## 7 Conclusions and Future Research  
In recent years, the maritime transport of freight has been undergoing an exponential growth, in particular thanks to the development of containerization. In order to maintain a good level of competitiveness, ports must necessarily equip their infrastructures and their terminals in order to receive container ships that are becoming increasingly large and to handle the goods transported efficiently. If the infrastructural improvement leads to an increase in port traffic, and therefore to a greater economic development of the region, it is important not to underestimate the environmental impact that these new port activities exert in the communities to which they belong, especially in the case of port cities.  
This paper presents a comprehensive decision support framework for port terminal planning that aims at an efficient handling of goods transported by container ships, while guaranteeing a minimization of the environmental footprint linked to these port activities, calculating their impact. The framework was applied to the case study of the port of Augusta, whose administration is planning infrastructural improvements to allow it to enter the container traffic market. Different ship reception scenarios have been analyzed through the framework, with infrastructural improvements that allow the port to progressively accept Feeder and Panamax ships and also aspire to become a Hub port. The results of an initial analysis of the environmental impact carried out demonstrate an increase in CO\({}_{2}\) emissions and noise emissions that will inevitably impact the community of the town of Augusta. Of course, a proper demand forecast for the port [29] would help to correctly estimate the environmental impact of future infrastructure projects. Attention should be paid also to other impacts that have not been investigated in depth in this paper (e.g., waste and garbage disposal); in future research a qualitative approach could be developed to take into account social-related issues concerning the construction of a new container terminal. Moreover, a proper estimation of economic costs for both new terminal equipment and infrastructure and environmental measures should be performed to verify the balance with the benefits associated to the improvements. However, the adoption of this simplified framework to the case study provides a first suggestion of impact mitigation measures that can be of help to port administrators in making their own decisions.  
Conceptualization, N.G., M.S., E.T., M.I.; methodology, N.G., M.S., E.T., M.I.; software, N.G., M.S.; data curation, N.G., M.S.; writing--original draft preparation, N.G., M.S.; writing--review and editing, N.G., M.S., E.T., M.I.; supervision, E.T., M.I.; funding acquisition, M.I. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
The work has been partially financed by the project \"THALASSA-Technology and materials for safe low consumption and low life cycle cost vessels and crafts\" (unique project code CUP B46C18000720005) under the programme \"PON Ricerca e Innovazione 2014-2020\".  
Not applicable.  
Data Availability Statement: Data are available from the authors upon request.  
The authors declare no conflict of interest.