Urban Plan and Water Infrastructures Planning: A Methodology Based on Spatial ANP

Abstract

Cities are exploding, occupying rural territory in dispersed and fragmented ways. A consequence of this phenomenon is that the demand for utilities includes more and more extensive territories. Among them, fulfilling the demand for services related to integrated water service presents many difficulties. The economic costs needed to meet service demand and the environmental costs associated with its non-fulfilment are inversely proportional to the population needing service in rural areas, since that population is distributed across a low-density gradient. Infrastructure planning, within the area of competence, generally follows a policy of economic sustainability, fixing a service coverage threshold in terms of a "sufficient" concentration of population and economic activity (91/271/CEE). This threshold, homogenous within the territorial limits of a water infrastructure plan, creates uncertainty in the planning of investments, which are not sized on the actual, appropriately spatialized, demand for service. Careful prediction of the location of infrastructure investments would guarantee not only economic savings but also reduce the environmental costs generated by the lack of utilities. Therefore, is necessary to create a link between water infrastructure planning and urban planning, which is responsible for the future spatial distribution of service demand. In this study, the relationships between the instruments of regulation and planning are compared by a multi-criteria spatial analysis network (analytic network process (ANP)). This method, tested on a sample of a city in southern Italy, allows us to optimize the design and location of the investment needed to meet the service criteria, looking at the actual efficiency of the networks. The result of this application is a suitability map that allows us to validate the criteria for defining urban transformations.

A Citizen-Centric Approach for the Improvement of Territorial Services Management

“…The system provides a process for acquiring, analyzing and visualizing large quantities of data. Specifically, the proposed methodology is based on the schematization of the decision-making process [24,25] and consists of three macro-phases ( Figure 2). Macrophase 1 corresponds to the intelligence phase, that is, the information collection phase where the target problem is identified.…”

“…The system provides a process for acquiring, analyzing and visualizing large quantities of data. Specifically, the proposed methodology is based on the schematization of the decision-making process [24,25] and consists of three macro-phases ( Figure 2). A preliminary version of SAFE was described in [23] where the primary goal of the project has been to follow the trend of the current research and identify hybrid solutions that let citizens and experts work together to collect and redistribute the information, once properly processed.…”

Applying the Systems Approach to Decompose the SuDS Decision-Making Process for Appropriate Hydrologic Model Selection

“…The Analytical Network Process (ANP), first proposed by Saaty [42], is a measurement theory based on multiple criteria that is used to derive relative priority scales of absolute numbers from a series of individual judgments that also belong to a fundamental scale of absolute numbers. These judgments represent the relative influence of each of two elements with respect to an underlying control criterion in a pairwise comparison process.…”

“…The software produces the limit matrix, which is the long-run or limit priority of influence of each element on every other element. More specifically, the weighted matrix is raised in a high power in order for the limit matrix to be identified [42]. The values, which represent the stakeholders' priorities, are then extracted from the limit matrix.…”

Landscape Features of Costal Waterfronts: Historical Aspects and Planning Issues

“…In particular, the cases mentioned are apparently similar but instead represent very different urban planning solutions. The continuous interest of urban planning which, in recent decades, has thoroughly examined the issues pertaining to the "waterfront renaissance" [4][5][6][7] concerns every waterfront regeneration processes. In the regeneration interventions, the recovery of the built compared to land consumption not only is a physical and environmental recovery but also acts on the local economy; on the quality of living; on the social integration of its inhabitants; and, not less important, on financial instruments related to feasibility, costs, and benefits.…”