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Large infrastructure building like the Florence Railway Station designed for high-speed rails requires a proper management of the huge quantity of waste originating from excavation activities. Such waste amounts require large areas for disposals, making abandoned areas or exhausted quarries and mines ideal sites for hosting the excavated wastes.A rectangular area of 500×70m delimiting the railway station has been excavated in two steps causing the removal of a 10m-thick soil layer per step: excavated earth and rocks would then be used for the environmental restoration of an area of 400×350m located near a former exhausted lignite quarry) in the proximity of the Santa Barbara village near Cavriglia (Arezzo).The Tuscan Regional Environmental Agency (ARPAT) have been involved in monitoring both the terrain transportation and disposals’ operations according to the approved management plan: the Environmental Regional Information System Office (SIRA) was asked to evaluate volume balancing between all the waste management cycle, with included: (a) waste extraction from railway station site building, and (b) waste disposal final destination (exhausted Santa Barbara lignite quarry).Terrestrial Laser Scanner (TLS), Simultaneous Localization and Mapping System (SLAM) systems and Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) surveys have been used to track earth and rocks excavation and disposal activities in the aforementioned sites: while RPAS systems cannot be used in underground site surveys, their usage must be recommended in open space surveys due to the ese of use if sub-centimetric precisions are not required.Multiple TLS scans alignment can result in a quite challenging task if automatic alignment software is not available, requiring manual rough alignment’s operations that can be very time consuming: two open-source solutions based on different algorithms have been evaluated.The selected survey technologies – RPAS, TLS, SLAM – have shown a great potential in earth and rocks monitoring: each technology has its own strengths and weakness, which can vary on the basis of both hardware and software technical progresses.

Complex extractive districts, such as the marble quarries in the Apuan Alps (northern Italy), require soil consumption monitoring over the years that could be achieved through high-resolution remotely sensed data. To derive 2D and 3D indicators with appropriate resolution for annual monitoring of high-resolution changes in soil consumption, aerial images, LiDAR acquisitions, satellite data, and Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) acquisitions were used. In particular, open-access Sentinel-2 multispectral satellite imagery with a spatial resolution of 10 m was used to assess cover changes (2D), and then refined by manual interpretation for 5 years (2016-2021). 3D changes were detected by comparing free aerial LiDAR data from 2009 and 2017, integrated with two stereo models obtained from Pléiades high-resolution satellite images from 2020 and 2022. 3D changes observed over the years by algebraic elevation comparison, performed in QGIS 3.x environment, highlight quarries characterized by intense mining activities (extracted marble blocks, characterized by positive elevation differences) and quarry area management (debris disposal and service infrastructure construction, characterized by negative elevation differences). The combined use of 2D and 3D change indicators can be challenging in order to correctly represent soil consumption over the years. A dual 2D/3D webgis client have been developed for proper representation of 2D/3D spatial indicators of ongoing extraction activities in the Carrara marble basin: high-resolution images have been served as tiled data, while 2D/3D spatial indicators are served as static and/or tiled vector data. Open-Source libraries have used in data processing, serving and representation inside a map interface.

La costituzione del Catasto nazionale delle Sorgenti Fisse e mobili di campi elettromagnetici, da realizzarsi in coordinamento con i catasti regionali, è prevista in adempimento all'art. 7 della Legge quadro 36 del 2001. Tale compito ha visto coinvolte tutte le agenzie regionali per la protezione ambientale per quanto di propria competenza, sia per l'ambito RF che ELF. Per quanto riguarda gli elettrodotti, l'impegno è ricaduto essenzialmente su ISPRA per il coordinamento centralizzato, su ARPA Piemonte per la definizione degli aspetti tecnici e quindi la riconciliazione dei database regionali, e su ARPA Toscana per la realizzazione tecnica dello strumento volto a divulgare i dati su piattaforma web. Tale implementazione è consistita inizialmente nell'elaborazione dei dati ottenuti dalle singole regioni per trasportarli in un unico sistema di riferimento geografico, e quindi nella predisposizione di una serie di programmi per il trasferimento in ambiente Postgres. Tale RDBMS, disponendo dell'estensione geografica PostGIS, è lo strumento più adatto a creare entità visualizzabili in ambito webGIS. L'implementazione di un applicativo basato su UMN MapServer, che sfrutta le potenzialità offerte dal client p.mapper, ha tra l'altro offerto la possibilità di definire l'ambito di visualizzazione su scala regionale, e quindi di rendere il prodotto immediatamente distribuibile alle singole agenzie. Infine, l'elaborazione di opportuni indicatori aggregati relativi alle entità territoriali (Comuni, Province, Regioni), e di indicatori di pressione riferiti ai singoli elementi del catasto, ha evidenziato le potenzialità delle caratteristiche geografiche dei tool utilizzati per mettere in risalto la presenza di possibili criticità sul territorio ed individuare le realtà amministrative che subiscono il maggior impatto su scala nazionale.

In the last years the Regional Environment Protection Agency of Tuscany (ARPAT) has made an evaluation of the ELF (Extremely Low Frequencies) exposure of population trough the means of an integrated system which includes the implementation of the Regional Power Lines Archive (CERT)1 as a data source for the calculation software. The storage of 380 and 220 kV lines has been possible entering the lines routes, the profiles and the technical diagrams of high and very high-tension power lines -- obtained from the lines operators after an agreement with Tuscany Region -- in the CERT archive. Differently from the 380 and the 220 lines, the storage of 132 kV is still in progress. The PLEIA calculation software -- developed in a IFAC-ARPAT agreement -- allows the 3-dimensional calculation of magnetic field values in proximity of power lines. A control procedure has been developed to guarantee the quality of theoretical valuations obtained by using the data of the CERT archive. The controls concerned the geometrical features of pylons and buildings got from the numeric cartography. DGPS (Differential GPS) measures have allowed to improve the precision of the pylons coordinates; all the geometric features stored in the archive have been verified (straddles amplitude, lower wire height, span catenary constant) for each pylon using a laser telemeter. The same tool has been used to measure the distances of closest buildings to power lines and their height. In conclusion, some 3-dimensional visualization environments (ESRI ArcScene and GoogleEarth) have been tested as further support by the technicians involved in the controls.

A flesh-specific oligonucleotide custom array was designed to study gene expression during blood orange ripening. The array included 301 probes derived from a subtracted SSH library, a cDNA-AFLP collection, and a set of regulatory genes from the Harvest citrus database. The custom array was hybridized using samples of Moro, a pigmented cultivar, and Cadenera, a common cultivar, at three different ripening stages: the immature phase, the halfway point of maturation (corresponding to the start of Moro pigmentation) and the full ripening. Of the 301 probes, 27 in total, corresponding to 20 different transcripts, indicated differential expression in stage-to-stage and/or cultivar-to-cultivar comparisons. Transcripts encoding for anthocyanin biosynthesis represented most of the total over-expressed probes. The remaining differentially expressed transcripts were functionally associated with primary metabolism as flavor biosynthesis, defense and signal transduction. The expressed products associated with probes indicating differential expression were confirmed by qRT-PCR. The microarray was designed considering a small collection of sequences useful for monitoring specific pathways and regulatory genes related to fruit ripening and anthocyanin pigmentation. The main novelty of this customization is the use of expressed sequences specifically derived from blood orange flesh to study different cultivars and ripening stages, and the provision of further information about processes related to anthocyanin pigmentation in citrus fruit flesh.