Francesco Pilla

University College Dublin | UCD · College of Engineering

Developing the quality of public transport has an efficient impact to attract more users to switch modes from private vehicles to public transport, which has a tremendous capability in reducing the traffic congestion, noise and CO2 emissions the urban areas. For this reason, policy makers and scholars aim to enhance the supply quality of public tra...

Due to the rise of e-commerce, there has been a significant increase in commercial transactions, playing a crucial role in driving economic growth. However, the delivery systems need help locating addresses and dealing with issues such as missed deliveries and exacerbating problems in last-mile logistics, such as traffic congestion and environmenta...

This paper delves into the realm of public transport system enhancement, a critical consideration for decision makers due to its profound impact on citizens' lives and government investments. The primary objective is to assess the quality of public bus transport supply and identify the most effective improvements to heighten passenger satisfaction...

For choosing the optimal option for multiple issues, the multiattribute decision-making (MADM) technique within a Fermatean fuzzy environment is a well-known and significant method. This paper presents a novel superiority inferiority ranking (SIR) approach for Fermatean fuzzy sets in group decision-making using multicriteria to reduce investment ri...

Urban logistics has become part of the citizens' life, who often use e-commerce options to buy goods and groceries. The constant increase of this phenomenon which has been witnessed in recent years led to a consequent increase in the externalities associated with it, such as air pollution, traffic, land occupation and accidents generated by the veh...

The Delphi-based scenarios (DBS) development implies the assumption of different choices, through the gathering of information and the assessment of alternative resolutions (Panpatte and Takale, 2019). During the last decades, the spread of environmental hazards has increased quickly, much to request different responses in order to develop a sustai...

The Delphi method is a structured communication approach used to gather and process expert judgments in order to make predictions or estimates about a specific issue. In the Futures Studies (FS) context, the Delphi method is combined with different methods, however, one of the main combinations is with the scenario method, forming the Delphi-based...

The Delphi technique is a commonly applied method for (among the various uses) achieving consensus from a group of knowledgeable experts. This approach is frequently employed to generate and prioritize ideas, identify potential solutions, and make decisions in various contexts through a series of iterative rounds. In the Futures Studies (FS) contex...

In the Future Studies context, the scenario development process is an established method for the identification of future projections, useful to avoid future threats and take different actions in the present. The development of future scenarios is often combined with different participatory approaches, one among many is the Delphi method, widely ad...

Building energy use is one of the largest global demands, accounting for 36% of final energy use and 39% of energy and process-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Green plans are the recommended planning technique for reducing the energy demand of buildings without changing the current built environment. This study investigates the effect of ne...

Although the transport systems have improved in recent years, they are still leading to different issues for sustainability. Developing a sustainable future of transport becomes essential and since the future is characterized by various trajectories, there is a need for careful and detailed planning and management of alternative solutions. Among th...

Nature-based solutions (NbS) can be beneficial to help human communities build resilience to climate change by managing and mitigating related hydro-meteorological hazards (HMHs). Substantial research has been carried out in the past on the detection and assessment of HMHs and their derived risks. Yet, knowledge on the performance and functioning o...

Shared mobility solutions can respond to the social inclusion needs of communities, eliminating the costs of owning a private vehicle. In particular, bike -sharing services are an active mobility solution that especially favours sustainability since the bicycle is a transport mode with a low environmental impact and with positive effects on the hea...

Hyperspectral imageries are often degraded by systematic sensor-based errors known as “striping noises”. This study implements a spectral-based regression algorithm from highly correlated consecutive bands, i.e. left band, right band or both, to model and reconstruct the abnormal pixel values, stripe noises, in various bands of PRISMA (PRecursore I...

Evaluating flood susceptibility, identifying flood-prone areas, and planning reasonable landscape patterns are important measures in promoting sustainable urban development and flood mitigation. To this end, this study evaluated the flood susceptibility using a neural network model depending on a flood inundation map created from satellite data fro...

The increasing level of marine plastic pollution poses severe threats to the marine ecosystem and biodiversity. Open remote sensing data and advanced machine learning (ML) algorithms could be a cost-effective solution for identifying large plastic patches across the scale. The potential application of such resources in detecting and discriminating...

The growth in e-commerce that our society has faced in recent years is changing the view companies have on last-mile logistics, due to its increasing impact on the whole supply chain. New technologies are raising users’ expectations with the need to develop customized delivery experiences; moreover, increasing pressure on supply chains has also cre...

Citizen science is advocated as a response to a broad range of contemporary societal and ecological challenges. However, there are widely varying models of citizen science which may either challenge or reinforce existing knowledge paradigms and associated power dynamics. This paper explores different approaches to citizen science in the context of...

Hydrological modelling to address the problem of flood risk corresponding to climate change can play an important role in water resources management. This paper describes the potential impact of climate change on an urban river catchment using a physically based hydrological model called Soil Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). The study area considered...

Changes in streamflow within catchments can have a significant impact on agricultural production, as soil moisture loss, as well as frequent drying and wetting, may have an effect on the nutrient availability of many soils. In order to predict future changes and explore the impact of different scenarios, machine learning techniques have been used r...

