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• Machine Learning to classify watermarked Italian paper. • XRF and FTIR spectroscopies to study late middle-aged Italian watermarked paper. • A new spatial-temporal approach to trace the local recipes and the geographical paper mills' production. • Bergamo and Bologna stand out as marked watermarked Italian paper mills. Manuscripts, illuminated codex, books, documents and letters are composite materials, traces of the past starting from the invention of the writing. In this context, dating is one of the most important information for document attribution, and watermarked papeItaly'smarkers for studying their time-spatial distribution. In the Late Middle Ages, Italy's most important centre of paper mill was located in the town of Fabriano (Marche region, Italy). Here, a selection of ten Italian Late Middle Ages watermarked papers belonging to the Corpus Chartarum Italicarum (Corpus of Italian papers) is characterised by elemental and molecular spectroscopies and collected data are analysed by Machine Learning (ML) to trace the local fabrication recipes and the geographical paper mills production. Data from portable X-ray fluorescence and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy were analysed through Singular Vector Machine, Soft Independent Modeling of Class Analogy and Moving Blocks methods. This innovative ML spatial-temporal approach based on keeping the temporal variable fixed is used to find elemental benchmarks for classifying the watermarked Italian notarial catalogue of the Late Middle Ages finding differences in the local recipes and studying the homogeneity in the paper mills' production. Results show that watermarked paper from Northern Italy, from the town of Strozza, Piacenza and Bergamo , as well as Bologna, present a high elemental and molecular homogeneity, which indicates that the hand-made processing technique could be the same helped by the proximity of the three cities, starting point for technologies exchange or influence. No heavy metals are found in the watermarked paper and K, Ca, Fe and Zn are identified as elemental benchmarks. Finally, Ca, Ti, Mn, Cr and Fe are particularly present on the edges of the watermarked papers. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Part of a larger ethnographic study on Italian youth mobilities, this paper investigates the transitions to adulthood of young returnees who have gone back to Italy after a period of living and working in Australia. Adopting the 'mobile transitions' approach, we illustrate the ways in which mobility affects transitions to adulthood. We suggest that upon return these transitions unfold like a palimpsest, where the old texts are layered over with new ones, unsettling conventions about adult life and disrupting assumptions that return is a final stage in the transition process. New meanings around adulthood emerge in these young Italians' mobile experience that continue also after return. We explore this through their aspirations for the future and their renegotiation of family relationships. Return for these young movers means bringing home a new perception of their current and future selves and especially of their role within their family of origin and Italian social and political culture. This is significant if we consider that Italy is the 'country of the long family' (Cavalli, A. 1997. "La lunga transizione all'età adulta." In Giovani del nuovo secolo. Quinto rapporto IARD sulla condizione giovanile in Italia, edited by C. Buzzi, A. Cavalli, and A. De Lillo, 38–45. Bologna: Il Mulino), where the youth condition is characterized by a delayed acquisition of autonomy and the consequent late assumption of responsibility and adult roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to describe the process of building a coherent frame for the identification of local environmental urban vulnerabilities, coping with heat waves' increasing threats, and adopting specific adaptation policies in the Emilia-Romagna region. A microclimate model (ENVI-met) was used to simulate temperature regimes in five areas of Bologna, providing ex ante maps enabling us to locate the most vulnerable areas. Adaptation measures were suggested with the support of WMO Guidance 1234 and included recommendations about the introduction of high-albedo building materials and nature-based solutions. The step-by-step methodology developed, coupling local vulnerabilities with adaptation recommendation, integrates a scientific methodology into a political decision. The results, allowing us to widely represent this city's vulnerability, are considered outstanding with respect to supporting the city's adaptation ambitions and are now part of the running Bologna General Urban Plan (PUG), which regulates building interventions, introducing the obligation for enterprises to respect or ameliorate the microclimate in all the areas in which they intervene. This tool can be replicated and adapted to any municipal area, as it integrates authoritative WMO solutions with accurate microclimate assessment, thus providing locally tailored adaptation interventions. This paper aims to support the vision, shared by both science and policy makers, of transforming cities into widely resilient systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The future of physiology has been a recurrent concern for physiologists and Physiological Societies within post-Bologna Europe and the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). Our paper provides an overview of Physiology teaching and research in Portugal, an EU member state and part of the EHEA. A