Measuring Social Inclusion in Europe: a non-additive approach with the expert-preferences of public policy planners.

This paper introduces a normative, expert-informed, time-dependent index of Social Inclusion for European administrative regions in five countries, using longitudinal data from Eurostat. Our contribution is twofold: first, our indicator is based on a non-additive aggregation operator (the Choquet Integral), which allows us to model many preferences' structures and to overcome the limitations embedded in other approaches. Second, we elicit the parameters of the aggregation operator from an expert panel of Italian policymakers in Social Policy, and Economics scholars.

Constructing a comprehensive disaster resilience index: The case of Italy.

Measuring disaster resilience is a key component of successful disaster risk management and climate change adaptation. Quantitative, indicator-based assessments are typically applied to evaluate resilience by combining various indicators of performance into a single composite index. Building upon extensive research on social vulnerability and coping/adaptive capacity, we first develop an original, comprehensive disaster resilience index (CDRI) at municipal level across Italy, to support the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030.

A Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis based methodology for quantitatively scoring the reliability and relevance of ecotoxicological data.

Ecotoxicological data are highly important for risk assessment processes and are used for deriving environmental quality criteria, which are enacted for assuring the good quality of waters, soils or sediments and achieving desirable environmental quality objectives. Therefore, it is of significant importance the evaluation of the reliability of available data for analysing their possible use in the aforementioned processes. The thorough analysis of currently available frameworks for the assessment of ecotoxicological data has led to the identification of significant flaws but at the same time various opportunities for improvement.

A risk-based methodology for ranking environmental chemical stressors at the regional scale.

A "Risk-based Tool for the Regional Ranking of Environmental Chemical Stressors" has been developed, aimed at supporting decision-makers in the identification of priority environmental contaminants, as well as priority areas, to be further assessed. The tool implements a methodology based on a quantitative Weight-of-Evidence approach, integrating three types of information, identified as "Lines-of-Evidence" (LoE), namely: LoE "Environmental Contamination" (including data on chemical contamination in environmental matrices in the region, thus providing information on potential population exposure), LoE "Intake" (including results from human biomonitoring studies, i.e.

Interinstitutional variation of caesarean delivery rates according to indications in selected obstetric populations: a prospective multicenter study.

The aim of the study was to identify which groups of women contribute to interinstitutional variation of caesarean delivery (CD) rates and which are the reasons for this variation. In this regard, 15,726 deliveries from 11 regional centers were evaluated using the 10-group classification system. Standardized indications for CD in each group were used.

The application of the Ten Group classification system (TGCS) in caesarean delivery case mix adjustment. A multicenter prospective study.

Background: Caesarean delivery (CD) rates are commonly used as an indicator of quality in obstetric care and risk adjustment evaluation is recommended to assess inter-institutional variations. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether the Ten Group classification system (TGCS) can be used in case-mix adjustment.

Methods: Standardized data on 15,255 deliveries from 11 different regional centers were prospectively collected.

Development of a site-specific ecological risk assessment for contaminated sites: part I. A multi-criteria based system for the selection of ecotoxicological tests and ecological observations.

A two modules Decision Support System (DSS-ERAMANIA) was developed in order to support the site-specific Ecological Risk Assessment (ERA) for contaminated sites. Within the first module, the TRIAD and the Weight of Evidence approaches were used to develop a site-specific Ecological Risk Assessment framework including three tires of investigation. Selected ecological observations and ecotoxicological tests were compared according to Multi Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) methods and expert judgment, and the obtained ranking was used to identify a suitable set of tests, at each investigation tier, to be applied to the examined case study.

Decision support-oriented selection of remediation technologies to rehabilitate contaminated sites.

A methodology for selecting remediation technologies is presented as part of a decision support system for the rehabilitation of contaminated sites. It includes 2 steps: In the 1st step, a pool of suitable technologies is selected within a technologies database according to their applicability to site-specific conditions; in the 2nd step, the selected technologies: are ranked according to a multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) approach. The MCDA was applied to allow for a transparent procedure and for the integration of expert analyses.