Academic literature on the topic 'Naples Suburban Area (Italy)'

ABSTRACT Human exposure to contaminated food is a general health concern worldwide; it is necessary to evaluate food safety with respect to contaminants present in the edible parts of major food crops. This study evaluated the concentrations of 17 trace elements (As, Be, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mn, Mo, Ni, Pb, Sb, Se, Sn, Tl, V, and Zn) from 51 potato plantations in the Campania region, inside the area known as the “Triangle of Death,” with inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry analysis. Results confirm that the potatoes collected from the suburban area of Naples contained concentrations of trace elements below the safe limits prescribed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Health Organization. The concentrations of elements were similar to those reported for potatoes grown in other countries. Monitoring the content of toxic and potentially toxic elements is one of the most important aspects of food quality assurance. The environmental persistence of metals may result in the accumulation of significant levels of these contaminants in plants. They are absorbed to different extents, depending on their source, soil and climatic factors, plant genotype, and agrotechnical conditions, thereby entering the food chain and representing a risk to human health.

The assessment of Technosols quality in urban environments is pivotal for the maintenance of ecosystems impacted by human activities. The study was performed on Technosols constructed in experimental mesocosms in the suburban area of Naples (Southern Italy) to highlight changes in the main soil properties over eight years and to identify the most suitable indices at quality monitoring. In this study, several chemical, biological, and integrated indices were analysed to evaluate the mineral accumulation, potential ecological risk, edaphon activity, fertility, and the overall soil quality. The Technosols showed alkaline pH, nitrogen ranged from 24.5 to 39.5 g kg−1, high organic matter contents above 40 g kg−1, and there were no evident processes of soil compaction. Heavy metals (Cr, Cu, Fe, Mg, Mn, Ni, Pb, and Zn) did not exceed the thresholds defined by the Italian law for urban soils, despite their volcanic components. During eight years, the chemical indices depicted changes in the elements balance and increase in ecological risk; the biological indices indicated a reduction in the fungal fraction (fivefold) and in the resources utilisation and carbon storage. The soil quality index with all parameters highlighted the reduction in the soil quality (from 0.78 to 0.65) due to the decrease of the chemical quality, the increase of microbial stress conditions, and changes of the microbial composition, underlining the importance of integrating chemical and biological information for monitoring Technosols.

This article retraces the late modern and contemporary history of East Naples through its environmental transformations. By the end of the eighteenth century, this marshy rural/suburban area hosted small urban agglomerations and many proto-industrial activities, deeply intertwined with agricultural production. During the nineteenth century, the area experienced its deepest transformations as a result of the three parallel processes of drainage, urbanisation and industrialisation. On the threshold of the twentieth century, East Naples became an industrial suburb, home to an uncontrollable residential sprawl interspersed with factories. This inchoate suburban mix has determined the area's unsustainability, leading to those hygienic deficits, environmental risks and economic and social complications that have plagued it to this day.

A “real-time” noise mapping project, named DYNAMAP, has been developed in the framework of a Life+ 2013 program and cofunded by the European Commission. The project aims at giving a real picture of the noise generated by vehicular traffic. To this purpose, a dedicated platform has been developed to elaborate the information from distributed noise monitoring stations. The methodology has been implemented along the ring road encircling the city of Rome (Italy). A detailed description of the system is given together with a report on the testing campaign that allowed evaluation of the accuracy and reliability of the system. From the monitoring campaign satisfactory results have been achieved, showing an average overall prediction error of ~1.5 dB.

Abstract. The ‘Masseria Rota’ in Cercola, near Naples, is one of the best-preserved examples of the important vernacular architectural heritage of the Vesuvian area. Built in the 17th century upon more ancient pre-existences, the farm is an extraordinary example of the construction capabilities typical of the Neapolitan area and the dual vocation, productive and residential of the Vesuvian ‘masserie’. The production area for slaughter and winemaking – located on the basement floor and still in good condition – coexists with the residential part with a sober decorative apparatus, enriched by the nineteenth-century transformations. Its planimetric U-shaped layout denounces a development for subsequent integrations that is also evident from the mensiochronological analysis of the walls. Unfortunately, despite the its indisputable historical, architectural and documentary value, the ‘Masseria Rota’ is in a serious state of abandonment, suffocated by contemporary buildings often devoid of specific values. The contribution to be presented illustrates the results of a teaching experiment that aims to propose methodological guidelines for the drafting of a restoration project aware and respectful of the identity of the aforementioned 'Masseria', and intends to provide a contribution of knowledge for the preservation and enhancement of a vernacular building heritage present on the slopes of Vesuvius, guiltily forgotten and abandoned in recent decades, which, instead, represents one of the most interesting and important of the settlement and construction modes of a territory inhabited since antiquity – despite the cyclical destructions caused by the volcanic activity of Vesuvius – for its environmental and landscape characteristics.

