This report presents the development of a Decision Support System (DSS) designed to evaluate and predict the resilience and attractiveness of Italian territories, with the overarching goal of supporting sustainable territorial development. The DSS allows decision-makers to explore territorial dynamics, understand the drivers of resilience and attractiveness, and simulate alternative scenarios to inform the decision-making process. The report explains how the system operates and illustrates its main steps and components.
The development of the DSS follows a structured construction framework based on four key stages and begins with an assessment of decision-makers’ needs. Local governments were identified as the primary stakeholders, given their central role in territorial planning and public administration. DSS have been shown to enhance decision-making quality, improve organizational performance, and strengthen management control in public sector contexts. In this regard, the proposed DSS aims to offer local authorities a data-driven tool to support evidence-informed decisions.
The DSS provides a comprehensive overview of territorial attractiveness and resilience across territories. By examining the relationship between these outcome variables and the underlying territorial features, the system enables users to identify relevant patterns and drivers. To operationalize these capabilities, two main applications were developed: “Exploration” and “Prediction”.
The Exploration functionality focuses on analyzing the level of association between selected territorial characteristics and the outcome variables. This feature supports decision-makers in identifying which factors are most strongly related to territorial resilience and attractiveness.
The Prediction functionality enables users to estimate how variations in input variables may affect future performance. To validate and demonstrate the predictive capacity of the DSS, two applications were implemented, focusing respectively on PM2.5 concentration levels and tourism flows. These applications provide concrete examples of how the DSS can support informed decision making in different domains.
Finally, the report presents the applications developed on the Amelia platform, illustrating their operational steps and user interface, and demonstrating how decision-makers can interact with the system to support informed territorial strategies.
