Categorization of the Potential Impact of Italian Quarries on Water Resources through a Multi-Criteria Decision Aiding-Based Model.

Quarrying has great importance for economic development and, at the same time, can have several adverse environmental impacts; specifically, it may have a significant influence on water resources. There are approximately 4000 quarries in Italy, and knowledge of their potential impact on water resources is limited. To this end, a procedure for categorizing Italian quarries was devised by combining the methods of Geographic Information Systems and Multi-Criteria Decision Aiding, selecting the potentially impactful criteria, and parametrizing the latter through the available databases. Using the ELECTRE models (ELECTRE TRI and ELECTRE III), the impact category of each quarry was assessed separately for surface water and groundwater and then the overall impact on water resources was assessed. The simulations were carried out by varying the weights of the various selected criteria, which allowed the grouping of Italian quarries into five categories with increasing potential impact on water resources. The ranking of quarries falling into the two highest-impact categories was further refined using ascending and descending distillations. The categorization can be interpreted as a first national assessment of the sustainability of quarrying activities with reference to water resources. The methodological approach of the study proved to be appropriate for the quarry-sorting and -ranking processes, lending itself to the introduction of other criteria and weights, including those arising from the participation of different stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]