Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
treatment and recycling integrated programs, taking into account all possible economic costs,
technical, normative, and environmental issues, is described. Finally, conclusions and future
developments about EDSS for material recovery and energy production are reported.
1. Introduction
The use of natural resources is necessary for human life and activities. Finding strategies
that can satisfy energy and material demands, be sustainable for the environment, and
preserve natural resources from depletion, seems to be a crucial point for the modern society.
This chapter is about the role of Decision Support Systems (DSS) for environmental
systems planning and management, with specific attention to material recovery and energy
production within a general waste management context. Specific DSS models and related
case studies are introduced and discussed as regards the use of wood biomasses (with specific
reference to forest biomasses and scraps coming from wood industries and public green
maintenance) for energy production in a rural context, and energy and material recovery from
the planning and management of municipal solid waste in an urbanised context. The two
mentioned issues are treated in two different sections to highlight the legislative and
technological differences beyond the “treatment” and the “possibilities of use” of biomasses
and solid wastes.
Specifically, the chapter is organised as follows. In this introduction, waste management
is introduced as the originating problem for which material recovery and energy production
represent the most important opportunities to face the problem. Specifically, the European
Union (EU) strategies to cope with waste once it has been generated, which are greenhouse
neutral energy production, recycling, and final optimal disposal, are briefly examined, since
they do represent the general framework on which the decisional problems of this chapter are
based on. The methodological possibilities to support these decisional problems are also
introduced, with specific reference to DSS, the related information management aspects and
the mathematical modelling of the decision. The state of the art as regards DSS for the two
main issues on which this chapter is based, that are energy production from biomass and
municipal solid waste management, is examined.
Two applicative sections follow, dealing with DSS for energy production from renewable
resources, and for material and energy recovery from municipal urban waste. The DSS
models and applications are based both on original work, and on previous works to which the
authors contributed to, and to which the readers may refer for further details.
The first applicative section is focused on wood biomass use to produce greenhouse
neutral energy, which, above all in rural territories, may represent an important solution not
only to reduce waste, but also to improve the economic, social and environmental
characteristics of a territory. Specifically, the possibility to use different kinds of biomasses
has been considered: scraps coming from “wood-industries”, scraps coming from public
green, and forest biomasses (according to the available biomass reported in the Forest
Management Plans). The whole supply chain is detailed in terms of strategic planning and
tactical planning, and the connections with efficient manufacturing processes planning and
management are highlighted. The second applicative section regards the formalization of
multi-objective optimization problems for municipal solid waste management in urban areas.
In this case, the DSSs can help decision makers of a municipality in the development of
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