New survey instruments: studies for the environmental assessment report of the general plan in a case in Lombardy

The limits encountered in the «first generation» of environmental assessment reports, combined with the opportunity for more evolved data processing in regional and local IT systems (considered increasingly today as incubators for ideas), invoke a revision of their application sufficient to justify a true and genuine «second generation of environ-mental assessment reports» which in this case, in the Lombard town of Buccinasco, has generated experimental morphological indicators and the construction of an innovative analytical protocol based: i) on the adoption of multi-variance analysis; ii) on estimates and the spatial output of results in a Gis environment; iii) on the classification of effects detected on the basis of a Values/Negative Values/Risks model (Paolillo, 2000), thereby obtaining: x) the identification of «minimum analytical units» with respect to three geo-graphical orders: extra-urban, peripheral and intra-urban; y) the classification of centralities detected in the municipal urban framework. This allows the sustainability of planning decisions to be assessed on the basis of sounder judgements of the suitability of land for settlement.