URBAN QUALITY ASSESSMENT BY MEANS OF INDICATORS AND INDEXES: APPLICATION OF AN ACOUSTIC QUALITY INDEX AND ANALYSIS OF OTHER SIGNIFICANT INDEXES FOR SMART CITIES EVALUATIONS

摘要

Quality of Life (QoL) in Urban Areas is becoming a strategic issue for city planners. In Europe, the rapidly increasing urban population amplifies the need of more attention on good quality urban areas creation and preservation. QoL assessment is a multidisciplinary concept involving environmental, social, urban planning features and subjective estimation. The general objective of the research is to provide a procedure for standardizing the evaluation of urban QoL levels and to perform its optimisation. The method is based on definition of indicators and indexes that, by means of relative weights (RW) and weighting factors (WF), can take into account an association of a large number of playing factors. Among the various indexes, the Noise Quality Index (NQI), obtained considering noise pollution, traffic intensity, population involved etc. was compared using a different but similar methodology and the results are in good agreement showing potential improvements. RWs and WFs have allowed to reach a significant objective judgment, taking into account the national/international legislation and displeasure levels. In this way the NQI contributes to weigh up QoL levels of different urban areas. In the paper a new proposal is considered, on the basis of the results of other researchers in the same field, considering a preliminary definition of a CityNAC Index, that takes into account Noise, Air pollution and Climatic conditions that can be considered some of the physical elements that contribute to the definition of a global life quality index.