty. To tackle the computational complexity of the model caused by the non-linear energy consumption rates in drone battery, we propose a tailored matheuristic combining variable neighborhood descent with a cut generation approach. The computational experiments show the efficiency of the solution approach especially compared to the Gurobi solver.

The Salcheto winery has undertaken a process of reduction of its primary energy consumption and the implementation of green energy technologies. They adopted solar photovoltaic, wood biomass, and geothermal energy sources. A horizontal ground source heat exchanger (GSHE) plant is used to cool a part of the pressed grapes and control the wine production temperature. The goal of this work was to investigate some technical issues of the plant and to increase the efficiency of the whole system. The first step was the evaluation of the actual operating conditions of the GSHE plant, by performing a thermal response test. The results allowed us to find the thermal diffusivity of 3.5 × 10−7 m2/s, and the calculation with the IGSHPA standard indicated a cooling performance of about 6 kW. A survey during the harvest highlighted a peak power of 6 kW. Therefore, to improve the plant, some modifications were proposed and analyzed. In the new layout, the geothermal plant serves the condenser of the refrigeration unit, allowing cooling of the all production lines, instead of only one. The peak power was evaluated as 32 kW, and the GSHE can fulfil this, up to 18 kW. For higher power, the evaporative tower will supply the remainder, covering a maximum of 45%. Furthermore, the refrigeration unit may cover the cooling requirements of the entire residential and office building, without other plant improvements.

Direct mineral carbonation (MC) is used to mitigate carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. This method has the great advantages of reducing the amount of industrial residues and creating valuable materials by incorporating CO2. Waste gypsum, industrial waste including flue gas desulfurization (FGD) gypsum (25.27–53.40 wt% of CaO), and phosphogypsum (30.50–39.06 wt% of CaO) can be used for direct MC (conversion rate up to 96%). Mineral carbonation converts waste gypsum into calcium carbonate (CaCO3), which can be recycled during desulfurization. Furthermore, ammonium sulfate ((NH4)2SO4), which is used as a fertilizer, can be prepared as a by-product when the carbonation reaction is performed using ammonia (NH3) as a base. In this study, recent progress in the carbonation kinetics and preparation of CaCO3 using FGD gypsum and phosphogypsum with NH3 was investigated. Temperature, CO2 partial pressure, CO2 flow rate, and NH3 concentration were reviewed as factors affecting carbonation kinetics and efficiency. The factors influencing the polymorphs of the prepared CaCO3 were also reviewed and summarized. A state-of-the-art bench-scale plant study was also proposed. In addition, economic feasibility was investigated based on a bench-scale study to analyze the future applicability of this technology.

Biogas is one of the most attractive renewable resources due to its ability to convert waste into energy. Biogas is produced during an anaerobic digestion process from different organic waste resources with a combination of mainly CH4 (~50 mol/mol), CO2 (~15 mol/mol), and some trace gasses. The percentage of these trace gases is related to operating conditions and feedstocks. Due to the impurities of the trace gases, raw biogas has to be cleaned before use for many applications. Therefore, the cleaning, upgrading, and utilization of biogas has become an important topic that has been widely studied in recent years. In this review, raw biogas components are investigated in relation to feedstock resources. Then, using recent developments, it describes the cleaning methods that have been used to eliminate unwanted components in biogas. Additionally, the upgrading processes are systematically reviewed according to their technology, recovery range, and state of the art methods in this area, regarding obtaining biomethane from biogas. Furthermore, these upgrading methods have been comprehensively reviewed and compared with each other in terms of electricity consumption and methane losses. This comparison revealed that amine scrubbing is one the most promising methods in terms of methane losses and the energy demand of the system. In the section on biogas utilization, raw biogas and biomethane have been assessed with recently available data from the literature according to their usage areas and methods. It seems that biogas can be used as a biofuel to produce energy via CHP and fuel cells with high efficiency. Moreover, it is able to be utilized in an internal combustion engine which reduces exhaust emissions by using biofuels. Lastly, chemical production such as biomethanol, bioethanol, and higher alcohols are in the development stage for utilization of biogas and are discussed in depth. This review reveals that most biogas utilization approaches are in their early stages. The gaps that require further investigations in the field have been identified and highlighted for future research.