Consulting on Sustainable Development indicators frameworks
Consulting on Sustainable Development indicators frameworks
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overview
overview
Indicator frameworks translate the sustainable development dimensions into measures a public administration can actually plan, monitor, and be accountable for. They turn policy goals into measurable signals — on the environment, the economy, social cohesion, health, and the quality of institutions — and make trade-offs visible to decision-makers and to citizens.
Through my independent consulting activity I support municipalities, public bodies, third-sector organisations, and research centres in designing, applying, and interpreting such frameworks. Past and ongoing collaborations include several Italian municipalities (with BES reports developed at the local scale), CGIL, NeXt — Nuova Economia per Tutti, the Euro-Mediterranean Centre on Climate Change (CMCC), and partner associations such as PLEF, AREGAI and AIQUAV. See my cv here and my publications here.
The most established line of this work — and the focus of this page — is the adaptation of the Italian BES (Benessere Equo e Sostenibile) framework to the municipal scale. The national BES, originally developed by ISTAT and CNEL, was not designed to be applied directly at the local level. I developed a methodology that brings it down to a usable, comparable, and territorially-grounded reporting standard for local administrations, documented in the handbook below.
The Handbook
The Handbook
The methodology I developed for BES at the municipal scale is documented in book form, intended as an operational manual for local administrations and practitioners: D. M. Bova, Guida per il report BES (Benessere Equo e Sostenibile) organico per comuni: manuale applicativo — Handbook to the BES (Equitable and Sustainable Wellbeing) report for towns: operative guide. Milan: Franco Angeli, 2019. The handbook walks the reader through the full pipeline: from the conceptual choice of domains, to indicator selection and adaptation to the local scale, to data handling, normalisation, and the structure of the final report that can be presented to councils and citizens.
Case study - B-BES Report for the Municipality of Vittorio Veneto
Case study - B-BES Report for the Municipality of Vittorio Veneto
It is the third instalment of a series of municipal BES reports developed within this initiative — preceded by Casale Monferrato (objective indicators) and Agrigento (subjective indicators) — and the first to combine both dimensions in a single municipality, including a dedicated survey on subjective wellbeing and its relationship with food and nutrition. Methodological innovations introduced and consolidated through the series include the "Aree Organiche" of TriBES and SuperTriBES as synthetic wellbeing dimensions, and a comparative cluster-based scoring of each indicator against all Italian municipalities, translating raw values into interpretable low/medium/high bands.
Methodology and scientific coordination: D. M. Bova. Text and analysis co-authored with G. Gucciardo.
I am grateful to the associations that promoted and reviewed the work — PLEF (Planet Life Economy Foundation ETS), AREGAI and AIQUAV — and to the partners and supporters that made it possible: CRAI SECOM, Codé CRAI Ovest, Gruppo Promotica and the Consorzio Distributori Alimentari (CDA). A further acknowledgment goes to CFI Group for the field research on subjective wellbeing, to QUhorizon for the analytical technology, and to the Municipality of Vittorio Veneto and the I.P.S.S.E.O.A. "Alfredo Beltrame" for their collaboration on the territory.
2024 Rapporto BES 2024 Vittorio Veneto -def_compressed.pdfQU-HORIZON
QU-HORIZON
Much of this work is supported by QUhorizon, the platform I developed for the automation of statistical reports on equitable and sustainable wellbeing. Its algorithms translate raw indicator data into structured BES reports and provide a cluster-based scoring that benchmarks each municipality against all Italian municipalities — turning a static set of figures into an interpretable, comparable, and reproducible assessment. QUhorizon is the computational backbone of the indicator work for cities and powered the analysis behind the Vittorio Veneto report described above.
Working together
Working together
Interested in developing or reviewing a sustainability indicator framework for your organisation? Get in touch
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