The aim of this work was to define and apply a multidisciplinary and multi-criteria approach to sustainability in evaluating alternative end-uses for disused areas. A contribution to sustainability is complete only if it simultaneously takes into account the social, economic and environmental points of view. In the literature, there is a gap in terms of practical approaches useful to measure how one alternative is more sustainable than another. This study tries to give a useful contribution to fill this gap. The procedure defined here is composed of three phases: 1) sociological; 2) economic; and 3) environmental.
In turn, each single phase is developed by means of elementary operations.
The sociological phase is useful in choosing the most socially sound alternative. This can be pursued by means of a consultative referendum. For the developed case study, we used the municipality of Santa Lucia di Serino (1460 inhabitants), in the Campania Region of Southern Italy; the referendum was simulated by means of a structured questionnaire submitted to a representative sample of the population (10% of people with no less than 18 years) in terms of age groups (18-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50-64, >65) and sex.
The economic evaluation of the three considered alternatives (MSW separate collection centre, market area with parking, gym) was conducted defining the bill of quantities with regards to six main items (soil handling, landfill disposal tax, public services, structure and services, completion work, equipment and furnishings).
The environmental evaluation was performed applying the Delphi method with local technicians who were involved in a qualitative-quantitative evaluation of the three alternatives with regards to eight possible environmental impacts (landscape impact, soil handling, odor, traffic, noise, atmospheric pollution, wastewater, waste).
Simple Additive Weighting was used as the multi-criteria technique to define alternatives priorities.
The defined procedure was able to ascertain the most sustainable alternative.
The 5th World Sustainability Forum
7–9 September 2015
Universitätsspital Basel, Zentrum für Lehre und Forschung, Switzerland
An international scientific conference of the journal Sustainability under the patronage of the University of Basel.
