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Giovanni Gulisano

Other affiliations: University of Calabria
Bio: Giovanni Gulisano is an academic researcher from Mediterranean University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Life-cycle assessment & Sustainability. The author has an hindex of 14, co-authored 38 publications receiving 639 citations. Previous affiliations of Giovanni Gulisano include University of Calabria.

Papers
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A systematic and critical review was developed, highlighting which multi-criterial and/or participatory methods have been associated with LC tools and how they have been integrated or complemented, and the intensity of the involvement of stakeholders.

111 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a case study about growing Calabrian olives, which is the most important crop in terms of surface area at a regional level, is presented, where the authors propose an innovative and integrated approach, i.e., the Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment, a methodology that is still under development within the conceptual framework of Life Cycle Thinking.

98 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Results highlighted that impact categories mostly contributed to performance differences and public deciders can be supported in deciding which farming practices should be encouraged, which social domains must be paid more attention, and where social problems mostly occur.
Abstract: Recently, Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) has been developed under the methodological framework of Life Cycle Thinking (LCT) to evaluate the social impacts that emerge during the overall life cycle of a product or service. There is not yet a standardized methodology for S-LCA as there is for environmental LCA (eLCA), due to the nature of social impacts that do not depend only on the processes themselves, but also on the behavior and context of actors (manufactures, consumers, local community members, etc.). One of the most critical steps in the application of S-LCA concerns the choice of criteria for selecting affected actors, impact categories, subcategories, and the taxonomic relation among them. Moreover, the importance (in terms of weight) of these impacts may be felt differently by affected actors, confirming the importance of the context within which impacts arise. In this sense, the integration of participatory tools can be useful in making the S-LCA more locally relevant. The aim of the present study is twofold. First, we will outline a methodology that combines S-LCA with two research tools. The first is the focus group, adopted from qualitative research. The second is the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), adopted from operational research, which belongs to the framework of Multicriteria Decision Analysis (MCDA). These have been used to make the S-LCA more locally relevant and to legitimate the criteria used. Second, we will test this methodology by applying it to a specific field, i.e., 3 production areas and 3 different crop systems of citrus growing in the Calabria region in Southern Italy. Citrus growing is one of the most important agricultural sectors at regional level, and it is also well known for issues of social concern, particularly in relation to immigrant workers. The results show a number of differences between cases and could offer useful insights to both local decision makers, such as agricultural entrepreneurs, and to those public decision makers that design and implement territorial planning strategies. Results have allowed the authors to rank the social performance of each case and to reflect on the most critical steps in conducting an S-LCA. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2015;11:383–396. © 2015 SETAC Key findings The integration of qualitative techniques and a multicriteria in sLCA allows catching local specificities by involving local experts and stakeholders Results highlighted that impact categories mostly contributed to performance differences Public deciders can be supported in deciding which farming practices should be encouraged, which social domains must be paid more attention, and where social problems mostly occur The methodological application allowed the authors also to foresee the feasibility of the integration of LCA and LCC results as inputs in sLCA to conduct a Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA)

98 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors make a sustainability assessment of different wine-growing scenarios located in Calabria (Southern Italy) that combines conflicting insights, i.e., environmental and economic ones, by applying Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC) to identify the main hotspots and select the alternative scenarios closest to the ideal solution through the VIKOR multicriteria method.
Abstract: The wine sector is going through a significant evolution dealing with the challenges of competition issues in international markets and with necessary commitments to sustainability improvement. In the wine supply chain, the agricultural phase represents a potential source of pollution and costs. From the farmers’ point of view, these contexts require them to be more attentive and find a compromise among environmental benefits, economic benefits, and costs linked to farming practices. This paper aims to make a sustainability assessment of different wine-growing scenarios located in Calabria (Southern Italy) that combines conflicting insights, i.e., environmental and economic ones, by applying Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC) to identify the main hotspots and select the alternative scenarios closest to the ideal solution through the VIKOR multicriteria method. In particular, the latter allowed us to obtain synthetic indices for a two-dimensional sustainability assessment. Conventional practices associated to the espalier training system represent the best compromise from both environmental and economic points of view, due to the higher yield per hectare. The choices regarding Functional Unit (FU) and indicators were shown to have a high influence on results.