Abstract This essay reviews two documentaries: Biùùtiful Cauntri, an exposéé of waste-disposal criminality in the Naples area of Italy, and Traces of the Trade, in which members of New England family uncover their ancestors' deep involvement in the slave trade.

Esta tesis propone un método cuantitativo para la evaluación integrada del rendimiento de Sistemas de Gestión de los Residuos Sólidos Urbanos (SGRSU) a diferentes escalas y dimensiones, integrando el análisis de flujos biofísicos con variables socio-económicas. La utilidad y limitaciones de este procedimiento se han ilustrado a través de la aplicación a un caso de estudio: el Área Metropolitana de Nápoles (MAN), región de Campaña, sur de Italia. El método propuesto se puede utilizar para apoyar procesos de decisión entre diferentes opciones tecnológicas considerando simultáneamente diversos indicadores. Para ello se combinan dos elementos: (a) Un marco de análisis holístico que permite realizar análisis multi-escala y multi-criterio de: (i) un determinado SGRSU; (ii) las opciones tecnológicas derivadas de cambiar el sistema existente; (iii) las transformaciones generadas por nuevas tecnologías. (b) Un conjunto integrado de indicadores relacionados con los diferentes criterios y escalas de análisis. Éstos pueden ser seleccionados "a la carta" por actores sociales a través de procesos participativos con el objetivo de aumentar la calidad de la información utilizada en el proceso de gobernanza. Este innovador marco está basado en la teoría de redes metabólicas y en el método de contabilidad MuSIASEM (Análisis Multi-Escala Integrado del Metabolismo de la Sociedad y de los Ecosistemas). Siguiendo este enfoque, un SGRSU se percibe como un órgano de un sistema socio-ecológico que modula la interacción entre los procesos metabólicos de un área urbana, que consume productos y genera residuos. Este órgano además se relaciona con los ecosistemas que le proporcionan algunos de los suministros que necesita para operar, así como capacidad de sumidero local. El método de análisis integrado es capaz de caracterizar: (i) los flujos de residuos generados por el sistema urbano en términos de cantidad y calidad; (ii) el conjunto de requerimientos necesarios para el funcionamiento de las etapas del proceso (tecnología, empleo, energía, agua y flujos de materiales); (iii) el grado de apertura del sistema, es decir, los flujos de residuos urbanos importados o exportados en las diferentes etapas; (iv) los productos finales que se depositan en el medioambiente. Los datos preliminares del caso de estudio se han utilizado para ilustrar el método propuesto. El enfoque de la red metabólica se aplica para generar una representación multi-escala integrada del funcionamiento del actual SGRSU de MAN y una herramienta de apoyo a las decisiones que permite explorar posibles opciones tecnológicas. Esta herramienta se aplica a la evaluación de dos alternativas: “internalización del procesado de residuos” versus “aumento de la tasa de reciclaje”. El análisis señala los diferentes costes asociados a cada una de las alternativas. La aplicación del método propuesto muestra su utilizad: (i) es semánticamente abierto puesto que se puede aplicar a diferentes contextos geográficos y culturales; (ii) es capaz de evaluar el efecto de condiciones impuestas por diferentes dimensiones como son la tecnológica, la económica y al social (viabilidad y deseabilidad) así como la ambiental (factibilidad); ilustra la inexistencia de soluciones óptimas en las intervenciones tecnológicas. Sin embargo, las herramientas analíticas testeadas demandan una gran cantidad de datos procedentes de múltiples y diversas fuentes. Realizar una evaluación robusta de la calidad de la información requiere tiempo y compromiso por parte de actores sociales que es difícil de mantener. Por último, la interacción con expertos en diferentes pasos del proceso ha mostrado la dificultad de generar discusiones más complejas sobre la ‘foto amplia’ del SGRSU. Este resultado abandera la importancia del desarrollo del conjunto de herramientas propuesto puesto que es capaz de aportar una visión más holística del funcionamiento de los SGRSU así como datos útiles para una toma de decisiones mejor informada.