This is a Masters Thesis completed at University College Dublin, Ireland in 2017 which involved augmenting an off-the-shelf electric bike with sensors to enable new services to be delivered to cyclists in cities. The application of primary interest was to control the cyclist's ventilation rate based on the concentration of local air pollutants. Det...

This article aims to analyse the performance of green roof in runoff reduction. A case study has been conducted through a deployed green roof at the custom house quay building in Dublin, Ireland. Modular green roofs have been deployed which have IoT scales associated to it for measuring the effective reduction in runoff. Hydro-meteorological variab...

Environmental exposure to active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) can have negative effects on the health of ecosystems and humans. While numerous studies have monitored APIs in rivers, these employ different analytical methods, measure different APIs, and have ignored many of the countries of the world. This makes it difficult to quantify the sca...

Environmental exposure to active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) can have negative effects on the health of ecosystems and humans. While numerous studies have monitored APIs in rivers, these employ different analytical methods, measure different APIs, and have ignored many of the countries of the world. This makes it difficult to quantify the sca...

Forest fires impact on soil, water, and biota resources. The current forest fires in the West Coast of the United States (US) profoundly impacted the atmosphere and air quality across the ecosystems and have caused severe environmental and public health burdens. Forest fire led emissions could significantly exacerbate the air pollution level and, t...

Investigating the impact of land cover change in hydrological modelling is essential for water resources management. This paper investigates the importance of landcover change in the development of a physically-based hydrological model called SWAT. The study area considered is the Dodder River basin located in southern Dublin, Ireland. Runoff at th...

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a paradigm characterized by a network of embedded sensors and services. These sensors are incorporated to collect various information, track physical conditions, e.g., waste bins' status, and exchange data with different centralized platforms. The need for such sensors is increasing; however, proliferation of technol...

The spread of climate change uncertainty among citizens requires the adoption of different methods to understand the public view and to take efficient actions. In the Big Data framework, a large amount of data from location-aware devices are available, which can constitute a valuable information resource. However, in social networks, the lack of ge...

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a paradigm characterized by a network of embedded sensors and services. These sensors are incorporated to collect various information, track physical conditions, e.g., waste bins’ status, and exchange data with different centralized platforms. The need for such sensors is increasing; however, proliferation of technol...

Increases in extreme hydro-meteorological events due to climate change and decreases in soil permeability and infiltration due to urbanization have increased the risk of flooding, particularly in cities. The limitation of the expansion of conventional drainage systems to manage excess stormwater leads to the application of nature-based solutions (N...

The abatement performance of photocatalytic coatings on NOx concentrations in real-world street canyons remains an open question considering the very different conclusions reached by the few previous field studies. To fill this gap, an intensive experimental campaign was carried out in summer 2018 in the outskirts of Bologna in Italy. The experimen...

Social media services such as TripAdvisor and Foursquare can provide opportunities for users to exchange their opinions about urban green space (UGS). Visitors can exchange their experiences with parks, woods, and wetlands in social communities via social networks. In this work, we implement a unified topic modeling approach to reveal UGS character...

Transport emissions, including road, rail, air, and marine transportation, account for a large part of the overall emissions; hence, there is a need to review strategies for managing associated issues and coping with negative impacts. A simultaneous improvement in economic efficiency can help us achieve our desired objectives in the concerned conte...

Social media services such as TripAdvisor and Foursquare can provide opportunities for users to exchange their opinions about urban green space (UGS). Visitors can exchange their experiences with parks, woods, and wetlands in social communities via social networks. In this work, we implement a unified topic modeling approach to reveal UGS character...

The sole objective and scope of the Special Issue are to offer novel, more sustainable, and cost-effective solutions to mitigate the risk of HMZs by providing a clear and detailed roadmap for practical implementation of the suggested solutions. The inclusion of cross-disciplinary ideas and approaches in the solution strategies can effectively reduc...

Forest fires impact on soil, water and biota resources has been widely researched. Although forest fires profoundly impact the atmosphere and air quality across the ecosystems, much less research has been developed to examine its impact on the current pandemic. In-situ air pollution data were utilized to examine the effects of the 2020 forest fire...

The increasing level of marine plastic pollution poses severe threats to the marine ecosystem and biodiversity. The present study attempted to explore the full functionality of open Sentinel satellite data and ML models for detecting and classifying floating plastic debris in Mytilene (Greece), Limassol (Cyprus), Calabria (Italy), and Beirut (Leban...

Urban expansion and densification brings both opportunities and challenges. Regeneration of urban areas is therefore a significant priority, which needs to take into account environmental quality, social justice and sustainable development. Transforming cities and regions into vibrant, sustainable and resilient living places has become a key global...

Evaluating the Impact of Nature-based Solutions: Appendix of Methods is a compilation of methods of determination for indicators of NBS performance and impact. Experts in a wide variety of disciplines from eighteen EU H2020 NBS projects and a number of supporting European programmes were directly involved in the production of this Appendix of Metho...

This chapter introduces 12 categories of societal challenges that NBS can address (Section 4.1). These are conceptually mapped against the UN Sustainable Development Goals. For each of the 12 societal challenge areas, Section 4.2 outlines and lists indicators to evaluate the performance and impact of NBS. It reviews the different types of NBS, give...

