This open access volume collects emerging issues in Environmental and Civil Engineering
originating from outstanding doctoral dissertations discussed at Politecnico di Milano in 2021.
The advanced innovative insights provided are presented with reference to the relevant
sustainable development goals (SDGs) hoping that scientists technicians and decision makers
will find them as a valid support to face future sustainability challenges.Indeed the fast
evolution of our society often falls short in properly taking into consideration its
relationship with the environment which is not only the primary source of any resource and the
sink of all the wastes we generate throughout our activities but also the cause of most of the
loading and constraints applied to structures and infrastructures. The lack of a proper
consideration of the relationship between the needs of both the society and the environment may
lead to strong disequilibria generating a large amount of threats for a robust resilient and
continuous development. In this perspective the SDGs set by the United Nations represent the
criteria to revise our development model towards the ability to conjugate different needs to
build a safe relation between anthropic activities and the environment. Civil and Environmental
Engineering plays a relevant role in providing methods approaches risk and impact assessments
as well as technologies to fulfil the SDGs. Research in these fields may in fact provide
technical knowledge and tools to support decision makers and technicians in: (i) planning
mitigation and adaptation actions to climate change extreme weather earthquakes drought
flooding and other natural disasters (ii) designing efficient and sustainable strategies for
resources exploitation minimizing the impact and the unequal distributions (iii) increasing
the safety of structures and infrastructures under exceptional loadings and against the
deterioration due to their lifecycle (iv) adopting a holistic risk management approach and
appropriate technologies to reduce pollution and environment deterioration which increase
vulnerability (v) providing a safe drinking water and sanitation system to protect human
health.
