Control of risks associated with floods in recent years has a central role in urban planning scientific research. This is related to the increased incidence of these phenomena whose the root cause was found in the greater frequency of extreme rainfall events as a result of climate change. In Italy the phenomenon became dramatic because of the numerous human casualties that occur each year. Without prejudice to the need for interventions that effectively act on climate change, there is a need to provide interventions to mitigate the consequences in the short-term. The Department of Urban Planning at Naples University has conducted a thorough research on the case, objectively verifying the impact that human activity has on the dramatic consequences of rainfall events, also highlighting the lack of efficiency of the traditional mitigation measures based on the construction of huge detention basins dug in the ground. This is due to three main reasons: such interventions require financial investments that local communities often do not have; the creation of detention basins cause the removal of large quantities of soil for agricultural use; the continuous increase in impervious surfaces due to urbanization implies the need to cope with the masses of water ever more impressive and therefore the dry ponds already created quickly become insufficient. The research proposes some interventions and best practices that, if adopted, can radically reduce the impact of extreme rainfall on public safety, enabling an efficient participation of private capital in investments through the use of leverage financial and fiscal incentives.
The growing awareness of the danger of extreme weather phenomena highlights the inadequacy of current cities and the increase in their level of vulnerability concerning the impacts resulting from climate change. The theme of design to combat climate impacts requires the development of knowledge and process models capable of managing the complexity of the information necessary to direct a climate-proof transformation of the urban systems. The research made it possible to develop a methodology based on the exchange of data between GIS-based ICT tools and for parametric design, to analyze the microclimatic and performance behavior of recurrent types of urban open spaces in Italian cities, characterized by different climatic conditions, through generic urban patterns, homogeneous in terms of building density and morphology. The goal achieved was to define the critical aspects of urban open spaces with the performance offered in response to the phenomenon of heatwaves, to verify and measure the performance effectiveness of climate-proof intervention categories, to transfer these results in the form of database, hazard maps, and potential levels of adaptation, and to define guidelines for the climate-oriented project. The transfer of the project data took place through a decision support webGIS platform (SDSS).
Waste management is an issue where several technical, technological but also social and cultural factors contribute to make it complex, while the concentration of waste production in big cities mainly gives it an urban and metropolitan dimension. Remarkable difficulties can be found in the scarce motivation of the citizens to actively participate in the process of trash separation and collection as well as in the dislike they feel towards the systems and facilities dedicated to waste processing. This paper reports on research in this subject carried out at the University of Naples thanks to a scientific cooperation agreement with the Dutch multinational company Còrio. The verified thesis showed the existence of a close relationship between direct and tangible motivations and the users' attitude to trash separation. The results were significantly above those expected to be obtained through coercive methods or, even worse, through the promise of an abstract general benefit. The above-mentioned research also brought the implementation of a prototype made up of a playful but at the same time educational urban vegetable garden of around 800 sq. m with a virtuous management system of organic household waste. The experiment, named Orto in Campania, showed the real effectiveness of the proposed solutions with a strong motivational value for the citizens' involvement but also the mutability of it both in well-established and in new urban areas. The success was so huge that this installation, intended as temporary, is still on course after more than five years.
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