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Research Interests: Mathematics and Emergy
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The analysis of ecosystem services (ES) is becoming a key-factor to implement policies on sustainable technologies. Accordingly, life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methods are more and more oriented towards the development of harmonized... more
The analysis of ecosystem services (ES) is becoming a key-factor to implement policies on sustainable technologies. Accordingly, life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methods are more and more oriented towards the development of harmonized characterization models to address impacts on ES. However, such efforts are relatively recent and have not reached full consensus yet. We investigate here on the transdisciplinary pillars related to the modelling of LCIA on ES by conducting a critical review and comparison of the state-of-the-art in both LCIA and ES domains. We observe that: current LCIA practices to assess impacts on 'ES provision' suffer from incompleteness in modelling the cause-effect chains; the multi-functionality of ecosystems is omitted; and the 'flow' nature of ES is not considered. Furthermore, ES modelling in LCIA is limited by its static calculation framework, and the valuation of ES also experiences some limitations. The conceptualization of land use (changes) as the main impact driver on ES, and the corresponding approaches to retrieve characterization factors, eventually embody several methodological shortcomings, such as the lack of time-dependency and interrelationships between elements in the cause-effect chains. We conclude that future LCIA modelling of ES could benefit from the harmonization with existing integrated multi-scale dynamic integrated approaches.
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Abstract The concept of urban metabolism has often been used to model and analyze urban regions to provide insights on their environmental sustainability. However, no consensus exists on the assessment methods that should be used to... more
Abstract The concept of urban metabolism has often been used to model and analyze urban regions to provide insights on their environmental sustainability. However, no consensus exists on the assessment methods that should be used to analyze the sustainability of these complex systems. This lack of consistency prevents data sharing and comparison between most studies. Past and current publications are therefore surveyed to identify key methodological aspects that could be favored to harmonize the sustainability assessment of urban metabolism. This investigation is structured around the common aspects of environmental assessment methods that have been used for the past forty years. It suggests that a network system modeling approach, a global life-cycle perspective, and a multi-criteria assessment are strategic choices for environmental sustainability assessment. While challenging in their implementations, these choices can offer common grounds to capitalize on the knowledge brought forth by new studies. The investigation also discusses basic principles to propose developments like the use of a functional equivalent as a basis of comparison and the use of specific uncertainty assessment methods. These propositions could help to improve the clarity of future studies that tackle the question of environmental sustainability in urban metabolism.
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Research Interests: Environmental Science, Air Quality, Climate Change, Ecosystem Services, Carbon Dioxide, and 15 moreEnvironmental Management, Environmental Impact Assessment, Carbon Sequestration, Climate, Environmental Resource Management, Forest, Forest Management, Exergy, Forests, Human health, Ecosystem, Fresh water, Conservation of Natural Resources, Environmental Pollutants, and Environment
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Research Interests: Landscape Ecology, Earth Sciences, Computer Science, Ecosystem Services, Ecology, and 10 moreLandscape metrics, Biological Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Resource Management, Spatial planning, Landscape Planning, Nature Conservation, Landscape Assessment, Nature-based solutions, and Landscape services
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Lo studio esposto in questo articolo è un caso emblematico di utilizzo della metodologia LCA come strumento per la gestione ambientale di processi produttivi in aziende farmaceutiche. In particolare, l’analisi ha riguardato la produzione... more
Lo studio esposto in questo articolo è un caso emblematico di utilizzo della metodologia LCA come strumento per la gestione ambientale di processi produttivi in aziende farmaceutiche. In particolare, l’analisi ha riguardato la produzione di Fattore VIII - Emoclot, un fattore della coagulazione utilizzato per trattare l’emofilia e altri deficit della coagulazione. I risultati dell’analisi sono stati utilizzati per l’ottenimento di una pre-certificazione EPD (EPD definitiva in fase di conferma) e come base per l’elaborazione di una PCR specifica per prodotti emoderivati. L’articolo espone un caso di utilizzo della metodologia LCA per la gestione ambientale della filiera produttiva industriale a cura di Kedrion Biopharma SpA e la definizione di strategie di mitigazione e compensazione degli impatti
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In sustainability assessment, the damage or benefit to certain final aspects one wants to protect/sustain is assessed. For example in life cycle assessment (LCA) these aspects are the predefined areas of protection (AoPs): human health,... more
