Department of Civil Engineering/DICIV

PhD in Risk and Sustainability in Systems of Civil, Building and Environmental Engineering

Maria Macchiaroli

Prof. Fernando Fraternali

Prof. Antonio Nesticò

Prof. Gianvittorio Rizzano

Prof. Settimio Ferlisi

Ing. Vincenzo Pellecchia

XXX Cycle – Year 2018

Current climate changes have also led to growing attention to the use of water resources in Western European countries. In particular, in Italy, the summer of 2017 – typified by a prolonged drought – caused emergencies due to insufficient water in regions traditionally with ample availability. The problem, therefore, arises of efficient resource management through a correct Integrated Water Service (SII) model. The rational approach must be applied both to the maintenance and development of the infrastructural asset useful for the supply, conservation and distribution of water, the disposal of wastewater and its purification, as well as to the management model for optimizing the provision of the service. public. In both cases, the operational scheme prescribed by the National Authority (ARERA), through a tight and constant standardization of address, sees a strong push to rationalize the operating principles aimed at achieving the industrialization of the sector.
This research is part of this issue, outlining a multi-criteria model that allows the optimal selection of investments in water infrastructures within the Program of Interventions with respect to an operational scenario of a multi-subject and multi-interest nature, therefore complex and often conflicting (public purposes versus entrepreneurial ambitions of the Managers). The model proposes the application of the AHP within an innovative logic scheme also with respect to the current national legislation.
The drive towards industrialization of the sector, promoted in Italy ab origine with the Galli Law of 1994, was consolidated both in the Consolidated Law on the Environment of 2006 and with a series of measures to follow, in compliance with European guidelines (Directive 2000 / 60 / EC and subsequent additions) on the competitive administration of primary assets and their conservation.
Within a modern interpretation of public services of economic value (Council of State 5409/12), the management by a private entity calls for sensitivity and speculation across a broad spectrum. From the vexed question on ethical correctness in the delegation to non-exclusively public bodies of the most relevant services for the community (medical assistance, education, transport, water distribution, etc.); the intangible significance of certain assets associated with primary services (water, environment, cultural and social matrices of the various communities, etc.); the technical-financial parameters to be reconciled to ensure the entrepreneurial appeal of economic areas that are often non-commercial.
Italy has chosen the English model as a rough reference for the restructuring of the SII, but only after eighteen years (in 2012) from the Galli reform to entrust the national regulation to an independent Authority that could allow the evolution of the sector in a manner sufficiently detached from the political ambitions of controlling the system, from the local aspirations to maintain the income positions acquired in the past decades and from the private objectives of unconditional exploitation of the resource.
To date, the transition, which has undergone undoubted conditioning by the outcome of the 2011 referendum abrogating the profit components in the management of the IWS, can be said to be in a stalemate due to the very recent renationalization intentions advanced by the current government executive.
Conversely, the industrial project in the last decade has advanced in much of the country, albeit with different degrees of implementation. In fact, in the South, the fragmentation of the areas subject to a single Manager and the vertical fragmentation of the services provided substantially prevent those economies of scale and objectives which represent the driving force behind the principle of uniqueness promoted by the law.
With a view to the balanced reconciliation of the interests at stake for the stakeholders involved, the proposed model also develops a module that allows the temporal hierarchy of the investments deemed optimal with respect to the critical issues of the management areas for which they are planned. With the implementation of a route useful for the sensitivity analysis, the results of a time schedule set according to the needs of the public regulator (EGA) – and therefore of the community – recorded in the Area Plan, can be compared with one calibrated in relation to the objectives of optimizing the entrepreneurial return typical of private management. 

Finally, a more specific mention of the condition of Southern Italy.

The synoptic framework proposed in chapters III and – with reference to Campania – in chapter V, defines a condition of delay in the alignment of the authorities in charge and, consequently, of the entrepreneurial components, with respect to the rest of the country. The effects of the in-house management of public services, and therefore also of the SII, have left deep scars in the social fabric connected with the red balance sheets of the municipalities in charge of local administration, with the strong discredit in the perception of the quality of service provision in the eyes of citizens, with substantial disservices (relating to the obsolescence of infrastructures) and image (linked to the vulgar political exploitation of extremely complex and articulated issues) recorded by public opinion and the media.

Therefore, the conditions for allowing a real increase in the level of service quality still seem today more linked to strategic investments of a public nature than to the effective possibility of triggering virtuous mechanisms of a private nature.