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Since people tend to spend more and more time visiting museums, more accurate requirements are needed for the indoor environmental conditions of these confined spaces where two primary requisites coincide in defining their optimal indoor microclimate: the need for the appropriate artwork preservation and suitable levels of indoor comfort conditions for people visiting the exhibition buildings and/or working there. Regrettably, people and artwork requirements are sometimes characterized by different reference limits of the environmental parameters that, not rarely, could potentially conflict. Another important point to consider is that museums hosted by heritage buildings (particularly in Mediterranean climates, as is often the case in Italy) are often not equipped with climatization systems because of difficulty in installing generally bulky equipment such as HVAC systems. This circumstance represents another important limit for achieving suitable conditions for the two requisites. In addition, the recent pandemic-related occurrences are pushing technicians and designers to rethink the criteria for controlling the microclimate of public buildings, and museums among them. In this paper, this issue is addressed by reviewing current regulations, standards, and handbooks (and by means of a real case example related to the Italian context) in order to ascertain whether such documentation could facilitate the development of effective rules/guidelines for proper management of indoor parameters in museums. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments are required to take proper measures to promote the use of electric and hybrid vehicles and, more generally, to push people towards sweeter modalities including walking and biking. To reach such tight and challenging goals, local institutions should be deeply involved, and universities among them. The promotion of sustainable mobility practices among commuter students must be considered indeed an effective contribution to facilitating the transition towards greener cities. On purpose, students of the University of Palermo that daily commute from their residences to the campus are considered here. These commuters, in fact, mainly adopt traditional polluting transportation means. Avoiding the recourse to these means by supporting the use of sweeter modalities such as walking, biking, public transport and vehicle pooling and sharing, would contribute to significantly reducing the associated polluting emissions. This task might be accomplished by involving students in app-based games that would reward their greener mobility behaviors. Results of a couple of in-field campaigns including a significant sample of commuter students is presented here, along with the obtainable environmental and energy benefits. The proposed method thus candidates itself as an effective tool that not only academic institutions but also local administrations could adopt to make their decarbonization pathways. Finally, it is argued whether universities (as well as local administrations) could be candidate for carbon or energy credits within the existing trading schemes because of the reduction of their energy consumption and greenhouse gases release.

Microclimate for cultural heritage plays a fundamental role in the degradation process of artefacts exhibited in museums. Generally, the Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) monitoring inside museums is based on conventional measurements of thermo-hygrometry parameters and longtime averaged measurements of atmospheric pollutants’ concentration. Unfortunately, all these approaches require electric supply and are usually characterized by a noticeable visual impact on the exhibition space, which clearly negatively affects the visitors’ experience. This paper intends to revisit and discuss a methodology (and its test application on field, to estimate the risk of damage of three artefacts displayed in an old museum of Palermo – Italy) perhaps prematurely underestimated that could usefully be re-proposed in particular contexts in which it is necessary to be careful to be as less invasive as possible, as in the case of museums housed in buildings of particular historical-cultural prestige. The discussed approach uses a non-destructive (or minimally invasive, at least) technique consisting in using two types of coupons, bi-metallic and marble ones, that allows an off-line monitoring of the indoor air aggressiveness inside museums, while avoiding consuming electricity and undesirable visual impacts on the site. Specifically, the estimated coupon damage is regarded as gauge to air aggressiveness, in order to provide an early warning of the risk of damage for the artefacts made of materials similar to those which the coupons are made of. Based on the considerations reported in the paper, the indirect evaluation of the air chemical aggressiveness through the assessment of the bi-metallic and marble coupons’ erosion seems to still candidates itself as a feasible method to be applied in complex exhibition scenes.

The tourist sector, despite the present severe constraints imposed by the sanitary emergence, can be considered as an important component of almost all countries’ economies. In Italy agriturism, in particular, has been experiences a continuously rising trend in recent years. Clearly, such great interest towards these businesses also calls for a deep attention by an energy point of view, in sight of an energy efficiency improvement, hence a lowering of the pressure that such facilities exert to the natural environment. On the other hand, the European Union has been engaged, for a long time, in awarding the tourist accommodations environmental excellence brands, like the EU Ecolabel. Unfortunately, the achievement of such excellence brands requires the capability of managing complex energy and environmental data, which is often not the prerogative of people running such facilities. In order of contributing to overcome this difficulty, and with the aim of helping the addressing of agritourism towards a Nearly Zero Energy path, we propose here a simple approach that does not require the modelling and simulation of the energy behaviour of an agritourism, being essentially based on the application of easy-to-use ARERA (Italian Regulatory Authority for Energy Networks and Environment) datasheets scheme. On purpose, an application of the method, involving two typical Sicilian agritourism, is presented. The obtained results showed the viability of the proposed methodology, although the need of an update and/or replacement of some technical datasheets arose.

Energy policy makers, architects and researchers, when designing new buildings or rehabilitating the existing ones, are engaged in the attempt of limiting the energy needs for climatization (NZEB buildings) and the environmental pressure exerted by buildings (EU Climate Action). The pursuit of this demanding assignment calls for innovative solutions in conceiving the building envelope and its energy systems. Recently, among the most effective tools for improving the energy and environmental performances of buildings, the technical interventions regarding the roofs are gaining a rising attention. Indeed, covers of buildings are responsible of a relevant part of their energy losses and, on the other hand, could contribute to increasing the UHI effect. In the paper, a simple methodology that compares the energy and environmental benefits of cool and green coverages with traditional ones is presented. The capability of limiting the UHI effect of these solutions is also analysed. The methodology is applied to four cities of the Sicilian Island, characterized by different building density and different microclimates. This in-field application shows the feasibility of the method to be used in different urban contexts, as a useful contribution to the design of new buildings or to the re-design of the existing ones.

Adapting to climate change and mitigating its impacts are the main challenges for cities today. One objective that the European Commission has set in recent decades is reducing climate change inaction, and several political actions have been implemented. Among these actions, the Covenant of Mayors led to the development and adoption of Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans (SECAPs) by many cities worldwide. A challenge that local authorities must face during the development of a SECAP is the identification of the policies to be included in the plan. This paper presents a case study to show the validity of using a hybrid analytic hierarchy process (AHP) approach and various geographic information system (GIS)-based methods to support local authorities in the decision-making process during the development of SECAPs. These methods can improve participation among the community and stakeholders, at the same time making it possible to choose the best actions to reduce emissions and energy consumption and optimally allocate financial resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]