descriptive study was designed to analyze data publicly available from the National Higher Education Directorate agency (DGES) from September to November 2022 to find all Portuguese syllabi containing at least one discipline related to human Physiology. A detailed database was established, including teaching staff, with a total of 365 courses/degrees and 764 Physiology disciplines. A bibliometric analysis of the identifiable lecturers' scientific production between 2017 and 2022 was made using Web of Science and PUBMED databases. Physiology is part of all health-related professions. However, universities and technical colleges differ greatly in programs, staff backgrounds, and scientific profiles. Medical schools were found to provide the most complete formation. Noteworthy, the profession of Physiologist has practically no expression within the EHEA, compared with the USA-UK realities. A better knowledge and understanding of these Physiology modalities in teaching and research within the EHEA will be instrumental to defining a stronger identity for European Physiology in the near future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Antonio da Parma (d. 1327) was a philosopher and physician, active in Bologna in the early fourteenth century, and associated with so-called "Bolognese Averroism." His philosophical works are increasingly better documented. While his medical works are much less studied, his commentary – written between 1310 and 1323 – on the first book of Avicenna's Canon , had a considerable influence on later commentators. This paper presents his analysis of the notion of 'complexion', a notion central to his anthropology for the philosophical issues it seeks to address: the possibility, for example, of defining the specific nature of the human body – as compared with other natural species – or of conceiving a scientific and universal discourse when confronted with the extreme variability of individual bodily complexion, which is at the heart of medical practice. Taking from Galen and Avicenna their 'relativistic' analysis of the well-balanced complexion, Antonio uses the idea of a latitude of individual complexion within the limits set by the natural species, to thereby make this picture of the human body coherent with the principles of Aristotelian natural philosophy. In so doing, he addresses the relationship between matter and form in a human body, the individuation of human bodies, or the principle of identity of a singular body. The paper concludes with a transcription of the relevant passages from Antonio's commentary on Avicenna's Canon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The removal of rust stains is a common but challenging problem. • A new method for rust removal from ancient glass, using sodium dithionite, is presented. • For the first time, this new method was applied to the medieval stained-glass windows of the Santa Croce or Notari chapel in the Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna. The removal of rust is always a demanding challenge, whatever the material on which it formed. Many methods have been proposed and used when dealing with stone, paper and so on. For what concerns glass, in the past, the removal of rust stains has always involved the use of rather aggressive substances, such as EDTA or oxalic acid, which, if not applied in an extremely controlled manner, could damage the glass itself or deposit material that was difficult to remove. In this paper we present a new method, derived from a study for the removal of rust from stone and based on the use of sodium dithionite, that is demonstrated to be highly effective without any risk of damaging the glass. At first, the use of compresses soaked with sodium dithionite buffered solution was tested in laboratory on original medieval glass samples. The good results and the absence of any risk for the integrity of the glass led to the use of this new method for the first time in an important restoration, the medieval stained-glass windows of the Santa Croce (Holy Cross) or Notari chapel in the Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna, Italy. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bologna, Italy, with its history of good governance, progressive welfare policies, community work, and participation has engendered powerful discourses informing policy and institutional innovation. Yet, a recent city-wide mixed-method action-research (AR) project, designed to document and tackle health inequalities, showed a significant North–South divide for a range of health indicators and an unequal distribution of social determinants of health across the most socio-economically deprived city areas. The AR project also examined the potential of the city's initiatives for community development and health promotion in addressing health inequalities. In this paper, we focus on a recent institutional innovation called 'Uffici reti e lavoro di comunità' (Network and community work units, NCWUs), established by the Bologna municipality in 2016 to promote the decentralization of powers, strengthen community networks, and foster the engagement of citizen organizations in taking care of the material and social living environment. The results of the AR project indicate that the NCWUs, whilst not designed as a policy initiative to reduce (health) inequalities, have a potential to do so by supporting more effective community action to address the determinants driving those inequalities. Through a critical re-thinking of the concepts of power and participation, they also suggest promising directions to overcome some of the limitations of community