In sustainability assessment, the damage or benefit to certain final aspects one wants to protect/sustain is assessed. For example in life cycle assessment (LCA) these aspects are the predefined areas of protection (AoPs): human health, natural ecosystems, the human/industrial system and natural resources. Hence an LCA outcome minimally exists out of four indicators that express damage or benefit to these AoPs. However, no sound approach is possible to aggregate these indicators (how much loss in species is equivalent to damage to human health?); conventional normalization is just a comparison with a standard reference system and does not interlink the indicators. An associated issue are the differences in viewpoints of sustainability assessment methodologies, e.g. ecosystem service assessment only focuses by definition on human well-being, leading to different outcomes. To resolve those related issues, there is a need to revise the theoretical/ethical backbone for sustainability assessment.\n Bourdeau (2004, J. Environ. Radioactiv.) reviews different environmental ethical visions/codes, with other priorities, on the ethics of mankind and nature: from absolute anthropocentrism moral rights for mankind) to the most radical ecocentrism (moral rights for all living and non-living entities). Likewise to these different levels, different types of sustainability may thus exist regarding what to primarily sustain. Because of the following reasons, an anthropocentric focus on human well-being seems appropriate: (1) the original definition of sustainable development describes the needs of mankind (WCED, 1987; Moldan et al., 2012, Ecol. Indic.), (2) in Article 1 of the Rio Declaration is stated (UNCED, 1992): “Human beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development.”, (3) as human it is impossible to look beyond a human viewpoint and desire for sustainability. An anthropocentric sustainability does not mean there is no attention towards other entities such as ecosystems. In anthropocentrism one protects the environment to sustain humans since nature provides vital services to us, though mankind’s survival has priority over nature’s maintenance. The development of a methodological framework is a next important goal. A clear linkage between damage to ecosystem and human well-being is for example possible through ecosystem service assessment. Future research should further develop a full-fledged framework based on this concept.
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There is a need to predict the responses of ecosystems and their provided services to management practices under changing environmental conditions via ecosystem models and use tools to compare the estimated provided services between the... more
There is a need to predict the responses of ecosystems and their provided services to management practices under changing environmental conditions via ecosystem models and use tools to compare the estimated provided services between the different scenarios. However, scientific articles have covered a limited amount of estimated ecosystem services and have used tools to aggregate services that contain a significant amount of subjective aspects and that represent the final result in a non-tangible unit such as ‘points’. To resolve these matters, this study improves and applies tools to assess the environmental impact (e.g. on human health) in physical units and ecosystem services, based on monetary valuation (including ecosystem disservices with associated negative monetary values). These approaches and improvements, relevant to all ecosystems, are demonstrated using a Scots pine stand from 2010 to 2089 for a combination of three environmental change and three management scenarios. The environmental change scenarios considered interannual climate variability trends and included alterations in temperature, precipitation, nitrogen deposition, wind speed, Particulate matter (PM) concentration and CO2 concentration. The addressed flows/ecosystem services, including disservices, are as follows: particulate matter removal, freshwater loss, CO2 sequestration, wood production, NOx emissions, NH3 uptake and nitrogen pollution/removal. The monetary ecosystem service valuation yields a total average estimate of 361-1242 euro ha-1 yr-1. PM2.5 (< 2.5 µm) removal is the key service, with a projected value of 622-1172 euro ha-1 yr-1. Concerning environmental impact assessment, with net CO2 uptake being the most relevant contributing flow, a loss prevention of 0.014-0.029 healthy life years ha-1 yr-1 is calculated for the respective flows. Both assessment methods favor the use of the least intensive management scenario due to its resulting higher CO2 sequestration and PM removal, which are the most important services of the considered ones.
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Natural Capital Accounting (NCA) is becoming a reference tool for an increasing number of organizations transitioning towards environmental impact neutrality. However, one NCA technique applicable to all types of actors (individual,... more
Natural Capital Accounting (NCA) is becoming a reference tool for an increasing number of organizations transitioning towards environmental impact neutrality. However, one NCA technique applicable to all types of actors (individual, community, company, etc.) is missing because of the lack of consensus on how to quantify both their environmental impacts and dependencies on ecosystems. A coupled systematic and non-systematic review of the grey and scientific literature is performed here to (i) make an extensive review of state-of-the-art NCA methods, identifying their current utilization and limitations, and (ii) discern prospects about the challenges of integrating an Ecosystem Service Accounting in Life Cycle Assessment (ESA-LCA). While NCA methods can extensively evaluate the supply of ES, they tend to disregard the quantification of environmental impacts that imply a demand for ES. The ESA-LCA approach is identified as a robust solution to balance supply and demand of ecosystem se...
