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To achieve the ambitious CO2 emission reduction targets set by the Sustainable Development Goals, it is crucial to act on cities. Indeed, cities are responsible for 67% of the world's primary energy consumption and about 70% of energy-related CO2 emissions. To support the urban energy transition, a broad implementation of zero-emission districts or, even better, positive energy districts (PEDs) is expected. PEDs can be defined as energy-efficient and energy-flexible urban areas that aim to provide a surplus of clean energy to the city by using renewable energies. However, in developing the PEDs concept, it is necessary to consider not only the technical issue of energy systems but also the environmental, social, and economic spheres. To be effective, it is important to provide decision-makers with tools such as Urban Sustainability protocols for PEDs, which can effectively assess the complexity of the impacts a PED might have on other urban transformations from a multi-stakeholder perspective. LEED for Neighborhood Development, BREEAM Communities, and CASBEE for Cities are the most widely used and known protocols in the world for the evaluation of districts. These certification protocols were established before the concept of PEDs and, therefore, are not considered. However, they exhibit some shared characteristics which permit the evaluation of PEDs' sustainability. In fact, through this research, an attempt is made to analyze how the implementation of sustainability protocols in existing PED projects can improve sustainability, but also how PED projects can improve evaluation systems through interventions that have not been considered so far. To test a methodology that could be extended in future case studies, an analysis of three of the world's best-known certification systems, LEED-ND, BREEAM-CM, and CASBEE-UD, was conducted on two completed PEDs case studies, Tampere and Salzburg. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mining activities can contribute to sustainable development, focusing on economic, environmental, and community aspects. To this purpose, it appears essential to investigate the spatial dimension of mining operations to have a clear picture of the full range of impacts in terms of both opportunities and constrains. The paper illustrates the construction of a geodatabase for supporting planning and management of mining activities in Piedmont Region (Northern Italy). In the geodatabase, all the quarries located in the area are represented at a regional scale, distinguishing by active and inactive sites that have been further divided according to the main categories of extracted materials, namely aggregates, industrial minerals, and ornamental stones. The article discusses how the regional mining mapping can offer an integrated and interdisciplinary representation of the territory under analysis, thus supporting the decision-making processes in the context of the activities related to the Strategic Environmental Assessment of the planning of mining operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Analytic Network Process is a multi-criteria measurement theory that is used to derive relative priority scales of absolute numbers from individual judgements. The Analytic Network Process offers a general framework to deal with complex decisions, which provides a comparison of the different options. The paper shows the application of the Analytic Network Process to support the decision-making process related to the choice of different transport scenarios in the town of Venaria Reale, Northern Italy. In particular, considering the necessity of improving the connections between the city of Torino and the town of Venaria, the need for new infrastructures emerges. In this sense, it is necessary to investigate different project solutions, taking into account the problems related to sustainable mobility and the impacts on the urban structure that will, from necessity, be changed to a great extent. The paper illustrates the work that has been done in order to make the decision makers able to consider the different aspects of the problem simultaneously, to identify the key questions and to prioritize them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mining activities impact on the territorial system in various ways, affecting its environmental and socio-economic components. Specific evaluation tools can support decision-making processes in the context of the sustainable planning and management of mining activities. Within the evaluation procedures of mining activities, a growing interest in the analysis of Ecosystem Services (ES) is emerging. ES refer to the benefits that the natural system delivers to society, linking the health of ecosystems and human well-being. Starting from a real-world case related to the adoption of the Regional Plan of Mining Activities (PRAE) of the Piedmont region (Northern Italy), the paper aims to explore the ES valuation by considering three different mining quarries. The state of the art of the basins is compared with alternative planning scenarios from the point of view of the ES produced. The valuation is developed through GIS and the Simulsoil software, detecting the biophysical benefits produced and estimating their economic performance. The simulation results can be used to support the formulation of planning strategies, estimating the trade-offs in terms of competitive land-use values. The study also demonstrates that the integration of ES into Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) can produce a comprehensive impact assessment of a mining project, guaranteeing the protection and valorisation of the environmental system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Renewable energy resources and energy-efficient technologies, as well as building retrofitting, are only some of the possible strategies that can achieve more sustainable cities and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Subsidies and incentives are often provided by governments to increase the number of people adopting these sustainable energy efficiency actions. However, actual sales of green products are currently not as high as would be desired. The present paper applies a hybrid agent-based model (ABM) integrated with a Geographic Information System (GIS) to simulate a complex socio-economic-architectural adaptive system to study the temporal diffusion and the willingness of inhabitants to adopt photovoltaic (PV) systems. The San Salvario neighborhood in Turin (Italy) is used as an exemplary case study for testing consumer behavior associated with this technology, integrating social network theories, opinion formation dynamics and an adaptation of the theory of planned behavior (TPB). Data/characteristics for both buildings and people are explicitly spatialized with the level of detail at the block scale. Particular attention is given to the comparison of the policy mix for supporting decision-makers and policymakers in the definition of the most efficient strategies for achieving a long-term vision of sustainable development. Both variables and outcomes accuracy of the model are validated with historical real-world data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an interdisciplinary multi-level decision-making procedure for supporting an ongoing process of rural development of Yanzhou Island (China). A multi-methodological evaluation approach based on the combined use of different evaluation tools has been developed in order to take into account the economic, social, environmental and cultural aspects of the planning process. An experts' panel has been involved in research since the preliminary phases of the evaluation with the aim of helping the structuring of the decision problem and discussing the outcomes of the analysis. The proposed approach allowed to understand the potentials and weaknesses of the area and to design the most suitable solution for the case study selected. The interdisciplinary nature of this process had given the opportunity to co-design and re-define the master plan in line with the expressed priorities. The master plan of the new district encourages landscape enhancement and promotes the economic development, proposing to grow tourism activities and wellness facilities in a natural place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]