Role and development of composite indicators for climate change and sustainable development policies and practices

Abstract

The overall scope of my thesis is to explore several methodological aspects of building composite indicators as decision-making tools for part of the elements of climate resilient pathways. Climate resilient pathways (mitigation and adaptation) may involve transformations in economic, social, technological and political decisions and actions at different scales which can be monitored, reported and evaluated by means of composite indicators. In the context of adaptation and disaster risk reduction, I focused on “Adaptive Capacity” and “Resilience” at regional, provincial and local scales in Italy as the core elements of vulnerability assessments and disaster risk reduction strategies (first and third manuscripts). In the context of mitigation, I investigated the energy efficiency potentials of the OPEC member countries in oil and gas sector which are responsible for huge amount of global GHG emissions (second manuscript).