alessandra oppio | Politecnico di Milano (original) (raw)
Papers by alessandra oppio
Integrated Evaluation for the Management of Contemporary Cities
In Italy, the Legislative Decree 49/2010, issued according to the European Directive 2007/60/EC, ... more In Italy, the Legislative Decree 49/2010, issued according to the European Directive 2007/60/EC, introduced the Flood Risk Management Plans (PGRA) as a mandatory requirement for the flood-risk areas to reduce the impact of flooding on human health, environment, cultural heritage and economic activities. The PGRA plays a crucial role for the prevention and sustainable planning for risk areas, through the identification and evaluation of appropriate interventions, in contrast to the traditional approach based on emergency actions. Starting from the analysis of the PGRA requirements and contents, this paper aims to highlight the role of evaluation with respect to the plans implementation and the multidimensional issues emerging when laws and standards are applied. Many evaluation issues are still open, such as: (i) the uncertainty due to the long-term perspective generally used within this kind of investment decision; (ii) the estimation of the complex social impact of vulnerable areas; and (iii) the definition of a social discount rate able to reflect the intertemporal preferences of today’s generation over future ones.
Decision Support System for the Location of Healthcare Facilities
Decision Support Systems (DSSs) have been developed for aiding Decision-Makers (DMs) in handling ... more Decision Support Systems (DSSs) have been developed for aiding Decision-Makers (DMs) in handling and solving complex problems. When decisions belong to the public domain, as for the location of healthcare facilities, the use of DSSs could be fundamental to justify choices made and to easily communicate the results to citizens. Given the nature of the decision problem, the support of the Multicriteria-Spatial Decision Support Systems (MC-SDSS) has been recognised as strategic given the possibility to frame the decision problem, by breaking it down into hierarchical levels and to visualise the result directly on the territory through the use of maps. The contribution aims at presenting the strengths and weaknesses of the MC-SDSS for the location of healthcare facilities tested on a case study located in the Municipality of Milan, Italy, and to propose a DSS developed to support DMs, namely the Evaluation Tool for the Siting of Healthcare facilities (SitHealth Evaluation Tool).
Appraisal: From Theory to Practice
Composite indicators have been analyzed by several scholars, especially with the aim of defining ... more Composite indicators have been analyzed by several scholars, especially with the aim of defining standardization and aggregation rules consistent to the multidimensional theoretical framework underlying these kind of measures and adequate to the difficulty of comparing data of different nature. Starting from a broadly shared methodology, set up by OECD in 2008, the paper proposes a Composite Indicator of Territorial Vulnerability based on environmental, social and economic criteria. A special attention has been paid to the methodological approach more than to the results, with a focus on uncertainty and sensitivity analysis. The latter one has been developed by the use of the SimLab (http://ipsc.jrc.ec.europa.eu), which has allowed to estimate the probability distribution function of the composite indicator and to point out the field of variation of its variables. Lombardy Region has been selected as a pilot case study since it is one of the Italian regions with the highest infrastructural development. The results show that the Composite Indicator of Territorial Vulnerability applied to municipalities in the Lombardy Region has a limited variation range, and thus low uncertainty. Furthermore, the synthetic measure of territorial vulnerability seems to be a promising decision aid tool in the field of regional infrastructural development policies.
Integrated Evaluation for the Management of Contemporary Cities
The convergence between the concept of sustainable development and the theoretical framework of c... more The convergence between the concept of sustainable development and the theoretical framework of cultural-heritage preservation underlines some key issues: the tangible and intangible nature of benefits associated with cultural capital; intergenerational equity meant as the fair distribution of wealth, utility and resources among generations, in addition to the intra-generational one; the precautionary principle; and the multidimensionality of cultural heritage. As public goods, non-rival and non-exclusive, cultural resources are characterized by the presence of various categories of value that contribute to determining the Total Economic Value (V.E.T.). Given the risk of being under-supplied in the economy if these kind of goods are disregarded from appraisals, specific evaluation methodologies have been introduced with the aim of assigning a monetary value. In this context, the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) has been applied to estimate the economic benefits generated by the realization of a bicycle and pedestrian trail, considered as a non-marketed and complex good for the wide, and sometimes divergent, range of interests and values (economic, aesthetic, cultural, educational, political) attached to them. Consistently with the guidelines provided by the NOOA Panel, the CVM survey has been developed by the use of the Double Bounded Dichotomous model. In the absence of market prices that express the value of the benefits generated by this slow mobility project, respondents have shown a propensity for the implementation of the hypothetical scenario under valuation, thus demonstrating great awareness of the overall benefits associated with the project.
