Similarities and Differences in the Evaluative Methods

Abstract

The awareness in the last few years surrounding the use of natural resources and landscape transformations has led to the development of several tools designed to evaluate the effects of human actions on them. The environmental evaluation methods, born in the USA, have known different disciplinary evolutions according to the following factors: firstly, regarding the object to assess; secondly, pertaining to the national juridical framework; and thirdly, relating to the progress in this field. Today we can affirm that we have, more or less, as many assessment techniques as countries. In fact, other than the Environmental Assessment Impact and Strategic Environmental Assessment, common to different countries (including many beyond European borders), each nation has developed its own tools related to particular aspects of reality, as mentioned briefly in the previous chapter. Here, we look to compare the two most important methods in force within Europe—those just mentioned and an Italian instrument that has as its object a property or an area known as a “landscape of interest”, more focused than others on aesthetical levels. The reason for this choice is in the contribution it can give to the development of other spatial evaluation instruments—but mostly for the questions related to the evaluation of impacts on cultural heritage.