• Energy Research
• Closed Access close
• Embargo close
• IT close
• CA close
• CN close
• English close

The Soutpansberg Transect investigates the abundance and diversity of ants and spiders along an altitudinal gradient in the Western Soutpansberg Mountains, South Africa. It has a north-south orientation over the mountain and is a long term project initiated in 2009. Data collection is carried out in intervals that suit the data logger capacity. To study the diversity patterns in ants and other invertebrate groups across the spatial transect over a long-term period and the climate the invertebrates.

This paper focuses on binomial mobility-sustainability. Particular attention is paid to pedal mobility and to the fact that cycle transport ia a mean for a correct use of space. The work analyzes the route taken by Apulia Region, that conseiders cycle mobility as palnning and programming instrument, trasversally linked several filed.

In Sardinia (Italy), the highest frequency of extreme events is recorded in the Central-East area (3-4 events per year). The presence of high and steep mountains near the sea on the central and south-eastern coast, causes an East- West precipitation gradient in autumn especially, due to hot and moist currents coming from Africa. Soil structure and utilization make this area highly vulnerable to flash flooding and landslides. The specific purpose of this work is to provide a description of the heavy rainfall phenomenon on a statistical basis. The analysis mainly focuses on i) the existence of trends in heavy rainfall and ii) the characterization of the distribution of extreme events. First, to study possible trends in extreme events a few indices have been analyzed by the linear regression test. The analysis has been carried out at annual and seasonal scales. Then, extreme values analysis has been carried out by fitting a Generalized Pareto Distribution (GPD) to the data. As far as trends are concerned, different results are obtained at the two temporal scales: significant trends are obtained at the seasonal scale which are masked at the annual scale. By combining trend analysis and GPD analysis, the vulnerability of the study area to the occurrence of heavy rainfall has been characterized. Therefore, this work might support the improvement of land use planning and the application of suitable prevention systems. Future work will consider the extension of the analysis to all Sardinia and the application of statistical methods taking into account the spatial correlation of extreme events.

The present study deals with the use of renewable energy sources (RES) for biofuel production in addition to the power derived from hydroelectric and heat produced by district heating plants. It follows and integrates the main aim to reduce the use of fossil fuels in the considered study area according to the Directive Europe 2020. The possibility to address animal manure and other local biomass to the biogas yield with subsequent upgrading to biomethane was investigated, starting from the production up to the end use. The proposed solution implies the realization of one centralized biogas plant coupled with the upgrading section and one filling station. Details were deepen in order to improve the economic sustainability of the plant, the direct involvement of farmers in the management company and the acceptance level from the residents. Proceedings of the 19th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 6-10 June 2011, Berlin, Germany, pp. 2099-2101

An approach to sustainable intervention on historic buildings is proposed and applied to a case of study, the Church of Santa Maria in Villa in Palestrina. The building presents different forms of degradation including a large amount of moisture in the masonry, widespread salt efflorescence, but above all, floor surface dew. Methodology involves the use of on-site ambient measurements and dynamic simulation to better understand the microclimatic phenomena causing degradation. After a careful historical investigation, an environmental monitoring campaign was carried on, from June 2015 to January 2016 and data analysis was conducted according to European standards for cultural heritage preservation. Dynamic simulation was applied considering heat and moisture transfer through the church envelope. Possible presence of liquid water in the walls did not allow to fully calibrate the simulation model but the investigation was useful to confirm observations. Some interventions have been proposed based on the survey carried on.

The need of measures capable of representing the performance of a territory is often met through the use of indicator systems. Such tools, unlike others such as accounting systems, provide information about economic, socio-demographic and environmental phenomena more quickly; this, jointly with their ease of reading, led to their dramatic development within the field of territorial analysis too. However, this resulted in an overproduction of indicators representative of the various phenomena, to the point that the end user, facing an information overflow, has often difficulty in assessing the aspect of interest. In the presence of complex phenomena, characterised by many dimensions, the problem of indicators’ mass is even greater. Hence the need of aggregate measures (composite indexes) built by synthesis procedures applied to indicators, in order to simplify the evaluation of the phenomenon described by the indicators. Basic and composite indexes are often treated in literature as two alternative ways of providing relevant information on a phenomenon. The goal of this note is rather to illustrate the “information gain” resulting from their combined use. The methodology that achieves this gain is the SEA/TIA procedure included in STeMA (Prezioso, 2006b). The application context is that of spatial territorial analysis, with particular reference to all Italian provinces. For these provinces we intend to assess competitiveness in sustainability as already experienced in the ESPON project 3.3 “Territorial Dimension of the Lisbon-Gothenburg Strategy” (Prezioso, 2006b). “Information gain” is to highlight the possibility of regionalising the possible actions of economic policy in light of the Lisbon-Gothenburg objectives, its effects and impacts on basic indicators, leading to a rereading of such indicators and a redefinition of the composite index to be territorialised, starting from a review of the statistical method used.