Federico Amato

A SMAP Supervised Classification of Landsat Images for Urban Sprawl Evaluation

The negative impacts of land take on natural components and economic resources affect planning choices and territorial policies. The importance of land take monitoring, in Italy, has been only recently considered, but despite this awareness, in the great part of the country, effective monitoring and containment measures have not been started, yet. This research proposes a methodology to map and monitor land use changes. To this end, a time series from 1985–2010, based on the multi-temporal Landsat data Thematic Mapper (TM), has been analyzed in the Vulture Alto-Bradano area, a mountain zone of the Basilicata region (Southern Italy). Results confirm a double potentiality of using these data: on the one hand, the use of multi-temporal Landsat data allows going very back in time, producing accurate datasets that provide a phenomenon trend over time; on the other hand, these data can be considered a first experience of open data in the field of spatial information. The proposed methodology provides agencies, local authorities and practitioners with a valuable tool to implement monitoring actions. This represents the first step to pursue territorial governance methods based on sustainability, limiting the land take.

Using Spatiotemporal Analysis in Urban Sprawl Assessment and Prediction

The importance of soil resource protection is now universally recognized, but despite a lot of debates and principles enunciation, in the last decades the soil was consumed at a rate of 8 m2 per second. In this paper a simulation model has been proposed based on two methods: Joint information uncertainty and Weights of Evidence in order to analyse and predict new built-up areas. The proposed model has been applied to Pisticci Municipality in Basilicata region (Southern Italy). This area is a significant example, because of high landscape values and, at the same time, of a lot of developing pressure due to touristic activities along the coastal zone.

Fuzzy definition of Rural Urban Interface: An application based on land use change scenarios in Portugal

Abstract Land cover dynamics influence the spatio-temporal evolution of the Rural-Urban Interface (RUI). This represents the most prone area for human-caused forest fires ignitions in Mediterranean countries. Traditionally, RUI mapping is based on the measurement of the distances among specific land covers. This methodology suffers from the definition of pre-established fixed parameters. To avoid this arbitrariness, a new procedure based on Multilayer Perceptron and Fuzzy Set Theory is introduced in this paper. This allows to develop continuous non-categorical maps expressing the possibility of being part of this interface. Thus, an innovative way for assessing the uncertainty in identifying RUI is presented. The proposed methodology has been applied to the case study of Portugal, elaborating a future scenario for the RUI. The results show how the framework proposed in this paper is able to correctly identify the areas belonging to this interface, providing useful information for forest fires -prevention policies.

A Quantitative Prediction of Soil Consumption in Southern Italy

Landuse/cover evolution dynamic is a subject widely and thoroughly investigated, especially concerning consumption of natural and other lands, due to anthropogenic activities. This paper focuses on a region in southern Italy, where soil consumption is known to represent a urging matter of concern. However, although negative impacts of soil consumption are well known, to our knowledge there are no case studies presenting a precise quantitative measurement of the intensity of such phenomenon for the region of interest. This study aims at forecasting the development of urban settlements through the application of the cellular automata model SLEUTH; the first region to be investigated has been the Municipality of Altamura (Apulia region, Italy). This area has been used as a pilot case study to explore many difficulties and advantages in applying such a methodology to the whole southern Italian region. The final goal was to frame and populate an atlas of soil consumption in southern Italy, which intends to offer useful support to sustainable planning and policies.

Involving Citizens in the Reuse and Regeneration of Urban Peripheral Spaces

The issue of suburb regeneration is highly relevant today. Current urban planning approaches are mainly focused on large and permanent transformations. These solutions often do not take into account the great dynamism and rapid transformations of cities, making any intervention, in most cases, outdated even before its realisation. Nevertheless, these expensive interventions implemented by local government frequently tend to fail the regeneration of these public spaces. This chapter presents the experience of ‘Serpentone reload’, a workshop based on participatory reactivation of abandoned and underused spaces and buildings in the ‘Cocuzzo/Serpentone’ neighbourhood of Potenza in Basilicata, Italy. The workshop focussed particularly on the reuse of the ‘Ship’, an underground building completed in 2010 but never used because, since then, it has been perceived as an extraneous element, being the result of an imposition and not the outcome of shared choices. The aim of this chapter is to propose a methodology that will allow the reactivation of public spaces, the empowerment of communities and the increase in citizens’ interest in planning choices, pointing therefore alternative ways for urban governance and for local government urban policies. The results show that the involvement of people in urban planning and in Placemaking activities raises the level of social cohesion, generating both social benefits and quality of public spaces.