Smart and Sustainable Planning for Cities and Regions
The paper is aimed at exploring the advantages of public authorities within the context of negoti... more The paper is aimed at exploring the advantages of public authorities within the context of negotiating Public Private Partnership (PPP). During recent years, many European cities have developed complex urban interventions through innovative forms of cooperation between the public and private sector. Given the limited public funds to cover investments and the need to increase the quality and efficiency of public services, this kind of PPP enables public and private sectors to define agreements with respect to future urban development interventions. Starting from an analysis of the urban developments under PPP carried out in Lombardy region over the last 15 years, the paper provides an overview of surplus values that result from land-use changes and development with the aim of pointing out the allocation between public and private parties. Despite the difficulty of performing an ex-post evaluation of surplus values, meaning the difference between the asset values before and after transformation, mainly for the limited and incomplete economic data recorded by the agreement, some preliminary insights are drawn, and a first operational framework is suggested to evaluate the sustainability of the urban development interventions from a public perspective.
Green Energy and Technology
Aestimum, 2015
This paper aims to explore the existence of a potential interdipendence among the level of territ... more This paper aims to explore the existence of a potential interdipendence among the level of territorial vulnerability and the distribution of local conflicts in the Lombardy Region (Italy), through an empirical analysis based on the overlay mapping of different informative layers. In order to explore this kind of relationship, a Vulnerability Index has been calculated according to the most recent conceptual and analytical frameworks developed in the research literature. The outputs of the vulnerability assessment has been put into thematic maps with the aim of providing a comprehensive overview of the environmental and socioeconomic state of the Lombardy Region and tackling questions such as which provinces are most vulnerable to the localization of new infrastructures.
Chemical engineering transactions, 2012
Modelling and Evaluating an Environmental Damage Scenario: Discussing an Assessment Model Predict... more Modelling and Evaluating an Environmental Damage Scenario: Discussing an Assessment Model Predicted Through a Geographical Information System Procedure Sergio Mattia, Alessandra Oppio, Angela Poletti, Alessandra Pandolfi* Dipartimento di Architettura e Pianificazione (DiAP), Politecnico di Milano, via Bonardi 3, 20133 Milan, Italy Built Environment Science and Technology (BEST), Politecnico di Milano, via Bonardi 3, 20133 Milan, Italy alessandra.pandolfi@libero.it
Sustainable strategies can have significant results if they are carried on at neighbourhood level... more Sustainable strategies can have significant results if they are carried on at neighbourhood level; indeed, the unsustainable nature of contemporary cities reveals a poor planning at the micro or district level (Berg and Nycander, 1997). In the last decades, many projects of urban development, following the principles of sustainability, have been realized in Europe. All these projects, although at different degrees, pay attention to the ‘green’ transport plan, which aims at promoting the use of walking paths and cycling ways and public transport, reducing the house-workplace movements and offering real alternatives to private cars. Transport consumes, indeed, about one-fifth of global primary energy and represents the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions and of import dependency on fossil fuels (COM 2006-B). Within this context, the aim of the paper is to investigate, through an ex-post evaluation, the many sustainable mobility strategies developed in 20 European neighb...
In Italy architectural quality and public interest are at the center of a cultural and political ... more In Italy architectural quality and public interest are at the center of a cultural and political debate, which has not yet been definitively adopted into our legal system. By recognizing that urban developments, both public and private, have to be part of a bigger and interconnected economic, cultural and social development pattern, in the last 15 years several efforts have been made to define a draft law on architectural quality.
Large-scale urban development projects featured over the past thirty years have shown some critic... more Large-scale urban development projects featured over the past thirty years have shown some critical issues related to the implementation phase. Consequently, the current practice seems oriented toward minimal and widespread interventions meant as urban catalyst. This planning practice might solve the problem of limited reliability of large developments’ feasibility studies, but it rises an evaluation demand related to the selection of coalition of projects within a multidimensional and multi-stakeholders decision making context. This study aims to propose a framework for the generation of coalitions of elementary actions in the context of urban regeneration processes and for their evaluation using a Multi Criteria Decision Analysis approach. The proposed evaluation framework supports decision makers in exploring different combinations of actions in the context of urban interventions taking into account synergies, i.e. positive or negative effects on the overall performance of an alt...
Enhancing cultural heritage in mountain regions is a crosscutting topic: environmental protection... more Enhancing cultural heritage in mountain regions is a crosscutting topic: environmental protection, social and cultural promotion and economic development have the same relevance and require to find a durable balance among them. Alpine areas bear geographic and permanent disadvantages. These include physical factors, such as morphology, climate, hydro-geologic risk, and human geography weaknesses, such as the low density, which prevents any arising of agglomeration economies, the isolation of local communities and the limited accessibility. Moreover, the opportunities for strengthen the territorial development by cultural heritage are not always consensual. Conflicts between preservation of tangible and intangible cultural values for local communities and the heritage marketing according to consumers’ needs often arise. This paper proposes an integrated approach able to consider the spatial features of each dimension of the problem and to support the definition of future development ...
