Decision-Making CIA Process (DeMaCIA) to Support SNAI Strategies: The Case of Castelluccio Inferiore in Basilicata, Italy

The debate on Inner Areas has produced the SNAI strategy (since 2014). It involves public and private actors, aiming to reverse the dynamics of small towns’ depopulation and the citizenry’s inaccessibility to primary services. We configured an intervention project for the Lucanian territory with an interdisciplinary approach and evaluated it through scenario simulation (DeMaCIA). The study is realized within an Agreement between the Municipality of Castelluccio Inferiore (PZ) and the Polytechnic University of Turin (2020–2025). Analyzing the use of resources deployed over the past 10 years (SNAI and PNRR) reveals a lack of population involvement. While identifying possible strategies to trigger active resident participation, we hypothesized the configuration of a Renewable Energy Community (REC) embedded in the site of the Old Mills, as a way to enable the collective sharing of the environmental and cultural resources of their area. The paper focuses on the methodology adopted by building a process to be applied in other fragile contexts.