Gianluca Scaccianoce

Smart city and public lighting

The smart city is increasingly becoming a concept of reference for what concerns the planning and the spatial development of cities. The concept of smart city cannot be easily standardized. It is based on a multi-service and multi-sectorial planning regarding various urban functions (energy, mobility, waste, etc.) and places them under a common denominator: the use of advanced technologies for minimizing resources consumption and simultaneously increase the quality of life of the citizens. This paper aims to give an overview on the concept of smart city and outline what, at present, are the main intervention areas considered at European level. Then the paper focuses on the public lighting that is among the sectors most affected by “smart actions” by the Public Administrations. The work concludes with a proposal for a retrofit of the public lighting system in a small town in Sicily (Italy).

Angle Factors and Projected Area Factors for Comfort Analysis of Subjects in Complex Confined Enclosures: Analytical Relations and Experimental Results

This paper addresses an important problem in the evaluation of the thermal comfort of people living or working in the sort of confined spaces typical of current architecture. In the details, a new algorithm is proposed for the evaluation of the angle factors of people within rooms characterized by complex shapes, where the envelope components are not always mutually orthogonal. The algorithm is based on field data obtained by means of an experimental photographic apparatus which allows measurements of projected area factors of seated or standing people in such complex confined environments.

Generation of a Test Reference Year (TRY): An Application to the Town of Palermo

The improvement of the energy efficiency of buildings calls for the availability of tools for evaluating and simulating the thermal behaviour of buildings, needing as input climatic databases. These databases contain a very large amount of data, resulting in long computational time analysis. Therefore, simple aggregation methods are used, among which the test reference year (TRY). In this paper, a comparison between two statistical methodologies for compiling a TRY, the Belgian and the Sandia methods, is presented. Then, the two methods have been utilized for compiling the TRY for the town of Palermo, Italy, and compared both statistically and by means of two simple applications, obtaining quite different results. Thus, a particular caution in the choice of the method for generating such reduced sets of data is suggested.

Smart Cities and Municipal Building Regulation for Energy Efficiency

The “Smart Cities & Communities Initiative†of the Strategic Energy Technology Plan is the strategic European response to lead cities and regions to a carbon free future. In this contest energy efficiency in buildings has a crucial role and must be considered in a holistic approach to the urban planning. In order to implement the minimum requirements stated by the European Directive about the Energy Performance of Buildings, and in order to consider different planning layers with the view to a smart city planning, local regulations are a key factor aiming at sustainable territorial planning. This paper investigates the possibility to draft a basic structure of Municipal Building Regulations in order to guide local administrators and technicians and to limit discretionary power of bureaucracy. The paper is organized as follows. First, a review of the most common practices for building regulations in Europe is proposed, then the basic structure of a municipal building regulation for the city of Palermo (Southern Italy) accounting for sustainability is discussed.

Regional Policies for Sustainability in the Mediterranean Countries: The Role of a Proper HVAC System Maintenance in Museums

Italy, like several Mediterranean countries, holds a very large number of cultural artifacts that are often exhibited and saved inside museums. Museums are usually part of historical buildings that, not rarely, originally had a different intended use and that have been currently transformed in place for conservation and for exhibition of works of art. The use of historical buildings as museums leads to limitations in the management and distribution of exhibition space, in design and managing HVAC systems and in the achievement of targets relating to the continuous monitoring of the microclimate for people comfort and for preservation of works of art. Moreover, the costs of the operation and maintenance of the HVAC system for this particular type of confined environment are often very expensive and the proper optimization of the required operations plays a main role. In this paper, authors propose a new decision support tool for curators regarding the operation and maintenance management of HVAC systems in museums especially in the case of their belonging to cultural heritage buildings.

People comfort and artwork saving in museums: comparing indoor requisites

In museums, environmental indoor conditions should, contemporaneously, preserve the exhibited works of art and ensure the comfort conditions for people. Unfortunately, human and artworks requirements are characterised by different values of the physical indoor parameters that, occasionally, could become conflicting. In the paper, these problems are addressed by means of a literature analysis, with a specific attention to thermal comfort conditions of people. The possibility of finding common ranges of values for both requisites is finally discussed. Some recent technical recommendations on the matter have also been considered for indicating some HVAC equipment and appliances to be adopted in museums.

Applying A New Synthetic Environmental Indicator To Urban Transportation Scenarios

Through this work will be presented a suitably modified version of a simple model devoted to the evaluation of pollutant matters released in urban contexts by the transportation sector, The method, essentially referring to the pollutant emission factors provided within the European “COPERT III” approach, only requires the knowledge of data concerning the running car fleet on the analysed site. The methodology is here utilised for comparing enviromnental and energy effects of different transportation policies to be adopted in a given urban area, By imposing modal changes to the transportation demand and, consequently, by reallocating people from cars to public means, the effects on the released pollutants and on the energy consumption are compared. A simple score method for ranking the alternative choices is moreover presented and the feasibility of the method in representing a viable tool for local administrations is also pointed out.

Role of Green Coverings in Mitigating Heat Island Effects: An Analysis of Physical Models

Worldwide, governments are introducing several rules and standards in the aim of limiting the quantity of primary energy for air conditioning of buildings and supporting the use of renewable source of energy for generating thermal and electric energy to be utilized in buildings such as the European Directive on the Energy Performance of Buildings [1]. Along with these interventions, another important action takes currently place in the building sector, that is the introduction of passive structural components of the envelope, able to reduce the requirements of energy for air conditioning purposes. Among these building components, the so-called green roofs are becoming more and more interesting for designer and buildings owners. This simple technical solution, in fact, apart its effectiveness in lowering particularly the summer cooling loads, could make more attractive the shape of each single building and, when adopted on a large extension, of an entire city district, reducing the risks for urban heat island phenomena that represent a severe problem in urban contexts. In this work, a short review of the literature models for computing the energy balance of roof coverings will be proposed, with particular reference in modelling the heat exchange of a canopy.

Municipal Building Regulations for Energy Efficiency in Southern Italy

The building sector is still one of the most energy consuming sectors in Italy, like developed countries in Europe. At European level, the main policy driver related to the energy use in buildings is the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD, 2002/91/EC) and its recast. Through the EPBD introduction, requirements for certification, inspections, training or renovation are now imposed in Member States. In order to fulfill the expected changes, local regulations are a key factor aiming at sustainable territorial planning. It is thus required support the issue of local rules at municipal level in order to guide local administrators and technicians and to limit discretional power of bureaucracy. In this paper, a review of the most common practices for building regulations in Europe and in Italy is proposed, then the role and the framework of a municipal building regulation for the Southern European area accounting for sustainability features is discussed.

Greening The School Park: Energy And Environmental RehabilitationOf A Nursery School In Palermo

A nursery school, belonging to the school park of the municipality of Palermo, is here considered for interventions regarding the rehabilitation of the indoor conditions and the renew of its energy performances. The intervention refers to a more general policy, adopted by the municipality of Palermo, devoted to the monitoring of the energy consumption in the public building stock: this action plan also contemplates the adoption of equipment and tools fed with renewable energy sources. Presently, the kinder garden here considered for the rehabilitation shows dramatic problems for the occupants, due to the severe indoor conditions induced by the high level of solar radiation entering the building through the large glazed surfaces. Moreover, acoustic (bad insulation from the outdoor urban noise) and lighting (glare events) problems have been verified inside the school. This determines a high level of complaints to the children and to the people working inside the building. This calls for a deep analysis of the present situation, in sight of an improvement of the energy, comfort and environment performances of the school. Transactions on Ecology and the Environment vol 62,