Environmental Nanosafety
Research activities span from characterization of engineered nanomaterials in products and environmental media along life cycle stages to human health as well as ecological risk assessment in order to support sustainable manufacturing and use of nanotechnologies. The aim is to improve our understanding of release, fate and transport of engineered nanomaterials and related exposure scenarios as well as toxicological effects to human health as well as the environment, and to develop and apply adequate methodologies for a sound risk assessment.
Non-conventional ways of addressing potential risks (e.g., Weight of Evidence approaches, Expert Elicitation, Multi Criteria Decision Analysis techniques) are adopted, thus taking into account the deep uncertainties that currently pervade every step of the risk assessment procedure, especially when applied to nanomaterials, and implemented into user-friendly software-based decision support systems.
Climate Change Risk Assessment and Management
The primary aim of the research unit is to develop and apply methodologies for the analysis of environmental impacts and risks related to climate change and natural hazards. Interdisciplinary approaches and tools (e.g. risk and vulnerability assessment, multi criteria decision analysis, spatial indicators, decision support systems, ecological risk models) are employed for the assessment of impacts associated to one or more environmental stressors at different spatial and temporal scales (e.g. climate variability and change, chemicals, land use changes). Particular emphasis is given to the development of Regional Risk Assessment (RRA) and Multi-Risk Assessment (MRA) methodologies able to consider the complex relations between multiple hazards and exposed receptors on different natural and human systems. Research activities are also devoted to the assessment of the consequences of climate change on environmental fate and transport of chemicals and on the evaluation of related risks for ecological and human systems.
All the research products are implemented in GIS-based Decision Support Systems (DSSs) that guide stakeholders and decision makers in the spatial analysis of the potential consequences associated to climate change and in the definition of suitable risk management and adaptation options.
The interdisciplinary work is carried out in collaboratio with research groups from the Euro-Mediterranean Centre on Climate Change (CMCC, www.cmcc.it) and the Venice Centre for Climate Studies (VICCS, http://www.unive.it/nqcontent.cfm?a_id=172748).
Environmental Chemical Contamination
The research activities focus on the development and application of methodologies and tools for the assessment of risks and impacts of chemical substances on ecosystems and human health, in order to support the sustainable management of contaminated areas and natural resources. Our research activities include:
- development and application of methodologies and tools for ecological and human exposure and risk assessment for contaminated areas (soil, freshwater and groundwater);
- development and application of regional risk assessment procedures for the prioritisation/optimisation of sustainable solutions for the rehabilitation of contaminated sites and brownfield sites;
- sustainability assessment of remediation technologies;
- development of Decision Support Systems (DSSs) to support and improve the decision-making process in contaminated sites assessment and management;
- integration of environmental and socio-economic information by developing dedicated Multi Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) methodologies to support end-users and decision-makers in the decision- making process;
- provision of regulatory and methodological support in the implementation of the new European Regulations such as REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals) and CLP (Classification, Labelling and Packaging of substances and mixture).