The activities of the Fondazione ENI Enrico Mattei cover a broad
spectrum of research topics, ranging from economics to engineering, from
environmen- tal management at the industry or regional level to basic
mathematical model- ling research. It is the combination of the
activities on these last two topics that led the Fondazione to organise,
with the University of Geneva, a work- shop where operation research
tools were designed with the aim to provide national and local policy
makers with appropriate analytical and policy instru- ments for
environmental management. In the recent past, attention has often been
devoted to global environmen- tal issues in which the level of policy
making is either international, through multi-country agreements on
emission control, or national, when environ- mental policies are
designed to control domestic pollution. Many environ- mental problems,
however, have a local or regional dimension. Even when their dimension
is global, e. g. in the case of the greenhouse gas effect, relevant
decisions on emission control, such as the adoption of energy saving
utilities, are taken at the local level. In many countries, the current
legislation imposes the local authorities to prepare plans and adopt
measures to control energy consumption or to reduce waste of natural
resources. It is therefore important to analyze the way in which local
or regional authorities optimise their environmental management.