Urban Plan and Water Infrastructures Planning: A Methodology Based on Spatial ANP

摘要

Abstract: Cities are exploding, occupying rural territory in dispersed and fragmented ways.\udA consequence of this phenomenon is that the demand for utilities includes more and more extensive\udterritories. Among them, fulfilling the demand for services related to integrated water service presents\udmany difficulties. The economic costs needed to meet service demand and the environmental costs\udassociated with its non-fulfilment are inversely proportional to the population needing service in\udrural areas, since that population is distributed across a low-density gradient. Infrastructure planning,\udwithin the area of competence, generally follows a policy of economic sustainability, fixing a service\udcoverage threshold in terms of a “sufficient” concentration of population and economic activity\ud(91/271/CEE). This threshold, homogenous within the territorial limits of a water infrastructure plan,\udcreates uncertainty in the planning of investments, which are not sized on the actual, appropriately\udspatialized, demand for service. Careful prediction of the location of infrastructure investments would\udguarantee not only economic savings but also reduce the environmental costs generated by the lack\udof utilities. Therefore, is necessary to create a link between water infrastructure planning and urban\udplanning, which is responsible for the future spatial distribution of service demand. In this study,\udthe relationships between the instruments of regulation and planning are compared by a multi-criteria\udspatial analysis network (analytic network process (ANP)). This method, tested on a sample of a city\udin southern Italy, allows us to optimize the design and location of the investment needed to meet\udthe service criteria, looking at the actual efficiency of the networks. The result of this application is a\udsuitability map that allows us to validate the criteria for defining urban transformations.