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Minimetrò (MM) is a ropeway public mobility system that has been in operation in the city of Perugia for about ten years to integrate with urban mobility and lighten vehicular traffic in the historic city center. The purpose of this work was to evaluate the impact of MM as a source of pollutants in the urban context, and the exposure of people in the cabins and the platforms along the MM line. These topics have been investigated by means of intensive measurement and sampling campaigns performed in February and June 2015 on three specific sites of the MM line representative of different sources and levels of urban pollution. Stationary and dynamic measurements of particle size distribution, nanoparticle and black carbon aerosol number and mass concentrations measurements were performed by means of different bench and portable instruments. Aerosol sampling was carried out using low volume and high-volume aerosol samplers, and the samples nalysed by off-line methods. Results show that MM is a considerable source of atmospheric particulate matter having characteristics very similar to those of the common urban road dust in Perugia. In the lack of clear indications on road dust effect, the contribution of MM to the aerosol in Perugia cannot be neglected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Risk assessment was estimated starting from environmental hazard data and vulnerability and • exposure information of architectural buildings. • Three different risk levels can be assessed starting from air pollution and meteorological data measured by national monitoring station network. • Vulnerability and exposure describe the conservation condition based on damage intensity. • Risk assessment as a tool to plan maintenance and restoration activities according a priority scale. Limestone monuments are generally subjected to natural and anthropogenic environmental threats. This paper describes a methodology to assess the risk of surface recession damage, due to air pollution and meteorological factors, to architectural buildings in Italy. Through the elaboration of environmental data and information on conservation conditions of cultural heritage, three different risk models were identified: i) the territorial risk, obtained combining territorial hazard information with the density of historic buildings defined at municipal scale; ii) the individual risk, attained by overlapping territorial hazard data at municipal scale, with surface vulnerability and exposure information of a single monument; iii) the local risk, defined starting from the combination of territorial hazard at sub-municipal scale, with vulnerability and exposure information of a single monument. The first model refers to the risk of an aggregate of cultural assets located in a municipality, while the other two indicators identify the damage risk of a single monument at municipal and sub-municipal spatial scales. The proposed method was applied, using GIS (Geographical Information System) application, to identify the three risk models for Italian architectural buildings using environmental and monument conservation data updated to 2018. The territorial hazard was defined by assessing the material loss damage expressed as surface recession and quantified starting from air pollutant concentrations and meteorological data measured by the monitoring station network of Italy in 2018. The vulnerability and exposure information were extracted from the Italian Risk Map of Cultural Heritage system. The obtained results allowed to identify the potentially most aggressive areas from climatic and environmental point of view and the architectural buildings most exposed to surface recession risk. The methodology described in this paper can be therefore considered as a tool that can be used, by policy makers, to plan priority maintenance and conservation activities in order to reduce the progress and the intensity of decay on outdoor cultural properties. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to evaluate the small scale spatial variability of nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ) and selected VOCs (benzene, toluene, acrolein and formaldehyde) concentrations using Land Use Regression models (LURs) in a complex multi sources domain (64 km 2 ), containing a mid-size airport: the Ciampino Airport, located in Ciampino, Rome, Italy. 46 diffusion tube samplers were deployed within a domain centred in the airport over two 2-weekly periods (June 2011–January 2012). GIS-derived predictor variables, with varying buffer size, were evaluated to model spatial variation of NO 2 , benzene, toluene, formaldehyde and acrolein annual average concentrations. The airport apportionment to air quality was investigated using a Lagrangian dispersion model (SPRAY). A stepwise selection procedure was used to develop the linear regression models. The models were validated using leave one out cross validation (LOOCV) method. In this study, the use of LURs was found to be effective to explain spatial variability of NO 2 (adjusted-R 2 = 0.72), benzene (adjusted-R 2 = 0.53), toluene (adjusted-R 2 = 0.50) and acrolein (adjusted-R 2 = 0.51), while limited power was achieved with the formaldehyde modeling (adjusted-R 2 = 0.24). For all pollutants LURs output showed that the small scale spatial variability was mainly explained by local traffic. The airport contribution to the observed spatial variability was adequately quantified only for acrolein (0.43 (±0.69) μg/m 3 in an area of about 6 km 2 , SW located to the airport runway), while for NO 2 and formaldehyde, only a little portion of the spatial variability in a limited portion of the study domain was attributable to airport related emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]