Citizens Participation in Improving Rural Communities Quality of Life

The concept of participation is very difficult to clearly define, because of the complex framework and the experimental nature of any participatory process. These processes are more difficult to implement in small and isolated communities because of the particularities social structure. I several cases technologies can help citizens in participating in these activities, but the result is strongly related to the predisposition of a communities to use theses ICT tools.

Serpentone Reload an Experience of Citizens Involvement in Regeneration of Peripheral Urban Spaces

Suburbs are often very contradictory places. Despite great part of urban population live there, these parts of cities are mostly considered as degradation places. The topic of suburbs regeneration is relevant today. Nevertheless, often expensive interventions implemented by local authorities fail to regenerate their public spaces. This paper presents the experience of “Serpentone reload”, a workshop based on participatory reactivation of abandoned or underused spaces and buildings in “Cocuzzo/Serpentone” neighbourhood in Potenza (Basilicata, Italy). The workshop particularly focused on the reuse of the “Ship”, an underground building, completed in 2010, never used, because it has been perceived as an extraneous element, the result of an imposition and not the outcome of shared choices. The experience is particularly significant, because it shows how low cost interventions, realized with citizens involvement, could contribute to the regeneration of peripheral urban areas more than expensive and complex imposed interventions.

A quantitative measure of habitat quality to support the implementation of sustainable urban planning measures

The 2030 Agenda by United Nations highlights the necessity of undertake concrete actions to “protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss”. However, human activities on land use are strongly threatening habitat quality, causing their fragmentation and a dramatic loss of biodiversity all over the world. This paper proposes an application of the InVEST Habitat Quality model as a tool to support the definition of sustainable development policies able to favour the preservation of habitat structures while promoting their exploitation as cultural and landscape assets. The model is applied to the Basilicata Region (Southern Italy). Results show how modelling the impacts of human activities on biodiversity and ecosystem services can strongly help planning activities in distinguish those areas that should undergo to a conservation regime to preserve habitat integrity from those which are most prone to transformations, taking advantage by the social and economic benefit deriving from the human activities connected to their use.

Urban Solar Energy Potential in Europe

Among the objectives of the Sustainable Development Goals by United Nations, “Affordable and Clean Energy” aims at ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all. However, in Europe there is not a precise understanding of the unleashed potential that could be achieved through the exploitation of solar and wind resources. This study presents an application to retrieve spatial explicit estimates of Direct Normal Irradiance (DNI) through the use of data from geo-stationary satellites. The energetic demand of large metropolitan areas in Europe is then retrieved and compared with the potential production of energy for domestic use through solar panels. Results of this comparison are presented based on the assumption that only the 1 % of the built up area could be covered with solar panels, and hence devoted to energy production. Outcomes suggest that even such a little coverage, if spread systematically over urban areas can in most of the cases satisfy urban population domestic needs.

Change Detection and Classification of Seismic Damage with LiDAR and RADAR Surveys in Supporting Emergency Planning. The Case of Amatrice

The spread of new satellite and LiDAR data is recently leading to the development of effective methodologies to support the monitoring and management of disaster risks, assessing the level of damages in the very early post-event phase. The increasing availability of SAR images and the diffusion of LiDAR data due to technologies such as solutions such as drones offers the opportunity to experiment new techniques for monitoring the territory. The paper will examine the case study of Amatrice (Central Italy), the Municipality most affected by the seismic swarm started in August 2016, and discuss the results obtained with the technique of interferometric differentiation and detection of change.