Several territories, e.g. high mountain areas in developing Countries, are significantly influenced by climate change, increase of human activities and tourism. Impacting fuels, together with bad daily habits and obsolete technologies, cause often high levels of indoor air pollution; this reduces the quality of life and determines a number of respiratory diseases especially in elderly people, women and children. Moreover the increase in touristic inflow contributed to a progressive deforestation, and the consequent alteration of the hydro-geological system, and to the accumulation of waste.

SERA project aims at promoting useful strategies for sustainable development of high altitude territories, through an energy and environmental planning, in accordance with the Resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly concerning the sustainable mountain development (UN, A/Res/62/196, 2008). For this purpose a thorough analysis has to be conducted to identify the specific features of reference context from several points of view. On this basis, two main key actions can be carried out:

- Survey on possible energy efficiency measures, proposal and experimentation of technical/technological solutions, which may be integrated with the local territory, in order to meet population needs, in terms of simplicity of realization, use of local materials, environmental compatibility, exploitation of available renewable energies and indoor air quality improvement. The best solutions will be chosen on the basis of technical-economic feasibility studies and their impact during the entire life cycle.

- Definition of guide lines about sustainable development of territory and active support to local Government and Authorities for adopting correct policies aimed to a low environmental impact energy planning, through a “sharing” process of scientific knowledge gained during the project.

A pilot project should be implemented to test technological innovation for energy efficiency and renewable sources. This phase is extremely important for its repeatability and visibility, and could mobilize resources for further upgrade and replication in wider areas.

Latest information about SERA project:

Khumbu Valley was selected as reference context and a thorough analysis was conducted to identify its specific features; at the same time, a survey on efficiency solutions has been started, concerning building sector, renewable energies and distributed generation. To support the experimental development stage and the creation of a pilot repeatable project, an on-site investigation was organized in Chaurikharka village (Sagarmatha zone, Solukhumbu district, 27° 41’ 48” N, 86° 43’ 17” E, 2,660 m a.s.l.) from November 17 to December 3, 2013. The village and its inhabitants have been the focus of a cross assessment, aimed to:

- Detect the presence of markers of early atherosclerosis with ultrasound and estimate the value of systolic pulmonary pressure (Institute of Clinical Physiology, National Research Council of Italy, Pisa, Italy).

- Analyse respiratory function and health, by means of spirometry and a validated questionnaire; measure the indoor carbon monoxide (Biomedical Sport Studies Center, University of Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy).

- Continuous indoor measurements of Black Carbon and ambient aerosol number size distribution (Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, National Research Council of Italy, Bologna, Italy).

- Energy and structural audit, in order to get the housing main features of the village (construction types, lifestyle and customs are useful to design technological eco-sustainable solutions as well as integrated within the local context). This phase was directly on charge of Perugia University.