Italy joined the so-called "Industry 4.0" European framework in 2016, which designed and approved a national plan to regulate this key issue for regional development. To better support such a framework, the present study attempts to quantify the contribution of the Italian regions to the output...

This paper illustrates a two-step procedure for measuring land degradation (LD) risk in agriculture. The procedure estimated the potential costs of LD from a standard index of land sensitivity to degradation (ESAI) by calculating, over 784 local districts covering the entire Italian territory, a...

A better understanding of strength and weaknesses in rural systems through an adequate set of comprehensive and regularly updated indicators, indicates the necessary prerequisite for a flexible response to policy needs, such as policy targeting and monitoring rural development.The present study...

Land degradation is a global problem which involves different climatic, soil, vegetation, agricultural and population conditions. Originally attributed to the most arid regions of the world, desertification risk has been rapidly increased also in temperate regions. In Mediterranean Europe, high...

Soil sealing may be considered as a negative externality of the economic growth, because the sealed soil loses several of its ecological functions. The analysis of land cover changes carried out by traditional data sources, allows only a relatively rough estimation of soil sealing, since it is a...