58 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a critical review about which underlying paradigms have been applied in social life cycle assessment (sLCA) literature is presented, and the authors make a distinction between the interpretivist and post-positivist approaches used by the studies.
Abstract: The present paper aims to offer an explanation for the diversity of methodological approaches proposed up to the present for social life cycle assessment (sLCA), tracking down its roots in the cultural and scientific heritage of social sciences and especially management sciences. A second aim is to shift the current debate on methodologies to an epistemological level, presenting the first results of an ongoing critical review about which underlying paradigms have been applied in sLCA literature. This paper moves from the hypothesis that the diversity of positions in philosophy of science and the “multiparadigmatic” character of social sciences have had repercussions on sLCA literature since its beginnings, probably in an unconscious manner. Therefore, a discriminating reflection on the scientific and disciplinary inheritance that can represent the roots of sLCA has been conducted. The philosophy of science and the role of different research paradigms in social sciences have been deepened to provide an overview of the main elements of a paradigm (in terms of ontology, epistemology, and methodology). Finally, a brief but critical review of 133 selected scientific contributions on sLCA has been conducted to highlight which paradigms have been applied in sLCA studies. Recognizing that boundaries between paradigms are subtle and that researchers are rarely conscious of which paradigm underpins their works, a distinction between the interpretivist and post-positivist approaches used by the studies has been carried out on the basis of a text analysis conducted by identifying the main “literal” criteria. From an initial population of 209 studies, we excluded those concerning reviews of sLCA literature and those with selected criteria that were insufficient to catch the epistemological viewpoint of the authors. Among the remaining papers (133), 73 % has been ascribed to the group of interpretivism-oriented paradigms and only 24 % could be ascribed to the post-positivist one; the remaining 3 % is represented by studies with both characteristics. This data deserves some attention because, since the beginnings of sLCA methodologies, most sLCA publications explicitly suggest having the same underlying perspectives as environmental life cycle assessment (eLCA). In light of the reflections carried out, we argue that it is important, before going into methodological questioning issues, to be aware of which paradigm is underlying. Indeed, in this phase of sLCA development, scholars should go beyond the simple methodological debate and recognize the “multilayered” nature of social phenomena and the multiparadigmatic characteristics of social and management sciences.

50 citations


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01 Jan 2009
TL;DR: The aim of the research presented in this thesis is to create new methods for design for manufacturing, by using several approaches of KE, and find the beneficial and less beneficial aspects of these methods in comparison to each other and earlier research.
Abstract: As companies strive to develop artefacts intended for services instead of traditional sell-off, new challenges in the product development process arise to promote continuous improvement and increasing market profits. This creates a focus on product life-cycle components as companies then make life-cycle commitments, where they are responsible for the function availability during the extent of the life-cycle, i.e. functional products. One of these life-cycle components is manufacturing; therefore, companies search for new approaches of success during manufacturability evaluation already in engineering design. Efforts have been done to support early engineering design, as this phase sets constraints and opportunities for manufacturing. These efforts have turned into design for manufacturing methods and guidelines. A further step to improve the life-cycle focus during early engineering design is to reuse results and use experience from earlier projects. However, because results and experiences created during project work are often not documented for reuse, only remembered by some people, there is a need for design support. Knowledge engineering (KE) is a methodology for creating knowledge-based systems, e.g. systems that enable reuse of earlier results and make available both explicit and tacit corporate knowledge, enabling the automated generation and evaluation of new engineering design solutions during early product development. There are a variety of KE-approaches, such as knowledge-based engineering, case-based reasoning and programming, which have been used in research to develop design for manufacturing methods and applications. There are, however, opportunities for research where several approaches and their interdependencies, to create a transparent picture of how KE can be used to support engineering design, are investigated. The aim of the research presented in this thesis is to create new methods for design for manufacturing, by using several approaches of KE, and find the beneficial and less beneficial aspects of these methods in comparison to each other and earlier research. This thesis presents methods and applications for design for manufacturing using KE. KE has been employed in several ways, namely rule-based, rule-, programmingand finite element analysis (FEA)-based, and ruleand plan-based, which are tested and compared with each other. Results show that KE can be used to generate information about manufacturing in several ways. The rule-based way is suitable for supporting life-cycle commitments, as engineering design and manufacturing can be integrated with maintenance and performance predictions during early engineering design, though limited to the firing of production rules. The rule-, programmingand FEA-based way can be used to integrate computer-aided design tools and virtual manufacturing for non-linear stress and displacement analysis. This way may also bridge the gap between engineering designers and computational experts, even though this way requires a larger effort to program than the rule-based. The ruleand planbased way can enable design for manufacturing in two fashions – based on earlier manufacturing plans and based on rules. Because earlier manufacturing plans, together with programming algorithms, can handle knowledge that may be more intricate to capture as rules, as opposed to the time demanding routine work that is often automated by means of rules, several opportunities for designing for manufacturing exist.