development approaches in contributing towards greater well-being and equity for people and communities, underlining local learning which could be applied across different geographies nationally and internationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medieval Bologna was a vibrant and dynamic city with hundreds of artisans, craftsmen, students, government officials (and other professionals), as well as animals, all sharing the same streets, neighborhoods, and waterways. As this paper will show, medieval officials were highly concerned with keeping their city and its environs, safe and healthy, and devoted significant amounts of time and resources to achieve these goals. Using Bologna as a case study, this article maps in GIS over one hundred regulations from the city's urban statutes from 1245-67, to examine public health strategies. In doing so, it will demonstrate that medieval officials in Bologna employed a spatial logic as they created health regulations and oversaw the construction and maintenance of infrastructure. This spatial logic was grounded in an understanding of movement and an awareness of how, where, and when people, animals, goods, water, and waste moved through the city. In this way, the knowledge of space and movement were critical aspects of public health strategies which officials deployed to maintain a healthy and working city. • Demonstrates that medieval governments created and implemented preventive health measures prior to the Black Death. • Shows that medieval officials used knowledge of space and mobility to promote healthy and safe cities. • Uses urban statutes from medieval Bologna to conduct a spatial analysis in GIS. • Integrates data from historical and environmental sources. Public health scholars recognize that location-dependent characteristics including environmental factors (water and air quality), human factors (activities and population density), and infrastructure (roads, sewer systems, and buildings) influence both human and non-human health. While the regulation of public health is often thought of as a characteristic of modernity, managing the environment, human behavior, and other location contingent risks are not recent developments.1 Past medical theories, of course, could be quite different, and this article adds to the growing number of studies that demonstrate that medieval and premodern urban governments consciously strove to create healthy and safe spaces. This recent scholarship has challenged the longstanding narrative which casts the Black Death as the driving force behind the development of public health strategies, and has instead demonstrated that urban governments across Europe implemented numerous hygienic regulations and administrative oversights at least a century prior to the outbreak.2 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main aim of the paper is to provide a chronological overview of the development and history of the study of journalism at the Faculty of Political Science from its foundation in 1970 to the present day. Four key periods are identified in the paper, i.e.: 1) the one-year and two-year study period; 2) the four-year study period; 3) the period of implementation of practical work in journalism studies; 4) the period of implementation of the Bologna reform. The paper relies on records, published texts and transcripts of conversations with professors of political science and journalism who, in various ways, participated in the development of this study at the Faculty of Political Sciences, which now spans more than 50 years. The main part of the work is focused on recording the facts that were relevant for upgrading the study of journalism and what the study is today in the Croatian context. This paper confirms that the only constant in the development of the study of journalism is the constant re-examination of the conception and reform thereof as extensively as possible. Digital technology requires quick response, knowledge and skills, but the concern for fair access to the journalism profession has remained the same throughout the decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the relation between Shannon's information entropy and trips made by cyclists in an urban context. Such entropy indicator depends on people distribution across a territory in a specific time. Its evaluation and temporal evolution have multiple applications in transport planning, from the specification of demand distribution models to the calibration and validation of transport demand models to be used where transport data are scarce. This feature is crucial in transport planning, as the lack of robust data to estimate travel demand is still a common challenge, especially for cycling mobility. The entropy indicator has been applied to the cyclists' case in the Italian city of Bologna, using approximately 165,000 GPS traces recorded from April to September 2017. The results are encouraging because the entropy indicator is able to explain the evolution of the agents' distribution throughout a day across the territory. However, it is suggested that future research may further deepen the concept to test its transferability, and to better establish its sensibility to other case studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reconstruction of 3D geometries starting from reality-based data is challenging and time-consuming due to the difficulties involved in modeling existing structures and the complex nature of built heritage. This paper presents a methodological approach for the automated segmentation and classification of surveying outputs to improve the interpretation