<br>This dissertation develops a procedure for the integrated assessment of the performance of Municipal Solid Waste Management System (MSWMS) across dimensions and scales interfacing the quantitative analysis of biophysical flows with the socio-economic analysis. The usefulness and the shortcomings of this procedure have been tested in a real case study (The Metropolitan Area of Naples (MAN), Campania Region, Southern Italy). This procedure can be used as decision support system for carrying out an informed choice, based on the simultaneous consideration of different criteria of performance, when deciding about technological choices. The proposed decision support system combines two elements: (a) a holistic framework of analysis making it possible to carry out a multi-scale and multi-criteria analysis of: (i) the performance of a given MSWMS (ii) the option space of future changes in the existing network; (iii) the changes implied by the introduction of innovative technologies. (b) an integrated package of indicators referring to different criteria and scales that can be selected “à la carte” by social actors through participatory processes increasing the quality of the information used in the process of governance. The innovative holistic framework builds on the theory of metabolic networks and the Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism (MuSIASEM) accounting method. In this approach a MSWMS is perceived as an organ of a socio-ecological system that modulates the interaction between the metabolic processes of the urban area, which consume a flow of inputs and generate a flow of wastes, and those of the embedding ecosystems providing both some of the inputs used by the MSWMS and local sink capacity. The tool-kit for integrated analysis can characterize: (i) the waste flows produced by the urban system in terms of quantity and quality; (ii) the mix of inputs required for the operation of the stages of the waste management process, such as technology, employment, energy, water and material flows; (iii) the degree of openness of the system, that is, the imports and exports of urban waste flows in the stages of its operation; (iv) the final outputs released into the local environment. Preliminary data from the case study have been used to develop and illustrate the proposed theoretical framework. The metabolic network approach is then used to generate: (i) a multi-scale integrated representation of the current performance of the MSWMS of the MAN and (ii) a decision support tool to explore the policy option space. In relation to the last point, two alternative political options have been checked: “internalization of waste processing” and “increasing recycling rate”. The analysis pinpoints the different trade-offs associated to each of them. The application of the proposed method shows its usefulness: (i) it is semantically open since it can be applied in different geographic and cultural contexts; (ii) it can evaluate the effects of constraints belonging to different incommensurable dimensions such as technical, economic and social (viability and desirability) and environmental (feasibility) and (iii) it illustrates that there are not optimal solutions when coming to technological interventions. However, the analytical tool-kit demands large amounts of data from multiple and variegated sources. A robust quality check of the information requires time and commitment of the different actors that is difficult to maintain. Last but not least, the interaction with experts on the different steps of the process has proven the difficulty in opening a more complex discussion about the “big picture” of MSWMS. This discovery flags again the importance of the development of the presented analytical tool-kit, capable of providing a more holistic vision of the functioning of the MSWMS and useful inputs for better informed decisions.

