The European Union is committed to enforce limitations to water pollution through specific directives (UWWTD 91/271/EEC). The delay of some EU member states in transposing these directives has had an impact on the quality of the wastewater treatment system. Therefore, it is necessary to intervene with adjustment procedures and construction of new plants. The aim of the study is to carry out an economic feasibility assessment for the construction costs of an urban wastewater treatment plant of medium-low capacity (<50,000 Population Equivalent or pe) according to a simplified process diagram, and help in the planning of new investments. We propose a methodology based on cost functions according to two different procedures: synthetic estimate of the costs for civil works and a multiple linear regression for the cost of the electromechanical equipment. These functions show a correlation between the construction costs and the population equivalent and enable us to understand it. The results show greater economic benefit in increasing wastewater treatment plants sizes serving a population equivalent of 5000 pe to 10,000 pe, while further increases are less beneficial.

The present paper was prompted by the activity carried out within the scope of an EU-funded project (WARMEST). It calls to analyse the reasons for the degradation of the Patio de Los Leones, which attracts over 2 million tourists per year to Granada in Spain. We review here the most advanced studies and regulations on the assessment of the social impact of mass tourism and present a novel methodology to analyse its effects. We dug into the material available on social networks—especially feedback to posts published on major relevant sites—and got a comprehensive picture of the thoughts that were expressed there and a comprehensive assessment of the citizens’ opinion on the social impact of tourism in Granada. Thus, we obtained a new indicator called “C.1.2 index modified”, which measures the level of dissatisfaction of citizens with the tourists’ pressure; we propose to replace the existing ETIS index with C.1.2, which is mainly based on direct surveys that are often carried out with very limited resources. At the end of the research, we could point out topics that are especially important to the citizens, thus allowing us to define a strategic action plan with a bottom-up approach.

The continuous growth of vehicles on the road and the consequent traffic congestion, especially in suburban areas, is a source for major concern. It impacts negatively on the operating costs of infrastructures and on the social and economic life in the surrounding area. From an economic perspective, travel time for the displacement between two junctions of a network is one of the most significant factors to be taken into consideration. On this basis, the designer decides on the level of service and the type of infrastructure to be built and the traveller assesses the alternatives to the existing modes of transport and his willingness to face the associated cost. In Europe, United Kingdom (UK) was the first country to value travel time in the early 1960s. Moreover, until 2011, it contributed to the estimation of the monetary value of time for 60% of international studies within the EU. The UK Department for Transport (DfT) adopts the Transport Analysis Guidance (WebTAG) as useful transport planning and design tool. This paper discusses on the guidelines and software tools adopted for the economic evaluation of transport interventions in UK and Italy, highlighting particularly, the values and methods for estimating the value of time (VOT) in both countries. We propose a strong integration of the two models taking into account the numerous parameters examined in UK and at the same time the method’s easy applicability for countries with different development conditions and needs.

Every year ship traffic produces tons of liquid waste mainly consisting of bilge water and of washing water of tankers' tanks. The latter are called slop waters and are characterized by high salinity and by the presence of recalcitrant pollutants mainly of hydrocarbon origin: these characteristics promote the use of chemical-physical rather than biological treatment. In particular, in the present study the slop waters were subjected to a clariflocculation treatment by means of batch tests. This treatment involves the dosage of specific chemical reagents (coagulants and flocculants) added to water at different stages of the process. In order to establish the optimal reagents' type and dose, also considering the operating costs, the proposed study presents a frequency analysis belonging to the family of multi-criteria exploration. The application of this methodology to examine the validity of the different process alternatives has allowed the inclusion of, in a single assessment, both economic and extra-economic (measurable only in qualitative terms) procedures. Thanks to this qualitative and quantitative method, it was therefore possible to order the different treatment alternatives analyzed, identifying the one that allows optimizing the wastewater management, for a conscious choice of the most suitable solution to the problem.

In urban areas, tunneling works inevitably interfere with the adjacent buildings. In the preliminary design stage, designers usually do not inspect buildings adjacent to the construction sites, because these activities are often too expensive. This paper presents the STATUS app, an Android application for mobile data collection. It was developed and tested by Geofunction Srls before the beginning of the tunneling works for the railway doubling in Cefalù (Italy). The system assists technicians during visual inspections and records the pre-existing architectural and/or structural damages in buildings adjacent to construction sites in real time. The output of the data collection is an official report printed and countersigned in situ by the technicians and the owners of the inspected property. The application was used for 1189 inspections inside 96 buildings. The aim of the paper is to show the benefits achieved through the use of STATUS app. It is also useful for several purposes: external risk assessment, damage prevention, damage reporting, preventing future legal disputes, and the free-rider problems. The application is released under closed-source license.