and building information modeling from laser scanning and photogrammetric data. The research focused on the surveying of reticular, space grid structures of the late 19th–20th–21st centuries, as part of our architectural heritage, which might require monitoring maintenance activities, and relied on artificial intelligence (machine learning and deep learning) for: (i) the classification of 3D architectural components at multiple levels of detail and (ii) automated masking in standard photogrammetric processing. Focusing on the case study of the grid structure in steel named La Vela in Bologna, the work raises many critical issues in space grid structures in terms of data accuracy, geometric and spatial complexity, semantic classification, and component recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on a study of the life course of 40 young people (aged 18–35) in Bologna (Italy), who are active in eight different political organizations. It explores whether the political organization, given that the city's political context is the same for all participants, affects the variation of their pathways. It does so by answering the following question: which phases in the lives of young participants are interconnected with the political organizations they are engaged in? To evaluate the impact of the organizational context on young participants, we will take into consideration three dimensions: the degree of bureaucratization, forms of action, and political orientation. Situated at the intersection of youth and social movement studies, this paper aims to advance our understanding of the connections between primary and political socialization processes in shaping young participants' mobilization and sustained participation within different political organizations. Our empirical findings show that, if the degree of bureaucratization was constantly salient in the two phases, on the other hand political orientation was more salient during participants' mobilization and the forms of action during participants' sustained participation. In the conclusion, the paper critically discusses the empirical findings of our analysis of the respondents' narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One can only know where a rock bridge is once one measures it. In addition, to measure it, you need the rock mass to fail. This critical problem is ignored by many, and engineers continue to refer to rock bridges as geometrical distances between non-persistent fractures. This paper argues that this rather simplistic approach can lead to non-realistic failure mechanisms. We also raise the critical question of whether the inappropriate functioning of strength equations centred on the measurement of rock bridge percentages could result in misinterpreting the risk of failure. We propose a new interpterion, aptly called the Bologna Interpretation, as an analogy to the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics, to highlight the indeterministic nature of rock bridges and to honour the oldest university in Europe (Bologna University). The Bologna Interpretation does not negate the existence of rock bridges. What rock bridges look like, how many there are, and where they are, we do not know; we can assume their existence and account for their contribution to rock mass strength using a potential analogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The presence of moisture in historic buildings, especially from rising damp, is extremely widespread and severe, causing materials' deterioration, internal discomfort and bad thermal insulation of external walls. Although this phenomenon is widely studied in the literature, the available solutions are frequently only partially effective, also due to the lack of reliable and compatible techniques to monitor the amount of moisture inside porous building materials, especially in heritage buildings where multiple restrictions exist. In this paper, a new sensorized ceramic plug was developed, to be inserted in historic masonry walls for the remote monitoring of moisture. The plug includes a moisture sensor that is currently used for soil irrigation purpose in agriculture and a ceramic envelope of tailored properties. The plug was developed in laboratory following a step‐by‐step testing program, which took into account both the specific features of the sensor (requiring a strong research effort to be transferred to building materials) and those of historic walls. After a first set of laboratory tests, the sensorized ceramic plug was validated in small‐scale laboratory walls and in a real historic masonry in the monumental Certosa cemetery in Bologna, Italy. The results are extremely encouraging, as they show how the new plug can provide valuable information about the rising damp evolution, and in fact, the data were correlated with the changes in the concurrent environmental parameters in the area of the cemetery. The results also suggest some possible measures to improve the sensorized ceramic plug in the near future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adaptive façades represent a viable and effective technological solution to reduce the building energy demand for cooling while achieving interesting aesthetic effects on the building envelope to screen solar radiation. During the last decade, many different design solutions, including those based on shape memory alloys, have been experimented to obtain appropriate responses without being dependent on electro-mechanically actuated systems. Several recent and ongoing studies have been published in the scientific literature regarding the different actuator