A Roman city was a bounded space. Defined by borders both physical and conceptual, the city stood apart as a concentration of life and activity that was divided from its rural surroundings not only physically, but also legally, economically, and ritually. Death was a key area of control, and tombs were relegated outside city walls from the Republican period through Late Antiquity. Given this separation, an unexpected phenomenon marked the Augustan and early Imperial periods: Roman cities developed suburbs, built-up areas beyond their boundaries, where the living and the dead came together in environments that could become densely urban. Life and Death in the Roman Suburb examines these districts, drawing on the archaeological remains of cities across Italy to understand their character and to illuminate the factors that led to their rise and decline, with a particular focus on the tombs of the dead. Work on Roman cities still tends to pass over funerary material, while research on death has concentrated on issues seen as separate from urbanism. This book aims to reconnect those threads, considering tombs within their suburban landscapes of shops, houses, workshops, garbage dumps, extramural sanctuaries, and major entertainment buildings to trace the many roles they played within living cities. It argues that tombs were not passive memorials, but active spaces that both facilitated and furthered the social and economic life of the city, where relationships between the living and the dead were an enduring aspect of urban life.

The 7 years monitoring-conservation-information program in the special B zone of Ieranto bay (belonging to the Marine Protected Area Punta Campanella - Naples, Italy) shows good results in terms of reducing illegal activities (such as illegal fishing, unauthorized boating, pollution and anchoring) and promoting environmental awareness for visitors. This 3-way management model represents one of the best practices of the MPA that could be applied to other MPAs in order to improve the correct usage of a protected area and to decrease/control the illegal actions and protect the environment

The Gaiola Underwater Park is a small Marine Protected Area located in Naples (Italy), funded in 2002 to preserve the biological and archaeological heritage. In fact, because of the metropolitan context in which it is integrated, the area is subject to constant anthropic pressure, which often results in illegal activities, especially in the fishing sector. In this work, the results of 5 years of monitoring and control of illegal fishing inside the MPA are presented. This research had an important impulse in 2015, thanks to the collected data and to the methodology developed within the Gaiola MedPAN Project. The experience acquired in these years resulted in the funding of the StAMM Project, a permanent station for the monitoring, control and prevention of environmental offences in the MPA.

Several studies put in evidence the relevant role of cultivated lands in the urban areas. Using GIS methodologies in order to map agricultural areas near or within the town, it is possible to analyze their relationship with the urban area. In this study, the author used several different cartography sources, like digital cartography and orthophotos, in order to locate the urban domestic gardens and the terraced landscapes accurately. The study area is a medium city of a North-East Region of Italy, Trieste. Built on a hill morphology, it had a great and fast growth in the 19th and 20th centuries. These changes deeply transformed its landform, mainly reducing its surrounding cultivated lands. At present, the residual terraced landscapes are mainly placed in the north side of the city and they represent a kind of “cultural heritage.” On the contrary, the most important garden areas are located in the terrain embankments of the south suburban areas.

This chapter considers artistic representations, showing evidence of ‘Women Church Leaders in and around Fifth-century Rome’. It focuses on two artefacts that portrayed women church leaders operating in this broad context. It addresses frescoes of deceased women painted with open gospel books in the San Gennaro Catacombs in Naples; it proposes that the most logical interpretation of the iconographic motifs associated with them is that they were women bishops, perhaps two of the women about whom Pope Gelasius complained to male bishops in southern Italy c.496. For cultural context it next considers an ivory reliquary box discovered in 1906, which depicts three pairs of men and women in the altar area of Old St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. This scene has recently been re-analysed; one of the pairs appears to have been sculpted jointly officiating the Eucharist at the basilica’s altar. Additional fifth- and sixth-century artefacts that portray women as clergy, sometimes paired with men, sometimes independently, affirm both the identification of women bishops in the two Naples catacomb frescoes and also the scene of the woman and man officiating at the altar in Old St Peters on the ivory box.

The arrangements made in ancient cities for the management and use of water varied over the extent of the Greek world, depending on local topography and geology. They also varied by time period. In the absence of detailed whole-site studies, we can no more than suggest some of those differences. Our method will be to examine one early city and one late, looking for similarities and differences. The chosen examples share the useful (for us) feature of having been destroyed, so that their ruins preserve a set of arrangements not diluted by later habitation. The examples chosen are Olynthos in northeast Greece, destroyed at the end of the fourth century B.C., and Pompeii near Naples in southern Italy, destroyed in A.D. 79. A description of each will point out features that are typical for that time period, and we will conclude with a direct comparison of the two water management systems. Olynthos (Fig. 13.1) is located in northeastern Greece, at the base of the left peninsula of the set of three which also includes Mount Athos. Geological maps of the area (Institute of Geology and Mineral Exploration, “Geology of Greece” series (1:50,000), Athens, Greece, ca. 1984) show that a large limestone massif terminates just to the north of the site, and could be tapped for its karst waters. Indeed, a pipeline was found coming southward for five miles (D.M. Robinson, 1935, 219 ff and fig. 12; Robinson and Clement, 1938), from the springs near Polygyros and from northeast of the church of Hagios Nicolas. More traces of the line were observed in the plain. In Volume II of the Olynthos excavation reports (Robinson, 1930, 12), the line is thought to be sixth century because of some fragments of black-figure vases found with it in the dig, yet in Volume XII this aqueduct was declared fifth or fourth century because of its beautifully cemented joints with mortar of pure lime with a little silica (Robinson, 1946, 107). The line is described as having pipes about 3 inches thick (.45 centimeters), and therefore is probably a pressure pipe.

