The present study suggests an innovative method that could be applied by local authorities to develop heritage interpretation plans aimed at promoting traditional rural buildings (TRBs) as built heritage attractions, while preserving their original features. Cultural heritage interpretation (CHI) methods and tools were used. They offer the advantage to create a kind of 'understanding' that would lead tourists and local communities to protect TRBs from inappropriate alterations and modifications that often occur when TRBs are reused also for tourism purposes.The proposed method was applied to TRBs located in an area of the South-Eastern Sicily (Italy).

Abstract:The study describes the planning strategy for a tourist itinerary in rural areas located in South-Eastern Sicily which aimed at promoting cultural rural heritage and diversifying the tourist offer. The planning of the tourist itinerary occurred within an appropriate heritage interpretation strategy as a working method which could facilitate the understanding and social use of the heritage sites located along the itinerary. The tourist itinerary combined significant territory potential such as traditional rural buildings and enogastronomy. It included a starting point; which is a heritage site and an already well known "tourist attraction", and several other tourist resources selected on the basis of the information derived from the analysis of the profile of the average visitor to the area. An interpretation center, which was located at the heritage site, and several interpretation media placed at each stopping point included in the itinerary supported the tourists during their trip. By promoting traditional rural buildings and enogastronomy, the tourist itinerary represents a significant opportunity for rural diversification and, therefore, can contribute to achieving sustainable socio-economic development of rural areas.

The need to investigate suitable alternatives to conventional fossil fuels has increased interest in several renewable energy sources, especially in widely available sources of biomass. This has made environmental and socio‐economic improvements possible. In recent years, biogas from biomass has increasingly been considered the most feasible alternative to energy from fossil fuel, as it allows both the possibility to reduce waste disposal treatment and the opportunity to produce green energy. Opuntia ficus‐indica (OFI) has been suggested as a possible biomass as it could represent a suitable resource for producing biomethane as a new frontier within the context of a circular economy. This study aims to define a methodology for evaluating the distribution of OFI biomass that is potentially available for biogas production by applying maximum entropy modeling in a case study of a province located in southern Italy. The geographic information system (GIS)‐based model that was developed made it possible to estimate the suitability of the species in the territory and to define specific indices at the municipal level by enabling the localization of the highest productive territorial areas. Municipalities were grouped into three different classes ranging from low to high potential ones. In future years, new municipalities could be part of the high‐potential group, due to global warming resulting from climate change. The results could be relevant to the intervention priorities established by the European Union related to the planning activities supported by the European Structural and Investment Funds within the Smart Specialization Strategy. In this regard, knowledge of the potential production and distribution of a species in a territory is highly valuable information for the quantification of the biomass potentially available for biogas production, prior to strategic planning for the improvement of the biogas sector. © 2021 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Nowadays, climate change is the environmental issue facing the world. To reach the 2030 European Union goals, recently, biogas production through anaerobic digestion has developed significantly, by using alternative biomass sources due to the competition between food and no-food products. In this regard, Opuntia ficus-indica (OFI) has been suggested as a suitable new biomass for producing biomethane within the context of circular economy. In this study, a predictive methodology was applied by combining the Nobel model of environmental productivity index (EPI) and geographic information system (GIS), with the aim of estimating OFI biomass amount, as well as biogas and electricity potential production. The GIS analyses allowed the identification of the most suitable territorial areas for producing biogas from OFI, and an estimation of electricity production. The achieved results are highly valuable information for strategic planning of biogas sector development and could be relevant to the intervention priorities established by the EU.