A preliminary assessment of the construction and operation costs of the municipal landfill of Potenza (Southern Italy) is presented. Such an assessment provides a reference for future planned investigations of other existing landfills, in order to quantify the energy, material, and financial investments needed as well as to compare them with improvement or alternative strategies, also taking into account scale factors and waste composition. Geographical Information System (GIS) and Emergy Synthesis (ES) methods are jointly used for the description and evaluation of a managed landfill system in the Province of Potenza (Southern Italy). Focus is placed on the municipal landfill of the town of Potenza, identified as the largest waste management site in the Region. Data about land use, geomorphological structure, existing ground and surface water bodies, and environmental services, were organized within a GIS framework in order to obtain a detailed description of the area and its environmental constraints, providing at the same time suitable data for the emergy evaluation. Results of ES provide a comprehensive understanding of the demand for environmental support to the whole process and may serve as a reference case for GIS-Emergy evaluation of other small and large landfill sites in Italy as well as for needed alternative strategies of waste management.
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Franzese, P.P., Russo, G.F., Ulgiati, S. (2008). Geographical Information System (GIS) and Emergy Synthesis Evaluation of Urban waste Management. In: Barbir, F., Ulgiati, S. (eds) Sustainable Energy Production and Consumption. NATO Science for Peace and Security Series C: Environmental Security. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8494-2_23
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