typologies, as well as the different properties of the materials used, which usually determine the adaptive solution characteristics after a series of complex and time-consuming simulations using specialised dynamic modelling software. Due to the time and resources required, this kind of evaluation is usually delivered during the last and more advanced design stage as a form of assessment of already-taken architectural and technological choices. The study reported in the paper aims to offer a quick, time-saving simplified algorithm to calculate the response of an adaptive façade, according to the ISO 13790 standards, to be adopted during the early design stage to evaluate the possible effects of design decisions. The study includes three main steps: (a) the conceptualisation of the adaptive solution considering the context conditions; (b) the definition of the calculation algorithm; (c) the application of the method to a test room in a case study building located in Bologna for supporting the discussion of the related outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines nascent alternative approaches to "commoning" and "common goods" that have been developed over the last decade by a unique coalition of lawyers, grassroots initiatives, and local governments in Italian cities, notably Bologna and Naples. The aim is to flesh out and to critically appraise two variants of a strategy for advancing urban commons in the direction of Integrative Governance, civic equality, power-with, solidarity, plurality, openness, and care for the city: the "Bologna Model" and the "Neapolitan Way." The argument is that the two strategies diverge in crucial respects, the former being more top-down and potentially compromising than the latter. Both, however, bear promise and potential for commons-oriented change, opening up processes of new social invention, deeper democratization, political contestation, and counter-hegemonic intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accessibility is a relevant condition for social inclusion, depending on both context (transport system, land use patterns, temporal availability) and individual features. Based on this, it may be used for measuring people's ability to participate in social life and activities that contribute to their well-being. With the aim of dealing with the accessibility by proximity concept, this paper proposes an Inclusive Accessibility by Proximity Index (IAPI), conceived as a tool for assessing accessibility levels to services and activities deemed essential for local inhabitants, while recognizing the impact of the physical and perceptual characteristics of urban spaces and paths on active mobility. By considering the needs and habits of different mobility profiles in relation to the spaces and paths they live and cross daily, IAPI can help direct the construction of planning and urban design measures aimed at promoting walkability and cyclability and improving accessibility via active modes, thus envisioning a more sustainable and inclusive city. Taking a cue from the experience conducted in the testbed of Bologna (Italy), this paper describes the methodology for constructing and applying the index, presents the results obtained, and outlines the steps to make the tool scalable and sensitive to the different contexts. • An Inclusive Accessibility by Proximity Index is proposed at the district scale. • IAPI measures the accessibility by active modes to essential daily services. • IAPI is based on the physical and perceived features of urban spaces and paths. • IAPI supports the design of policy measures devote to accessibility by proximity. • An application of IAPI in Bologna (Italy) is offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dowering maidens was a common concern in Renaissance and Early Modern Italian cities. As urban society recognized in un-dowered young women a potential threat to its moral and social stability, what had been a pious private effort became the business of specialized agencies, with the establishment of dowry funds. This paper examines the development of marriage endowment systems from the Florentine Monte delle doti, which in the main underwrote the marriage arrangements of the elite, to the Bolognese Monte del matrimonio, which was tailored to give respectable lower income families an opportunity to assemble dowries for young girls by investing their own savings. Finally, it focuses on the broad diffusion of charitable dowry funds, which dispensed dotal bequests through careful selection and scrutiny of recipients. Helping fathers to dower their daughters, dowry funds acted as a powerful stabilizing force, shoring up the pillar of early modern Italian society, the family, where it was weakest, i.e. among the urban lower classes. At the same time, they were innovative institutions, bridging kinship, charity, and finance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an analysis of the supply and demand of a FFBSS recently implemented in the city of Bologna, Italy. The main aspects treated in this paper are: analysis of bike availability; temporal analysis of FFBSS demand; calibration and validation of a novel model that predicts the number of daily trips per available bike. This model is based on a linear combination of several day attributes, including meteorological and day-type attributes. Moreover, an origin to destination analysis is generated showing the spatial distribution of FFBSS trips. The methods are applied to a scenario with almost a million GPS traces recorded between July and October 2018 by the FFBSS in Bologna. Findings could support FFBSS companies