727 citations

01 Jan 2016
TL;DR: The social research theory methods and techniques is universally compatible with any devices to read and is set as public so you can download it instantly.
Abstract: social research theory methods and techniques is available in our book collection an online access to it is set as public so you can download it instantly. Our books collection saves in multiple countries, allowing you to get the most less latency time to download any of our books like this one. Kindly say, the social research theory methods and techniques is universally compatible with any devices to read.

216 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a comprehensive literature review is conducted to investigate recent developments, current challenges, and future perspectives in the LCSA literature, and a complete discussion about the overarching role of systems thinking to bring tools, methods and disciplines together, and provide practical examples from the earlier studies that have employed various system-based methods.
Abstract: Tracking the environmental impacts of production, use, and disposal of products (e.g., goods, and services) have been an important issue in the global economy. Although Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a widely applied method to track these environmental impacts and support policies, it has certain limitations and an isolated way of evaluating the environmental impacts with no consideration of social and economic impacts and mechanisms. To overcome the limits of current LCA, three mechanisms have been proposed in the literature: (1) broadening the indicators by including social and economic indicators in addition to the environmental impacts; (2) broadening the scope of analysis from product-level assessment to national and global levels; (3) deepening the assessment by inclusion of more mechanisms to account for interrelations among the system elements, uncertainty analysis, stakeholder involvement, etc. With these developments, LCA has been evolving into a new framework called Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA). Practical application of LCSA requires integration of various methods, tools, and disciplines. In this study, a comprehensive literature review is conducted to investigate recent developments, current challenges, and future perspectives in the LCSA literature. According to the review, a high number (40%) of LCSA studies are from the environmental science discipline, while contributions from other disciplines such as economics (3%) and social sciences (9%) are very low. On broadening the scope of analysis, 58% of the studies are product-level works, while 37% quantified the impacts at national level and achieved an economy-wide analysis, and only 5% of the studies were able to quantify the global impacts of products using LCSA framework. Furthermore, current applications of LCSA have not considered the rebound effects, feedback mechanisms, and interrelations of the system of interest sufficiently. To address these challenges, we present a complete discussion about the overarching role of systems thinking to bring tools, methods and disciplines together, and provide practical examples from the earlier studies that have employed various system-based methods. We discuss the importance of integrated system-based methods for advancement of LCSA framework in the following directions: (1) regional and global level LCSA models using multi-region input-output analysis that is capable of quantitatively capturing macro-level social, environmental, and economic impacts; (2) dealing with uncertainties in LCSA during multi-criteria decision-making process and expert judgments in weighting of LCSA indicators; and (3) integration of system dynamics modeling to reveal complex interconnections, dependencies, and causal relationships between sustainability indicators.

187 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A comprehensive literature review has been performed to analyse which tools have been used by the scientific community for the sustainability evaluation of renewable energy systems during the past ten years and shows that LCA and MCDM applied individually do not achieve a comprehensive sustainability evaluation.
Abstract: Sustainability is a concept that integrates at least three dimensions: environmental, economic and social. Energy systems are usually evaluated as a key contributor for sustainable development, needing the methodology used for their evaluation to address many indicators, some are quantitative, while others are qualitative. It is therefore a challenge to choose the best methodology to accomplish this task. In this article, a comprehensive literature review has been performed to analyse which tools have been used by the scientific community for the sustainability evaluation of renewable energy systems during the past ten years (2007–2017). The purpose of this work focuses on verifying that the methodological framework integrated by the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) and Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) combination is the right tool for the sustainability evaluation of renewable energy systems and obtaining a set of sustainable indicators, evaluation methods and the context where they are applied (such energy policies, electrical supply and evaluation of projects). A knowledge database has been built from the scientific experience of 154 cases of sustainability evaluation in renewable energy systems, with special focus on photovoltaic systems. The results of this revision show that LCA and MCDM applied individually do not achieve a comprehensive sustainability evaluation, due to their intrinsic high degree of uncertainty and the different kinds of analysed parameters. The hybrid framework of LCA and MCDM applied in combination appears as the most appropriate approach for this purpose, and specifically the combination of LCA and Analytic Herarchic Process (AHP), the most frequently used by the scientific community, for its simplicity and robustness for sustainable evaluation in energy systems.

152 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyzed consumer interest in buying organic wines with no additives, evaluating whether and to what extent consumers are willing to pay a higher price for organic wine with no added sulfites.

151 citations