Francesco Scorza

Using participative GIS and e-tools for involving citizens of Marmo Platano–Melandro area in European programming activities

Traditional methods adopted in planning and programming activities have been developed in periods when society was less dynamic and complex. Such approaches led to defining the future evolution of a territory in great detail. The application of these methods in the current context of socio-economic transformation coupled with abrupt changes due to technological innovation, globalization and recent financial crisis contributed to the creation of a sort of ‘suspiciousness’ about planning and programming activities. Plans following such assumptions based their success on a faithful execution of planning instruments, but the extreme mutability of today’s socio-economic contexts may lead to the risk of discussing once again the location choices made many years before. In the present work, we use the ‘programming’ term to denote all government tools regulating the public economic investments for local development. In particular, we considered the hierarchy of intervention tools at different scales promoted by EU policies in different sectors: regional convergence, environment, education, social capital, etc. In our opinion, the programme is a particular part of planning activities connected more to economic resource management than to physical territorial dimensions. Programming activities influence territorial planning at different scales, but also implement several actions not directly connected to territorial transformations. For this reason, it is relevant to distinguish between the two terms. Since the 1960s, different approaches to strategic planning have been theorized. The main difference can be found in a sort of transition from a purely top-down approach to a ‘reticular interactive’ one, where the knowledge and imagination of society play a fundamental role in order to discover desirable scenarios. Such differences define three major families of strategic

Sustainable Planning: A Methodological Toolkit

This paper proposes a methodological appraisal developed in order to face the recurring conflict between environment and economic development assessed in a specific implementation context: the Val d’Agri in Basilicata (Italy), where protection and exploitation requests include the safeguard of particular traditions and culture of communities located in inland areas of the Apennines, as well as environmental resources (natural, agricultural, historical and artistic resources). In this view, we selected strategies in order to promote innovation required by the self-centred part of the development and we referred to a right of rationality of choices, based on: equity, efficiency and conservation of resources; accountability instruments and uncertainty sharing means to which connect the integrated cycle of assessment/governance. The Logical Framework Matrix (LFM) was proposed for this purpose and, through the derived call, applicants will have to work on the basis of a set of procedures oriented to the construction of ended and integrated supply chains.

Overcoming Interoperability Weaknesses in e-Government Processes: Organizing and Sharing Knowledge in Regional Development Programs Using Ontologies

European Regional Policy produced several generations of programmes at both National and Regional levels. Such a complex framework tends to increase multi-level governance in the period 2007-2013, promoting a wider participation of stakeholders (including Public Administration, Local Communities, Enterprises, etc). This process has been usually accompanied by e-tools for the management of bottom-up processes, with several instances related to common problems of participation processes. Communication between “programmer” and categories of beneficiaries always presented weakness due to the ineffective system of management knowledge within the process. Relevant issues in the framework of regional development programmes are: Do stakeholders understand the meaning of general and sectoral policies? Are citizens aware of technical instruments implementing such policies? Are they conscious of ex-ante comprehensive context analysis and/or can they share possible future scenarios? A way to tackle these problems is the use of ontologies. In this work we present the structural elements of the ontology of regional development programmes analyzing major steps of the ontology design and nodal phases of the ontology building (i.e. consensus on relations and restrictions, switch from glossary to taxonomy). The result of such an application is an ontology of regional development containing more than one hundred classes.

That's ReDO: ontologies and regional development planning

European Cohesion Policy generates several programs at territorial levels. An evident trend is the increasing of multi-level governance in the period 2007-2013, promoting a wider participation to programming processes. It is possible to affirm that new instances are coming out. We refer to problems generally connected with participation processes. The relation between problems in knowledge management and ineffective impacts of local development plans is confirmed. Therefore, the central role of communication determines relevant issues regarding the ability to understand the meaning of general and sectoral policies by stake holders, the awareness of citizens to manage technical instruments implementing such policies. Are they conscious of ex-ante comprehensive context analysis and/or can they share possible future scenarios? A way to tackle these problems is the use of ontologies. In this work we present the structural elements and an application of ReDO ontology (Regional Development Ontology) analyzing major steps of ontology design and nodal phases of ontology building (i.e. consensus on relations and restrictions, and switch from glossary to taxonomy).

Regional Local Development Strategies Benefiting from Open Data and Open Tools and an Outlook on the Renewable Energy Sources Contribution

The New Cohesion Policy opens to an integrated place-based approach for the improvement of territorial and social cohesion. The issue of territorial impact assessment of regional development policies highlight that data availability, open access to datasets in “near real-time”, participation, knowledge sharing, and assumed importance within the planning process. In this paper we present an application of spatial analysis techniques for evaluation of territorial effects of EU funds starting from open data by ‘open-coesione’. The final scope is to have the opportunity to develop an assessment in the framework of a public debate. According to this issue we developed an empirical approach for context analysis using open-data assumed as a relevant source of information for the measurement of diffused concerns. The application regards an internal area of the Basilicata Region: the Agri Valley, a complex contest in which environmental and agricultural vocation conflicts with the recent development of oil extraction industries (the actual main territorial specialization). The research produced an integrated approach in order to highlight the energy development domain for Agri Valley. In a first stage the balance between fossil/traditional and renewable energies development should consider the traditional manufacts and practice in order to push on community identity and social commitment. This implies—for the planner—the requirement of managing social conflicts and promoting effective procurement in territorial management. The paper describes as a strategy of conflicts resolution an integrated project called an “Energy Museum”. The “Conclusions” at the end of this chapter discusses further applications and perspectives for improving regional development planning, considering the exploitation of open data sources and spatial analysis in one hand and on the Renewable Energy Sources on the other.