to better understand the fluctuation of both the transport demand and supply of this relatively recent transport mode, as to make more efficient decisions when distributing or relocating bicycles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to predict the average waiting time, defined as the time spent moving at 1 ms − 1 or less, of urban bicyclists during rush hours while performing different maneuvers at intersections. Individual predictive models are built for the three cyclist typologies previously identified on a large database of GPS traces recorded in the city of Bologna, Italy. Individual models are built for the three cyclist typologies and bootstrapping has confirmed the validity and robustness of the results. The results allow the integration of waiting times in route choice models for cyclists, thus improving the rational bases by which cyclists makes their decisions. Moreover, the modeling allows transportation engineers to understand how different cyclist typologies perceive different variables that affect their waiting times. Future work should focus on testing the model transferability to other case studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Redox processes activated by environmental factors have been identified as the main cause of the chromatic alterations of a number of artists' pigments, including the yellow pigment orpiment (As2S3). Although a general comprehension of the mechanisms has been provided through characterization of degradation compounds of As2S3, experimental evidences to prove how other paint components and how different environmental agents influence the formation pathways of specific secondary compounds are still lacking. Thus, it becomes fundamental to develop a methodological strategy which enable achieving a discrimination among the causes affecting the chemical stability of more heterogenous As2S3-based paints and defining the mechanism through which the alteration establishes and evolves, with the ultimate goal of optimizing the preventive conservation measures of unique masterpieces. In this paper, we propose a comprehensive multi-material and multi-method approach based on the combination of synchrotron radiation X-ray micro-analytical techniques (i.e., X-ray diffraction, X-ray fluorescence and X-ray absorption near edge structure spectroscopy at S K-/Ag L3-/As K-edges) and vibrational micro-spectroscopy methods to unveil the causes and mechanism of darkening of "fake-gilded" decorations in tempera paintings, originally consisting of an unusual mixture of As2S3 and metallic silver (Ag0). Such degradation process is a not yet understood phenomenon threatening a series of Old Master paintings, including those by the Italian painters Cimabue and Pietro Lorenzetti. The high specificity, sensitivity and lateral resolution of the employed analytical methods allowed providing first-time evidence for the presence of black acanthite (α-Ag2S), mimetite [Pb5(AsO4)3Cl] and syngenite [K2Ca(SO4)2·H2O] as degradation products of the "fake-gilded" decorations in the Maestà by Cimabue (Church of Santa Maria dei Servi, Bologna, Italy). Furthermore, the study of the painting combined with that of tempera paint mock-ups permitted to explore and define the environmental agents and internal factors causing the darkening, by proving that: (i) Ag0 and moisture are key-factors for triggering the transformation of As2S3 to α-Ag2S and As-oxides; (ii) S2--ions arising from the degradation of As2S3 are the main responsible for the formation of α-Ag2S; (iii) light exposure strengthens the tendency of the paint components towards alteration. Based on our findings, we finally propose a degradation mechanism of As2S3/Ag0-based tempera paints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper focuses on analyzing the current situation regarding the educational and social inclusion of students with disabilities, based on the point of view of students studying at the College of Education and Learning Sciences in Bologna (Italy). Due to the complexity of the educational situation being analyzed, a descriptive methodological approach was followed, collecting and analyzing quantitative data through a survey. The data sample was obtained incidentally by taking advantage of the research collaboration of one of the authors who was present in Bologna. Overall, the results indicate that these students hold generally positive opinions and attitudes toward the inclusion of disabled students. It should be noted, however, that an improvement in basic training is needed, and that studies should be conducted on educational practice aiming to further develop the implementation of action plans based on academic quality in order to include students with disabilities in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Mathematics Education for the Future Project is organizing a Symposium on New Ways of Teaching and Learning in Bologna, Italy, from August 6-10, 2024. This symposium follows successful international meetings held in 2022 at King's College, Cambridge, and in 2023 at The Queen's College, Oxford. Teachers and math educators from all over the world and from all six continents attended these meetings. The project welcomes attendees and also invites proposals for papers and workshops to be published in the Symposium Proceedings. The organizing committee includes Alan Rogerson, Jasia Morska, and Chiara Chiarini, and the project is in cooperation with various organizations and institutions. [Extracted from the article]

