Physical land suitability evaluation is crucial to rural spatial planning, as it directly contributes to designing successful and sustainable interventions. This paper deals with a physical... Show More

Physical land suitability evaluation is crucial to rural spatial planning, as it directly contributes to designing successful and sustainable interventions. This paper deals with a physical land-suitability evaluation model for Mantonico, a historical and traditional grape variety of Southern Calabria (Italy), which is showing a considerable decline in its cultivation, owing to the abandonment of this cultivar in favor of others that are certainly more quantitatively productive, yet less valuable from a traditional and cultural point of view. The evaluation model developed was based on consolidated GIS-based MCDA (Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis) procedure and showed that the choice of the criteria (factors and constraints), which describe the physical land suitability for a niche product, is important and delicate. In fact, it is not always easy to establish how territorial characteristics may influence the development of the cultivation of an agricultural product. In this paper, the choice and, above all, the values associated to the factors, adequately represented real conditions and, as a consequence, the results of the model showed a clear coherence between suitability gradients and lands with similar cultivations. Results were validated by comparing the real geographical distribution of the current vine growing to the suitability value obtaining a very positive feedback on the robustness of the implemented model. The comparison between current vine-growing areas and the values obtained from the model clearly shows that the current vine-growing sites of the study area fall in suitable and very suitable classes (83.8%).

The exploitation of renewable energy sources has assumed a significant role, especially in an integrated vision of problems concerning energy policies, The 2009/28/EC Directive of the European... Show More

The exploitation of renewable energy sources has assumed a significant role, especially in an integrated vision of problems concerning energy policies, The 2009/28/EC Directive of the European Parliament and Council has indicated ambitious energy and climate change objectives for 2020 (according to the so-called “EU2020 Strategy”): greenhouse gas emissions reduction for 20%, renewable energy increase for 20%, improvement in energy efficiency for 20%. The aim of this paper is to present a GIS based methodology able to support decision-making in energy supply from Renewable Energy Sources (RES), focusing on two specific case-studies: Photovoltaic (PV) and Wind energy. To decide what type of renewable energy font is the best choice for a specific territory, it's important to know the local energetic situation, exploring the potential renewable energy sources available in that specific area, deciding what is the territory more compatible/sustainable among them, and if it's exploitable by suitable environmental and economic point of view. The methodology is largely directed towards the development of a tool to support siting decision.

This article addresses the issue of analyzing and mapping mobility practices by using different kinds of mobile phone network data, which provide geo-located information on mobile phone activity at... Show More

This article addresses the issue of analyzing and mapping mobility practices by using different kinds of mobile phone network data, which provide geo-located information on mobile phone activity at a high spatial and temporal resolution. It will present and discuss major findings and drawbacks, based on an application carried out on the Milan urban region (Lombardy, Northern Italy) and suggest possible implications for policies.

New sources of data relating to personal mobility and activity patterns are now providing a unique opportunity to explore movement patterns at increasing scales of spatial and temporal refinement.... Show More

New sources of data relating to personal mobility and activity patterns are now providing a unique opportunity to explore movement patterns at increasing scales of spatial and temporal refinement. In this article, a corpus of messages from the Twitter social networking platform are examined. An elementary classification of users is proposed on the basis of frequency of use in space and time. The behaviour of different user groups is investigated across small areas in the major conurbation of Leeds. Substantial variations can be detected in the configuration of individual networks. An interpretation of the patterns which result is provided in terms of the underlying demographic structures, and the basic form and function of the urban area.

Volunteered Geographic Information has become exponentially available over the Web in the last years. This availability can hide a vast geographical richness and provides us with both a great... Show More

Volunteered Geographic Information has become exponentially available over the Web in the last years. This availability can hide a vast geographical richness and provides us with both a great opportunity to explore new ways to use it and also big challenges related with its unstructured nature. This paper conducts a preliminary analysis of the adequacy of photos from the Flickr and Panoramio initiatives in order to use them as a source of field data in the quality control of the Land Use/Cover databases production. It evaluates its temporal and spatial distributions over Continental Portugal and also its distribution over Land Use/Cover classes using as a reference the European Corine Land Cover database. It concludes that this source is very valuable but needs to be combined with other sources due to its uneven spatial distribution.