Springer Quality of Life in Urban Landscapes: In Search of a Decision Support System (The Urban Book Series)

This volume introduces an innovative tool for the development of sustainable cities and the promotion of the quality of life of city inhabitants. It presents a decision-support system to orient public administrations in identifying development scenarios for sustainable urban and territorial transformations. The authors have split the volume into five parts, which respectively describe the theoretical basis of the book, the policies in question and indicators that influence them, the decision-support system that connects indicators to policies, the case study of Ancona, Italy, and potential future directions for this work. This volume is based on transdisciplinary research completed in May 2016 that involved about 40 researchers at The University of Camerino, Italy and other European universities. With purchase of this book, readers will also have access to Electronic Supplementary Material that contains a database with groups of indicators of assessment of urban quality of life and a toolkit containing the data processing system and management information system used in the book’s case study. From the Back Cover This volume introduces an innovative tool for the development of sustainable cities and the promotion of the quality of life of city inhabitants. It presents a decision-support system to orient public administrations in identifying development scenarios for sustainable urban and territorial transformations. The authors have split the volume into five parts, which respectively describe the theoretical basis of the book, the policies in question and indicators that influence them, the decision-support system that connects indicators to policies, the case study of Ancona, Italy, and potential future directions for this work. This volume is based on transdisciplinary research completed in May 2016 that involved about 40 researchers at The University of Camerino, Italy and other European universities. With purchase of this book, readers will also have access to Electronic Supplementary Material that contains a database with groups of indicators of assessment of urban quality of life and a toolkit containing the data processing system and management information system used in the book’s case study. About the Author Roberta Cocci Grifoni is graduated in Physics and completed a Ph. D in Applied Physics. She is actually researcher of Environmental Applied Physics and assistant professor, at School of Architecture and Design at Camerino University, Italy. Her investigation fields include air quality modelling, model evaluation techniques, sensitivity and uncertainty studies, models for environmental control, parametrization of the Planetary Boundary Layer, statistic filling and time series, computational  fluid dynamic simulations, outdoor thermal comfort and  energetic efficiency in buildings. She has participated in many researches in the field of environmental design, such as: LIFE+ Natura “SUN LIFE”; FAR Research Quality of the Landscape and Quality of Life in the Sustainable Adriatic City”; "Access2 Mountain” - South East Europe  Transnational Cooperation Programme SEE/B/0007/3.1/X - "Sustainable mobility and tourism in sensitive areas of the Alps and the Carpathians. From 2002 she is  Fellow of Wessex Institute of Great Britain. She is author of 4 books, some chapters of books and over 60 papers on international and national journals devoted to research fields ranging from air quality, boundary layer physics, themophysical properties of fluid system, outdoor thermal comfort and energy efficiency. Massimo Sargolini is Full Professor in Urban, Territorial, and Landscape Planning. He is coordinator of international research projects on inner areas, relationship between planning of protected areas and ordinary planning, quality of landscape and quality of life, and carries out scientific responsibility tasks in national and international organizations: member of the Inte