The Gini index (Gini in Variabilità e mutabilità: contributo allo studio delle distribuzioni e delle relazioni statistiche, Studi Economico-Giuridici, Facoltà di Giurisprudenza della Regia Università di Cagliari, anno III, parte II, Cuppini, Bologna, 1912) is the oldest and famous inequality measure. A Lorenz curve plots the cumulative percentages of total income received against the cumulative number of recipients, starting with the poorest individual or household. The Gini index measures the area between the Lorenz curve and a hypothetical line of absolute equality, expressed as a percentage of the maximum area under the line. In this paper, a fuzzy version of Gini's index is proposed and used it to propose an axiomatic measure of inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Green Deal places at the centre of its policies the need to act in order to achieve climate neutrality goals by 2050. In this context, the role of cities and, in particular, of already existing buildings is relevant. Although they are responsible for 40% of energy consumption, only 1% are involved in major restructuring processes. In the context of smart city strategies and to improve their performances, Europe proposes various approaches such as Positive Energy Districts and Industry 4.0. This paper analyses case studies and innovative European projects with the aim of identifying the most relevant strategic actions. Eventually, it presents a real case in the city of Bologna as a basepoint for the reflection proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Application of smart meters to the residential sector can provide insight into where and when water is used, thereby enabling utilities to achieve an efficient management of water distribution systems. Moreover, detailed information about domestic water use can be obtained by disaggregating smart meter data collected at the household inlet point. In this paper, a rule-based, automated methodology for disaggregating household water-use data into end uses is presented. The methodology is applicable to 1-min temporal resolution data, whose granularity is slightly lower than the one generally used in other methodologies, potentially allowing it to be applied to several contexts in the field of water-use monitoring. The methodology was set up and validated with data collected for 2 months through intrusive monitoring of four households in Bologna, Italy, and represents a pioneering case in which disaggregation performance is directly assessed by the comparison against data collected at each end use. The results obtained showed that the methodology enables household water use to be efficiently disaggregated even if detailed information about end-use features is not available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the impact of high-speed rail on the economic performance of the Milan-Bologna corridor in Northern Italy in terms of gross value added, distinguishing between services and manufacturing. The evidence-based impact assessment is carried out through propensity score matching difference-in-differences, event study, and synthetic control methods using NUTS 3 provincial panel data 2000–2018. The results suggest overall positive effects for the NUTS 3 provinces directly exposed to the programme. Still, sectoral heterogeneities arise depending on the specialization of the place hosting a high-speed railway stop. Moreover, different magnitudes occur depending on whether or not a high-speed station is located in a central place. • HSR impacts on the economic performance of the Milan-Bologna corridor are evaluated. • Evidence-based impact assessment suggests overall positive effects of HSR. • HSR in central vs. intermediate cities lead to varying magnitude in the effect. • Sectoral heterogeneity of GVA between services and manufacturing industries emerges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at indicating and certifying the implemented framework for forecasting buildings' energy demand of the city of Bologna, Italy. The method is developed through an automated calibration and is based on 7 known, physics-based building parameters and 6 unknown, and highly uncertain variables. The proposed method focuses on reducing computing time while keeping the accuracy of the output by narrowing the uncertainties in predicting unknown parameters. To accomplish this task, 11 archetypes are defined which are representatives of the buildings in a specific neighborhood in Bologna, Italy. For every defined archetype, the most informative unknown variables are recognized and the Gaussian Process (GP) is employed to emulate the variable-to-data map. A wide sampling of the GP outputs is then applied by No-U-Turn Sampler (NUTS). The methodology is validated for 1156 Italian urban buildings based on the city database. The level of evaluation metrics demonstrates no bias in the output of the long-term forecasting while it accelerated the prediction of building energy demand and calibration on the city scale. The method is flexible for application in other contexts and various available urban datasets. • This paper proposes an archetype coding method for simplifying buildings classification on large scales. • The energy demand of 1156 buildings in the city of Bologna, Italy is forecasted by the Bayesian calibration method. • The method prevents monotheism in applying retrofitting strategies for various types of buildings on large scales. • The model has proven the accuracy in forecasting energy demand and also estimating unknown parameters in urban buildings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pedestrian Navigation Applications (PNAs) provide assistance in terms of self-localization, space recognition, and turn-by-turn