Corsi S., Oppio A., Dendena B., 2015, ESIA (Environmental and Social Impact Assessment): a Tool to Minimize Territorial Conflicts, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 43, 2215-2220.
Starting from the spatial analysis of territorial vulnerability and local conflicts against the infrastructure development, the paper focuses on the potential benefit of ESIA in order to achieve an integrated assessment of environmental, economic and social impacts within the decisional process and to minimize the level of social conflicts. With the aim of strengthening the ESIA procedure on the side of environmental and social assessment two multidimensional indexes have been defined: the Vulnerability Index and the Local Conflict Index. The calculation and the comparison of the indexes in the case study of Lombardy Region provide interesting results, showing a) an unexpected lack of correlation between the degree of territorial vulnerability and the disputes b) providing synthetic information for addressing the development of new infrastructures.
