Territorial vulnerability and local conflicts perspectives for waste disposals siting : a case study in Lombardy region (Italy)

The interactions between economic activities and environmental quality is a field of research deeply explored since the second half of last century due to a growing public awareness about negative impacts of human actions on landscape. As shown by the large number of local communities' oppositions to the development of waste disposals, energy technologies and transport infrastructures, the loss in ecological value of environmental resources and the resulting decrease of human wellbeing are the most relevant concerns of opponents. Within this context, the paper explores the existence of a relationship among territorial vulnerability and local controversies emerged around the localization of new facilities, in order to provide decision-makers with an analytical tool for siting controversial facilities. The research has been developed according to four different phases: 1) the assessment of territorial vulnerability and the development of a Vulnerability Index (VI); 2) the introduction of supervised Artificial Neural Network (ANN) with the aim of weighting the VI criteria; 3) the analysis of intensity and spatial distribution of local oppositions and the development of the Local Conflict Index (LCI); 4) the investigation of oppositions against waste disposals. The analysis has been carried on the Lombardy region (Italy) since it shows the highest number of oppositions in the country. The results show that the synthetic territorial vulnerability assessment combined with the analysis of local conflicts could effectively be used for improving decisions about new facilities siting. The oppositions against waste disposals are relevant but mostly not directly linked to the territorial vulnerability.