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Nature-based solutions (NBS) are becoming popular in urban planning and policy making as cost-effective solutions capable of delivering multiple ecosystem services and addressing several societal challenges. So far, however, the... more
Nature-based solutions (NBS) are becoming popular in urban planning and policy making as cost-effective solutions capable of delivering multiple ecosystem services and addressing several societal challenges. So far, however, the cost-effectiveness of urban NBS projects has not been consistently quantified by built environment professionals, who lack user-friendly tools to account for the environmental costs and benefits of NBS. This paper presents a prototype online decision support tool (NBenefit$®) that calculates the negative and positive environmental impacts, externalities, and financial values of planned urban forests over their entire life cycle. NBenefit$ relies on a modelling framework that combines system dynamics, urban ecology, and life cycle thinking approaches, and it is presented as a visual web-based interface. An online map and a grid of cells is used to map the site of intervention, to delineate the size of the urban forest, and to define variations in abiotic, bio...
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Implementing nature-based solutions (NBSs) in cities, such as urban forests, can have multiple effects on the quality of life of inhabitants, acting on the mitigation of climate change, and in some cases also enhancing citizens’ social... more
Implementing nature-based solutions (NBSs) in cities, such as urban forests, can have multiple effects on the quality of life of inhabitants, acting on the mitigation of climate change, and in some cases also enhancing citizens’ social life and the transformation of customer patterns in commercial activities. Assessing this latter effect is the aim of this paper. An agent-based model (ABM) was used to assess change in commercial activities by small and midsize companies in retail due to the development of parks. The paper focuses on the potential capacity of NBS green spaces to boost retail companies’ business volumes, thus increasing their revenues, and at the same time create a pleasant feeling of space usability for the population. The type of NBS is not specified but generalized into large green spaces. The simulation contains two types of agents: (1) residents and (2) shop owners. Factors that attract new retail shops to be established in an area are simplified, based on attrac...
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The use of life cycle assessment (LCA) allows work to go beyond the traditional scope of urban nature-based solutions (NBS), in which ecosystem services are provided to citizens, to include environmental impacts generated over the entire... more
The use of life cycle assessment (LCA) allows work to go beyond the traditional scope of urban nature-based solutions (NBS), in which ecosystem services are provided to citizens, to include environmental impacts generated over the entire life cycle of the NBS, i.e., from raw material extraction, through materials processing, production, distribution, and use stages, to end-of-life management. In this work, we explored how LCA has been applied in the context of NBS through a critical analysis of the literature. Systems under review were not restricted to one typology of NBS or another, but were meant to cover a broad range of NBS, from NBS on the ground, water-related NBS, building NBS, to NBS strategies. In total, 130 LCA studies of NBS were analysed according to several criteria derived from the LCA methodology or from specific challenges associated with NBS. Results show that studies were based on different scopes, resulting in the selection of different functional units and syste...
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Nature-based solutions (NBS) such as rainwater gardens and permeable paving can be deployed as an alternative to conventional urban gardens to improve cities’ resilience against increasing rainfall. This study describes the application of... more
Nature-based solutions (NBS) such as rainwater gardens and permeable paving can be deployed as an alternative to conventional urban gardens to improve cities’ resilience against increasing rainfall. This study describes the application of an agent-based model (ABM) to assess the role of private gardens toward the enhancement of water management by households. The ABM simulates the process of switching from “gray” (i.e., paved) to green gardens, taking into account the effect of “soft” (garden networks and gardening workshops) and “hard” (monetary) incentives. The ABM is supported by a water balance model to consider the effect of rainfall on soil water retention. Four different cities in Europe were analyzed: Szeged (Hungary), Alcalá de Henares (Spain), Metropolitan city of Milan (Italy), and Çankaya Municipality (Turkey). The results demonstrate that greening private gardens can generate impact on water run-off and catchment in cities in the order of 5–10%, reaching picks up to 20%...
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The use of a multi-scale life cycle sustainability analysis (LCSA) could advance the evaluation of ecosystem services (ES) supplied by nature-based solutions (NBS) to urban areas. However, current analytical LCSA approaches are still not... more
The use of a multi-scale life cycle sustainability analysis (LCSA) could advance the evaluation of ecosystem services (ES) supplied by nature-based solutions (NBS) to urban areas. However, current analytical LCSA approaches are still not able to assess how urban metabolism (UM) impacts (e.g. those derived from land consumption) influence ES supply by NBS. There is also a general lack of experimental methods, and available data, to account for the space-time-dependent interactions and feedback loops that occur among socio-economic variables and determine the UM of an urban area. Those interactions and loops depend upon endogenous and exogenous land use functions, stock and flow of natural resources, and the set of ES supplied within and to the urban landscape by NBS. Thus, a major research question arises, which is how to improve existing UM methodologies for the assessment of ES delivered by NBS using a LCSA approach. To contribute addressing these questions, the present paper aims ...