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The roof structure of Olympic Stadium in Rome had been conceived, studied and realized between the end of 1988 and the April 1990, in total 16 months of work. This roof is the first example of spoke wheel roof structural system, that today is widely applied on many actual Stadiums around the world [1]. Wind tunnel tests on the roof structure have been carried out at the BLWT Lab. of Western Ontario University: at that time, there have been many discussions between the designer and wind tunnel researchers about the integration of wind tunnel tests data into the design process for sub-horizontal wide span roofs. The conceptual design and the method of wind dynamic analysis has been updated for the Yaoundé roof Stadium, now under construction. The aerodynamic behavior of Yaoundé stadium roof has been tested in London RWDI wind tunnel. Innovative and recently proposed numerical techniques have been adopted to perform dynamic analyses under wind action. Erection sequences prescribed for roofs of these two Stadiums are both remarkable and advanced: the big lift adopted procedure for the Olympic stadium roof in Rome and the new tie down pre tensioning operation, provided for the Yaoundé stadium cable roof.

This paper resume the story of the design of the new “Swan River Pedestrian Bridge” now under construction in Perth, Australia. The bridge is formed by three steel decks connected with cable hangers to three steel arches, the central span is 144[m] and the two lateral 84[m]. The geometry of the steel arches follow the free form shape designed by DCM Architects, in order to achieve an iconic image as required in the tender of 2014. Studio Majowiecki has been involved as structural designer from the tender phase to the executive design in the team of York Rizzani Joint Venture. During the concept phase of the tender proposal many static and architectural schemes have been analyzed in order to find the solution that combine in the best way the requirements in terms of aesthetic image and structural efficiency. Due to the complex geometry of the bridge it has been necessary to adopt particular solutions for the design and analysis of the arches and deck structures, such as the joints between the steel elements of the lattice structures, the connections between the membrane cladding and the chords and some details that allow the completion of assembly procedures.

The paper presents the problems related to wind and pedestrian induced vibration that have been faced during the design of the Swan River Pedestrian Bridge (SRPB) in Perth (Australia). It is a three-span arch structure (approximately 80-140-80 m length, respectively). Arches are made by lattice steel structures and the deck is suspended to the arches by sub-vertical strands. Each span has two crossed arches with triangular cross-sections that vary dimensions along the arch. Two cantilever extensions are connected to the crown of the central arch. Arches are supported by quite flexible piles.

Seniors are the fastest growing segment of populations not only in many parts of Europe, but also in Japan and the United States. ICT technologies are not very popular among many elderly and also are not designed around their cultural necessities and ergonomic needs. The risk is that in the very near future this growing segment will be digitally isolated, in a society that is more and more based on ICT as infrastructure for service, and communications. Easy Reach Project proposes an ergonomic application to break social isolation through social interaction to help the elderly to overcome barrier of the digital divide. This paper focuses its attention on the development of the technology and algorithms used as Human Computer Interface of the Easy Reach Project, that exploits inertial sensors to detect gestures. Many experimental algorithms for gesture recognition have been developed using inertial sensors in conjunction with other sensors or devices, or by themselves, but they have not been thoroughly tested in real situations, they are not devoted to adapt to the elderly and their way of executing gestures. The elderly are not used to modern interfaces and devices, and --- due to aging --- they can face problems in executing even very simple gestures. Our algorithm based on Pearson index and Hamming distance for gestures recognition has been tested both with young and elderly, and was shown to be resilient to changes in velocity and individual differences, still maintaining great accuracy of recognition 97.4% in user independent mode; 98.79% in user dependent mode. The algorithm has been adopted by the Easy Reach consortium 2009-2013 to pilot the human machine gesture-based interface.

This paper presents the EasyReach system, a tool that aims at getting the elderly and pre-digital divide population closer to new technologies by creating a simplified social enviroment that facilitates interaction, trying to allow them to (i) easily keep in contact with friends and relatives, (ii) share their lifetime expertise, and (iii) avoid isolation. The EasyReach tool creates for the elderly a special social TV channel accessed by means of their own TV set and a specialized remote control endowed with gesture recognition, video and audio capture capabilities. A hidden personal assistant reasons on user preferences in the background allowing better focalization on his/her social interests. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.

The high number of accidents in living areas, work environments, and ambient, in general, can benefit of prevention mechanisms able to identify the causes and the indications which precede accidents, and to put in place strategies to avoid risks whenever this is possible. To this aim, this paper presents a risk management architecture for monitoring movements within a smart ambient and managing possible risks. In particular, we present a methodology for movement analysis aimed at detecting and preventing risks. Results from experimentations are discussed.

Design of steel cross sections with thin plates has to take in account the effect of local instability that reduce the ultimate resistance.Eurocode 3 classifies these cross-sections as Class 4 cross-sections and in part 1-5 it shows two procedures to take in account local buckling effects in the ULS resistence evaluation:Effective cross section methodReduced stress methodScope of this paper is to show the application of the Reduced stress method to a real case (main roof of High Velocity railway station in Florence, Italy) and some considerations about the relationship with Effective cross section’s method.

Movement recognition constitutes a central task in homebased assisted living environments and in many application domains where activity recognition is crucial. Solutions in these application areas often rely on an heterogeneous collection of body-sensors whose diversity and lack of precision has to be compensated by advanced techniques for feature extraction and analysis. Although there are well established quantitative methods in machine learning for robotics and neighboring fields for addressing these problems, they lack advanced knowledge representation and reasoning capacities that may help understanding through contextualization. Such capabilities are not only useful in dealing with lacking and imprecise information, but moreover they allow for a better inclusion of semantic information and more general domain-related knowledge. We address this problem and investigate how a lexical approach to multisensor analysis can be combined with answer set programming to support movement recognition. A semantic notion of contextual coherence is formalized and qualitative optimization criteria are introduced in the reasoning process. We report upon a first experimental evaluation of the lexical approach to multi-sensor analysis and discuss the potentials of knowledge-based contextualization of movements in reducing the error rate.

We present a solution for social adaptive e-learning. In particular we want to individuate candidates acting as peer help in an e-learning academic course. Starting from a previous work in which adaptive learning functionalities were added to a traditional Learning Management System (LMS) [1], we found an interesting application of filtering techniques working together with fuzzy ontologies to individuate peer help, a fundamental step in constructing a true social environment in e-learning communities [2]. This way it is possible to use all the activities and functionalities offered by LMS improving their effectiveness with technologies based on socio-constructivism learning theory, such as: adaptive presentation, collaborative filtering, supporting peer help and peer tutoring.

After about 19 years the “delle Alpi” Stadium of Turin (Italy), builded for Italia ’90 WorldCup is going to be substitued by a new stadium named “Nuovo Stadio Juventus” designed according newer and actual guidelines for stadium and sport’s arena utilization.Scope of this paper is to show the adopted architectural and structural design approach The paper illustrates principally:foundation system;grand stand frames;suspended roof structural system;The design has been assisted by experimental testing procedures in boundary wind tunnel laboratories.