I am a historian, not a hydrologist, and it is well known that historians tell stories. So let me begin with one that opens up some of the themes I would like to consider. The date is around AD 400. The scene is the fringe of the small provincial town of Nola in Campania, Italy. Here was to be found the shrine of St Felix. It had recently been constructed in the middle of an elaborate complex by the bishop of Nola, Paulinus. Fountains gurgled in the courtyards of the basilica, offering natural refreshment. They also symbolized both the church’s and the saint’s therapeutic powers—the water of life, the rivers of paradise, baptismal regeneration. Rain-collecting cisterns initially met the requirements of the shrine, but these proved inadequate. The shrine became in effect parasitic on the water supply of Nola. This supply arrived both through the grand Aqua. Augusta, overall some 96 kilometres long, and from a small aqueduct that started in the hills of Abella. Now Abella was a very small nearby town that took its water into a reservoir through pipes from high mountain ridges and released the surplus down an aqueduct that both supplied Nola and irrigated the surrounding estates. The aqueduct was refurbished by the Abellans so that it fed St Felix’s shrine first and Nola second. The Nolans, however, felt deprived by the suburban complex to the point that they rioted. Yet another aqueduct, a disused one, had to be restored by the Abellans to appease the inhabitants of Nola, even though Bishop Paulinus had already been trying to persuade the Nolans that, by dividing their water with the saint, they reaped unexpected rewards, not just of a spiritual kind. The surrounding fields were better watered than they had been before; the area was better fed. Paulinus wrote in the poem (Carmen 21) that is our principal evidence for the local conflict: ‘Where rough stones lay arid in bare fields, there is now the pleasant transformation of greenery on the watered turf. . . Felix . . . has also brought here to your city the fountains that flow from heaven’ (Walsh 1975: 195-201, at p. 200; Trout 1999:192-4; Squatriti 1998:13-14).

The spectral third-generation ocean wind-wave model WAVEWATCH III (WW3), operational since January 2005 at the Department of Applied Sciences of the University “Parthenope” (Italy), was adopted for simulating wave propagation in the Gulf of Naples. The model was coupled with PSU/NCAR mesoscale model (MM5), which gives wind forcing at 1-h intervals. The model was implemented using a four-nested grid configuration covering the Mediterranean Sea until the Gulf of Naples, the inner mesh with higher resolution (1 km × 1 km). The simulated directional spectral waves were compared with APAT storm wave data recorded in winter 2000 offshore the Gulf of Naples and with wind and wave data collected by Servizio Idrografico e Mareografico offshore the mouth of river Sele in the Gulf of Salerno. The implementation of the wave model with reference to the December 2004 storm on the coastlines of the Gulf of Naples gives evidence of the need of a regional wind-wave model for this orographically complex area.

The aim of this work is to simulate the Urban Heat Island (UHI) in a medium size Mediterranean city (Lecce, IT) and to analyze its consequences for thermal comfort. We use the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model (version 3.2), that accounts for the urban structure with a multilayer urban parameterization (BEP+BEM i.e. the Building Effect Parameterization (BEP) combined with the Building Energy Model (BEM)). Three hot and cloudless summer days have been simulated and results have been compared with field data collected during an experimental campaign performed over the whole summer in the city of Lecce, Italy. In the model, the structure and shape of the city are reproduced using detailed data related to different urban classes, urban fraction and building morphometry. For the residential urban classes, different thermal parameters that are representative of building materials in the oldest and the newer part of the city, are used. Results show that UHI reaches, on average, its maximum intensity (4–5 °C) just before sunrise, and its minimum (2 °C) occurs during the day. Model validation inferred through statistical analysis shows overall a better model performance for the historical city centre than for the suburban area. This suggests that further refinement of the building representation in the outskirts might still be required. Consequences of the increased urban temperature are evaluated in terms of thermal comfort. The maximum thermal stress occurs during the central hours of the day, while, the minimum thermal stress occurs during the twilight hours.