Improving EU Cohesion Policy: The Spatial Distribution Analysis of Regional Development Investments Funded by EU Structural Funds 2007/2013 in Italy

The incoming European Programming Period 2014-2020 addresses to the New Cohesion Policy the role of effective promotion of regional development. The principle of concentration on few strategic issues appears to be reached a mature approach through local Managing Authorities. This concentration affects several dimension of cohesion policy: economic development, social inclusion, labour market, place based instances, infrastructures, private investments. The spatial dimension of EU Regional Policies, since the first European programming cycle 1989s-1993, has not been analysed in deep due to the lack of data concerning programs implementation at regional level. During last years new tools have become available under the umbrella phenomena of open-data, VGI etc. In particular we refer to the project ‘opencoesione’ by Italian Ministry for Territorial Cohesion providing open data on Operative Programs funded by EU Structural funds. The service, with the general objective of improving Citizen Engagement on investments policies, offers a data set with specific information concerning each project (operative program, beneficiary, budget, funds etc.). The paper, after a general position of the actual issues of improving effectiveness of public investments in regional developing programs, describes the spatial data analysis process for the evaluation of spatial concentration of investments in the 2007-2013 programming period. The results are interesting for the opportunity to evaluate ‘ex-post’ aggregation of public and private investments. Conclusion regards possible application in developing incoming New Cohesion Policies at national and regional level.

Spatial autocorrelation analysis for the evaluation of migration flows: the italian case

During the last decades immigration phenomenon reached a considerable importance, not only in research sector but also at public opinion level. Migration is a complex phenomenon demanding a system analysis which goes beyond demographic and economic considerations. The purpose of this study was to investigate the spatial structure of foreign presence in Italy in order to identify its geographical demarcation line among different interpretations. Traditional statistical analysis suggests different conventional indices allowing to quantify immigration phenomenon. Traditional indices, as Location Quotients and Segregation Index, have been compared to innovative indices including spatial statistics elements, as well as global and local indicators of spatial association. Such indicators have been created on the basis of available data for the case study, but also considering information which can be easily found in great part of national contexts.

Towards Self Energy-Management and Sustainable Citizens' Engagement in Local Energy Efficiency Agenda

EU 2020 targets and global challenges concerning energy efficiency in public and private sectors generated a great number of local and sectorial approaches mainly oriented to investment promotion in energy technologies including buildings renovations. RES diffusion also generated impacts on rural and natural areas, but a comprehensive balance of recent trends still remarks only a partial success. The research hypothesis regards short-term benefits that an inclusive approach in energy management could bring in connection with energy efficiency investments at municipal scale. In fact a lot of energy wastage is linked to ineffective usage model, even in renewed buildings too. If one includes community involvement process oriented to deliver sustainable energy behaviors, one can expect a general improvement of energy saving in public and private sector. In order to be included, citizens need information: the Real time ICT application for energy monitoring represents an advancement proposed in this research. The long term perspective fits with the attitude of informed citizen to deliver self-energy management practice in everyday life. The benefits of the proposed approach regard territorial policies in the framework of EU-2020 strategy, Covenant of Mayors and UN 2030-Agenda.

Crowd-cloud tourism, new approaches to territorial marketing

Despite great efforts in adopting technologies for tourism development, few results have been achieved. A lot of experiences are mostly based on pilot projects or on never completed prototypes. Nations with a large tourism vocation lack of a serious national tourism portal. A different approach has been adopted in Matera (southern Italy), where a volunteered way has been adopted in mapping all tourist services and related information. All data related to cultural heritage, services, transport, etc. have been collected by voluntary actions of students and citizens and shared using cloud-gis web service. These data have been linked with other information already existing on the web (movies, pictures, Wikipedia, historical documentations, etc.), producing a sort of local mini-portal for tourism development. After this first phase a strong interaction with citizens has been created using a blog and social networks in order to complete and correct the whole dataset.

A renewed rational approach from liquid society towards anti-fragile planning

Starting from the Blecic and Cecchini book “Verso una pianificazione antifragile” [1], this paper will identify main arguments that: (i) help to deal with the conflicts of a complex society that weakens the connections between pieces of society on all level; (ii) recognize in Z. Bauman thought the elements of concern that characterize the liquidity of our society and its negative connection with urban and regional planning; (iii) highlight in “anti-fragile planning” an innovation instance for the discipline promoting new approaches that starting from the reduction of territorial vulnerability (resistent), are able to promote the regeneration of utility functions (resilient) by involving local communities in a collective form of creativity strategic development form. In one word: anti-fragile.