Integrated Evaluation for the Management of Contemporary Cities
In Italy, the Legislative Decree 49/2010, issued according to the European Directive 2007/60/EC, ... more In Italy, the Legislative Decree 49/2010, issued according to the European Directive 2007/60/EC, introduced the Flood Risk Management Plans (PGRA) as a mandatory requirement for the flood-risk areas to reduce the impact of flooding on human health, environment, cultural heritage and economic activities. The PGRA plays a crucial role for the prevention and sustainable planning for risk areas, through the identification and evaluation of appropriate interventions, in contrast to the traditional approach based on emergency actions. Starting from the analysis of the PGRA requirements and contents, this paper aims to highlight the role of evaluation with respect to the plans implementation and the multidimensional issues emerging when laws and standards are applied. Many evaluation issues are still open, such as: (i) the uncertainty due to the long-term perspective generally used within this kind of investment decision; (ii) the estimation of the complex social impact of vulnerable areas; and (iii) the definition of a social discount rate able to reflect the intertemporal preferences of today’s generation over future ones.
Decision Support System for the Location of Healthcare Facilities
Decision Support Systems (DSSs) have been developed for aiding Decision-Makers (DMs) in handling ... more Decision Support Systems (DSSs) have been developed for aiding Decision-Makers (DMs) in handling and solving complex problems. When decisions belong to the public domain, as for the location of healthcare facilities, the use of DSSs could be fundamental to justify choices made and to easily communicate the results to citizens. Given the nature of the decision problem, the support of the Multicriteria-Spatial Decision Support Systems (MC-SDSS) has been recognised as strategic given the possibility to frame the decision problem, by breaking it down into hierarchical levels and to visualise the result directly on the territory through the use of maps. The contribution aims at presenting the strengths and weaknesses of the MC-SDSS for the location of healthcare facilities tested on a case study located in the Municipality of Milan, Italy, and to propose a DSS developed to support DMs, namely the Evaluation Tool for the Siting of Healthcare facilities (SitHealth Evaluation Tool).
Appraisal: From Theory to Practice
Composite indicators have been analyzed by several scholars, especially with the aim of defining ... more Composite indicators have been analyzed by several scholars, especially with the aim of defining standardization and aggregation rules consistent to the multidimensional theoretical framework underlying these kind of measures and adequate to the difficulty of comparing data of different nature. Starting from a broadly shared methodology, set up by OECD in 2008, the paper proposes a Composite Indicator of Territorial Vulnerability based on environmental, social and economic criteria. A special attention has been paid to the methodological approach more than to the results, with a focus on uncertainty and sensitivity analysis. The latter one has been developed by the use of the SimLab (http://ipsc.jrc.ec.europa.eu), which has allowed to estimate the probability distribution function of the composite indicator and to point out the field of variation of its variables. Lombardy Region has been selected as a pilot case study since it is one of the Italian regions with the highest infrastructural development. The results show that the Composite Indicator of Territorial Vulnerability applied to municipalities in the Lombardy Region has a limited variation range, and thus low uncertainty. Furthermore, the synthetic measure of territorial vulnerability seems to be a promising decision aid tool in the field of regional infrastructural development policies.
Integrated Evaluation for the Management of Contemporary Cities
The convergence between the concept of sustainable development and the theoretical framework of c... more The convergence between the concept of sustainable development and the theoretical framework of cultural-heritage preservation underlines some key issues: the tangible and intangible nature of benefits associated with cultural capital; intergenerational equity meant as the fair distribution of wealth, utility and resources among generations, in addition to the intra-generational one; the precautionary principle; and the multidimensionality of cultural heritage. As public goods, non-rival and non-exclusive, cultural resources are characterized by the presence of various categories of value that contribute to determining the Total Economic Value (V.E.T.). Given the risk of being under-supplied in the economy if these kind of goods are disregarded from appraisals, specific evaluation methodologies have been introduced with the aim of assigning a monetary value. In this context, the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) has been applied to estimate the economic benefits generated by the realization of a bicycle and pedestrian trail, considered as a non-marketed and complex good for the wide, and sometimes divergent, range of interests and values (economic, aesthetic, cultural, educational, political) attached to them. Consistently with the guidelines provided by the NOOA Panel, the CVM survey has been developed by the use of the Double Bounded Dichotomous model. In the absence of market prices that express the value of the benefits generated by this slow mobility project, respondents have shown a propensity for the implementation of the hypothetical scenario under valuation, thus demonstrating great awareness of the overall benefits associated with the project.
