Search results for "environmental planning."

Modelling migrants’ access to healthcare: focus groups results from an ecological approach

2018

Managing Change in Tourism: Creating Opportunities—Overcoming Obstacles

2010

Past Objectives and Future Scenarios

2016

The intimate link between landscape and urban planning has long been denied and underestimated. In spite of the “good intentions” of certain scholars, practitioners and policy makers across Italy, Spain and other EU countries, their efforts are undermined by rigidly framed, sector-focused laws and by a concept of landscape defined in purely aesthetic terms. We have established the importance of identifying tools used to integrate the various approaches that “urbanism” and landscape planning adopt in dealing with urban planning to date. In fact, even with the prospect of significant environmental legislation, the discipline is still unable to incorporate the concept of landscape and its asso…

Quality of Environmental Impact Assessment: Finnish EISs and the opinions of EIA professionals

2010

This article presents and compares findings of two EIA quality studies conducted in Finland. First a survey was targeted at competent authorities and environmental consultants to investigate their perceptions of the quality of Finnish EIAs. Second, 15 EISs were considered using the European Commission's guidance on review criteria. The results show that the EIA professionals generally consider the quality as good, though they also recognized that the quality varies and suggested certain areas for improvement. In the professionals' opinion the performance of Finnish EIAs could be enhanced, especially with more profound alternative considerations. Based on the results it is also suggested tha…

FIRElinks. Fire in the Earth System: Science & Society

2020

FIRElinks is a EU-spanning network of scientists and practitioners involved in forest fire research and land management with backgrounds such as fire dynamics, fire risk management, fire effects on vegetation, fauna, soil and water, and socio-economic, historical, geographical, political perception and land management approaches. FIRElinks connect communities from different scientific and geographic backgrounds, allowing the discussion of different experiences and the emergence of new approaches to fire research. The main aim of FIRElinks is to power synergistic collaborations between European research groups and stakeholders with the objective to synthesise the existing knowledge and exper…

The effect of soil on human health: an overview

2018

Soil has a considerable effect on human health, whether those effects are positive or negative, direct or indirect. Soil is an important source of nutrients in our food supply and medicines such as antibiotics. However, nutrient imbalances and the presence of human pathogens in the soil biological community can cause negative effects on health. There are also many locations where various elements or chemical compounds are found in soil at toxic levels, because of either natural conditions or anthropogenic activities. The soil of urban environments has received increased attention in the last few years, and they too pose a number of human health questions and challenges. Concepts such as soi…

Monitoring fungal biodiversity – towards an integrated approach

2012

Biodiversity information databases and platforms have seen considerable progress in recent years. They have a high potential in conservation science in general, but may be even more revolutionary in relation to poorly known species groups such as fungi, whose practical conservation work has been jeopardised by scattered and poorly controlled information. We review the tradition of collecting information on species occurrences in mycology and discuss the characteristics of the present fungal biodiversity information databases. With a special focus on population trend monitoring of fruit body producing macrofungi, we emphasise several unrealised opportunities of these databases and point out …

“Serpentone Reload” an Experience of Citizens Involvement in Regeneration of Peripheral Urban Spaces

2015

Suburbs are often very contradictory places. Despite great part of urban population live there, these parts of cities are mostly considered as degradation places. The topic of suburbs regeneration is relevant today. Nevertheless, often expensive interventions implemented by local authorities fail to regenerate their public spaces. This paper presents the experience of “Serpentone reload”, a workshop based on participatory reactivation of abandoned or underused spaces and buildings in “Cocuzzo/Serpentone” neighbourhood in Potenza (Basilicata, Italy). The workshop particularly focused on the reuse of the “Ship”, an underground building, completed in 2010, never used, because it has been perce…

Urban Services to Ecosystems: An Introduction

2021

Green infrastructure is a structural system of naturally developed human societies, capable of preserving and ensuring as much space as possible to the local biodiversity. For this reason, green infrastructure shall be planned and designed so that the urban built environment is in harmony with the surrounding biotic communities. The challenge is to sustain nature-based solutions in order to improve citizens’ awareness towards natural and semi-natural ecosystems while providing our society with a more liveable, healthier, safer and fairer environment. This book puts an emphasis on the services the city can offer to nature, thanks to a multidisciplinary approach involving scientists and pract…

A cost efficiency analysis of flood proofing measures for hydraulic risk mitigation in an Urbanized riverine area

2020

Non-structural measures for flood risk mitigation are often more economically accessible, easier to implement, and are highly effective, especially in view of the pursuit of risk resilience objectives. Among the non-structural measures, more importance is increasingly being attributed to flood proofing interventions. There are two main types of flood proofing: dry proofing and wet proofing. An example of dry proofing is shielding, which involves the use of flood barriers that can be installed in the entrances of buildings or outside the buildings in order to avoid contact with the houses and deviate the water flow. Their use must be supported by a detailed hydraulic analysis to ensure the c…