navigation. The use, motivations and perceptions associated with these applications have been under investigated due to users being insufficiently involved in their design and development. This paper analyses the extent to which PNAs are used for assisting people to walk, the frequencies and reasons of using these applications, the perceptions about them, and the barriers preventing them from being used. The study is supported by a questionnaire (N = 1438) that was administered in Bologna (Italy) and Porto (Portugal). Results indicated that 42% of the respondents use PNAs mainly on an occasional basis to find locations and the shortest routes. Google Maps was the preferred navigation service. Statistical tests showed that PNAs were more likely to be used by younger adults and students. The lack of need was the main reason for not using these apps, due to the good spatial knowledge of the cities or the non-use of the pedestrian mode for regular trips. Respondents would like to have apps that are more accurate, usable, and adjusted to pedestrian navigation. The findings described in this paper could be helpful for future designs of PNAs, especially to match pedestrian needs more effectively and to enhance the role of these apps in promoting healthier and sustainable lifestyles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research in Indirect Structural Health Monitoring (ISHM) uses the dynamic response of instrumented vehicles to carry out "drive-by" monitoring of bridges. These vehicles are generally cars or trucks instrumented with different types of sensors. However, some urban bridges are inaccessible to regular vehicles. Also, cars and trucks have non-negligible weight and suspension systems that may affect the collected vibration data. Stiff, light, and standardized shared micromobility vehicles, such as bicycles and electric kick scooters, have never been explored for ISHM purposes. This paper proposes an innovative and automatic ISHM strategy based on the data collected by smartphones temporarily installed on shared micromobility vehicles. An identification procedure suitable for cloud computing is proposed to extract the dynamic parameters of bridges without needing any sensor deployment, becoming particularly appealing for monitoring a densely built environment at a territorial scale. The methodology is applied to a real footbridge in Bologna (Italy). • Crowdsourcing from human-powered vehicles is first employed for bridge monitoring. • Cloud-based platforms can gather and process crowdsourced data automatically. • The Kalman filter is used to fuse smartphone data and identify modal parameters. • A smartphone deployed on a city bike is employed to collect IMU and GPS data. • The first natural frequency and absolute mode shape of a footbridge are identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recognizing 3D objects and estimating their postures in a complex scene is a challenging task. Sample Consensus Initial Alignment (SAC-IA) is a commonly used point cloud-based method to achieve such a goal. However, its efficiency is low, and it cannot be applied in real-time applications. This paper analyzes the most time-consuming part of the SAC-IA algorithm: sample generation and evaluation. We propose two improvements to increase efficiency. In the initial aligning stage, instead of sampling the key points, the correspondence pairs between model and scene key points are generated in advance and chosen in each iteration, which reduces the redundant correspondence search operations; a geometric filter is proposed to prevent the invalid samples to the evaluation process, which is the most time-consuming operation because it requires transforming and calculating the distance between two point clouds. The introduction of the geometric filter can significantly increase the sample quality and reduce the required sample numbers. Experiments are performed on our own datasets captured by Kinect v2 Camera and on Bologna 1 dataset. The results show that the proposed method can significantly increase (10–30×) the efficiency of the original SAC-IA method without sacrificing accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Allergenicity indices are a powerful tool to assess the health hazard posed by urban parks to pollen allergic subjects. Nonetheless, only few indices have been developed and applied to urban vegetation in the last decade, and they were never compared nor standardised over the same dataset. To address this issue, in this paper the two best-known allergenicity indices, the Urban Green Zones Allergenicity Index (I UGZA) and the Specific Allergenicity Index (SAI), have been calculated for the same park (the Botanical Garden of Bologna), collecting vegetation data through both systematic sampling and arboreal census. The results obtained with the two data collection methods were comparable for both indices, indicating systematic sampling as a reliable approximation of the total census. Besides, the allergenic risk resulted moderate to high according to SAI, and very low according to I UGZA. Since SAI does not consider the total volume of the vegetation, it was deemed less reliable than I UGZA in evaluating the allergenicity of an enclosed green space. • SAI and IUGZA provide different estimations of the allergenic potential of a park. • I UGZA tends to be more reliable than SAI when applied to enclosed green spaces. • Systematic sampling can replace complete census in calculating allergenicity indices. • Systematic sampling can misidentify the main allergenic species of the park. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]