Smart and Sustainable Planning for Cities and Regions
The paper is aimed at exploring the advantages of public authorities within the context of negoti... more The paper is aimed at exploring the advantages of public authorities within the context of negotiating Public Private Partnership (PPP). During recent years, many European cities have developed complex urban interventions through innovative forms of cooperation between the public and private sector. Given the limited public funds to cover investments and the need to increase the quality and efficiency of public services, this kind of PPP enables public and private sectors to define agreements with respect to future urban development interventions. Starting from an analysis of the urban developments under PPP carried out in Lombardy region over the last 15 years, the paper provides an overview of surplus values that result from land-use changes and development with the aim of pointing out the allocation between public and private parties. Despite the difficulty of performing an ex-post evaluation of surplus values, meaning the difference between the asset values before and after transformation, mainly for the limited and incomplete economic data recorded by the agreement, some preliminary insights are drawn, and a first operational framework is suggested to evaluate the sustainability of the urban development interventions from a public perspective.
Green Energy and Technology
Aestimum, 2015
This paper aims to explore the existence of a potential interdipendence among the level of territ... more This paper aims to explore the existence of a potential interdipendence among the level of territorial vulnerability and the distribution of local conflicts in the Lombardy Region (Italy), through an empirical analysis based on the overlay mapping of different informative layers. In order to explore this kind of relationship, a Vulnerability Index has been calculated according to the most recent conceptual and analytical frameworks developed in the research literature. The outputs of the vulnerability assessment has been put into thematic maps with the aim of providing a comprehensive overview of the environmental and socioeconomic state of the Lombardy Region and tackling questions such as which provinces are most vulnerable to the localization of new infrastructures.
Chemical engineering transactions, 2012
Modelling and Evaluating an Environmental Damage Scenario: Discussing an Assessment Model Predict... more Modelling and Evaluating an Environmental Damage Scenario: Discussing an Assessment Model Predicted Through a Geographical Information System Procedure Sergio Mattia, Alessandra Oppio, Angela Poletti, Alessandra Pandolfi* Dipartimento di Architettura e Pianificazione (DiAP), Politecnico di Milano, via Bonardi 3, 20133 Milan, Italy Built Environment Science and Technology (BEST), Politecnico di Milano, via Bonardi 3, 20133 Milan, Italy alessandra.pandolfi@libero.it
Sustainable strategies can have significant results if they are carried on at neighbourhood level... more Sustainable strategies can have significant results if they are carried on at neighbourhood level; indeed, the unsustainable nature of contemporary cities reveals a poor planning at the micro or district level (Berg and Nycander, 1997). In the last decades, many projects of urban development, following the principles of sustainability, have been realized in Europe. All these projects, although at different degrees, pay attention to the ‘green’ transport plan, which aims at promoting the use of walking paths and cycling ways and public transport, reducing the house-workplace movements and offering real alternatives to private cars. Transport consumes, indeed, about one-fifth of global primary energy and represents the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions and of import dependency on fossil fuels (COM 2006-B). Within this context, the aim of the paper is to investigate, through an ex-post evaluation, the many sustainable mobility strategies developed in 20 European neighb...
In Italy architectural quality and public interest are at the center of a cultural and political ... more In Italy architectural quality and public interest are at the center of a cultural and political debate, which has not yet been definitively adopted into our legal system. By recognizing that urban developments, both public and private, have to be part of a bigger and interconnected economic, cultural and social development pattern, in the last 15 years several efforts have been made to define a draft law on architectural quality.
Large-scale urban development projects featured over the past thirty years have shown some critic... more Large-scale urban development projects featured over the past thirty years have shown some critical issues related to the implementation phase. Consequently, the current practice seems oriented toward minimal and widespread interventions meant as urban catalyst. This planning practice might solve the problem of limited reliability of large developments’ feasibility studies, but it rises an evaluation demand related to the selection of coalition of projects within a multidimensional and multi-stakeholders decision making context. This study aims to propose a framework for the generation of coalitions of elementary actions in the context of urban regeneration processes and for their evaluation using a Multi Criteria Decision Analysis approach. The proposed evaluation framework supports decision makers in exploring different combinations of actions in the context of urban interventions taking into account synergies, i.e. positive or negative effects on the overall performance of an alt...
Enhancing cultural heritage in mountain regions is a crosscutting topic: environmental protection... more Enhancing cultural heritage in mountain regions is a crosscutting topic: environmental protection, social and cultural promotion and economic development have the same relevance and require to find a durable balance among them. Alpine areas bear geographic and permanent disadvantages. These include physical factors, such as morphology, climate, hydro-geologic risk, and human geography weaknesses, such as the low density, which prevents any arising of agglomeration economies, the isolation of local communities and the limited accessibility. Moreover, the opportunities for strengthen the territorial development by cultural heritage are not always consensual. Conflicts between preservation of tangible and intangible cultural values for local communities and the heritage marketing according to consumers’ needs often arise. This paper proposes an integrated approach able to consider the spatial features of each dimension of the problem and to support the definition of future development ...