Selecting appropriate indicators of NBS performance and impact can be challenging, and is context-dependent. In this chapter, we present case studies from a variety of NBS demonstrations across Europe and Asia that illustrate the application of the NBS indicators and methods presented in Chapter 4 and thoroughly described in Evaluating the Impact o...

Increasing recognition of the potential ecosystem services provided by urban forests suggests a need to examine soil quality under urban conditions. Soil quality assessment tools are presently mostly applied in agricultural production, but these approaches must also be evaluated in the urban context. This proof-of-concept exploratory study evaluate...

Background: Soil spatial variability is a major concern when deciding how to collect a representative topsoil sample for laboratory analysis. Sampling design to capture site-specific variability is documented in the agricultural literature, but poorly understood for urban forest soils where soils may be characterized by strong horizontal and vertic...

Plastic pollution poses a significant environmental threat to the existence and health of biodiversity and the marine ecosystem. The intrusion of plastic to the food chain is a massive concern for human health. Urbanisation, population growth, and tourism have been identified as major contributors to the growing rate of plastic debris, particularly...

The adoption of Nature-Based Solutions (NBSs) represents a novel means to mitigate natural hazards. In the framework of the OPERANDUM project, this study introduces a methodology to assess the efficiency of the NBSs and a series of Open-Air Laboratories (OALs) regarded as a proof-of-concept for the wider uptake of NBSs. The OALs are located in Finl...

Nature-based solutions (NBS) for hydro-meteorological risks (HMRs) reduction and management are becoming increasingly popular, but challenges such as the lack of well-recognised standard methodologies to evaluate their performance and upscale their implementation remain. We systematically evaluate the current state-of-the-art on the models and tool...

The spatialization of socioeconomic data can be used and integrated with other sources of information to reveal valuable insights. Such data can be utilized to infer different variations, such as the dynamics of city dwellers and their spatial and temporal variability. This work focuses on such applications to explore the underlying association bet...

To bring to fruition the capability of nature-based solutions (NBS) in mitigating hydro-meteorological risks (HMRs) and facilitate their widespread uptake require a consolidated knowledge-base related to their monitoring methods, efficiency, functioning and the ecosystem services they provide. We attempt to fill this knowledge gap by reviewing and...

Clean air is a fundamental necessity for human health and well-being. Anthropogenic emissions that are harmful to human health have been reduced substantially under COVID-19 lockdown. Satellite remote sensing for air pollution assessments can be highly effective in public health research because of the possibility of estimating air pollution levels...

Tree diversity, on a species-, genus-, and family-level, is an important factor in securing healthy urban forests and providing ecosystem services for billions of city dwellers. Using open-source data on global tree inventories, this study examines (1) the diversity of species, genera, and family of urban street trees in eight cities internationall...

Since December 2019, the world has witnessed the stringent effect of an unprecedented global pandemic, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). As of January 29, 2021, there have been 100, 819, 363 confirmed cases and 2, 176, 159 deaths reported. Among the countries affected se...

Continued population growth and urbanization is shifting research to consider the quality of urban green space over the quantity of these parks, woods, and wetlands. The quality of urban green space has been hitherto measured by expert assessments, including in-situ observations, surveys, and remote sensing analyses. Location data platforms, such a...

The spatialization of socioeconomic data can be used and integrated with other sources of information to reveal valuable insights. Such data can be utilized to infer different variations, such as the dynamics of city dwellers and their spatial and temporal variability. This work focuses on such applications to explore the underlying association bet...

Since December 2019, the world has witnessed the stringent effect of an unprecedented global pandemic, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). As of January 29, 2021, there have been 100, 819, 363 confirmed cases and 2, 176, 159 deaths reported. Among the countries affected se...

Nature-based solutions (NBS) to address societal challenges have been widely recognised and adopted by governments in climate change and biodiversity strategies. Nevertheless, significant barriers exist for the necessary large-scale implementation of NBS and market development is still in its infancy. This study presents findings from a systematic...

Continued population growth and urbanization is shifting research to consider the quality of urban green space over the quantity of these parks, woods, and wetlands. The quality of urban green space has been hitherto measured by expert assessments, including in-situ observations, surveys, and remote sensing analyses. Location data platforms, such a...

Ecosystem Services (ESs) are bundles of natural processes and functions that are essential for human well-being, subsistence, and livelihoods. The 'Green Revolution' (GR) has substantial impact on the agricultural landscape and ESs in India. However, the effects of GR on ESs have not been adequately documented and analyzed. This leads to the main h...

The evergrowing populations and increasing human activities are associated with a major increase in environmental pollution. However, their impact is still poorly understood due to the pervasiveness and spatiotemporal complexity of the phenomenon. Conventional approaches to environmental monitoring are based on networks of sparse measurement statio...

The characterization of health risks (HRA) in a population due to air pollution is crucial for the development of effective risk management policies and strategies. HRA is a formally required tool by nations as part of the decision-making process for new programs, regulations and policies that affect air quality, so it is important for decision mak...