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Sustainability issues challenge most conventional approaches to policy design and implementation. One broader concern is how to create the conditions for the desired sustainability options to be realized. In this pursuit, policy design has several tasks to accomplish, such as strengthening governance, promoting learning, and enabling self-organization. The case study presented in this paper is an example of this undertaking. It is part of activities carried out at IRES Piemonte for supporting the sustainability-oriented transport plan of the Piedmont region in Italy. It deals with the development of an ICT tool to address the following question: Given the list of the transport plan's interventions, which ones are more likely to be a successful package and achieve the desired goals most effectively? The paper outlines the conceptual and methodological underpinnings of the tool and illustrates the main results of an application which involved participants from different regional departments.

Telemedicine solutions help improve the delivery of and access to healthcare services. The recent pandemic has given a burst to the use of telemedicine services, allowing to overcome or set aside, at least temporarily, some of the difficulties which usually hamper the implementation of innovative services. It has also spurred a new attention to the issues of access to healthcare services, and to the role telemedicine services could play in overcoming or reducing the physical distance between patients and healthcare premises. This study makes a preliminary step to sharpen the topics for the Piedmont region. Data retrieved from the Regional Health Information System are used to profile the health mobility pattern in the regional local areas, through a set of spatial performance indicators. A few hypotheses of the possible impact of telemedicine on health mobility are formulated and their impact is investigated in an exploratory analysis of the regional health flows.

Implementing digital health transition is challenging. Whilst technology progresses rapidly, the appropriation of innovation in healthcare is slower and has to deal with the local context. This is the case with Piedmont, an Italian region where in the last decade a number of telemedicine projects have been launched. In order to assess their implementation a survey has been recently conducted by the regional Health Department. This work builds upon the results of this investigation. The conceptual approach underlying the survey is illustrated and the main findings of the investigation discussed. To examine the regional situation, a notion of telemedicine maturity model is used. By making it explicit the main dimensions entailed in developing an ehealth service, its application can facilitate the digital health transition in the region. A core argument is that to handle the complexity of ehealth projects a collaborative environment for exchanging health knowledge should be implemented.

Laying out complexity tuned plans entails adaptation and flexibility in their implementation pathways. So far, however, the recommendations have had only a limited success in informing regular policy practices. Notwithstanding the growing popularity of ex-ante assessment, one major difficulty has been the inability to consider the effectiveness and implementation possibilities of integrated sets of measures. This paper presents an analytic tool meant to address the issue. The work is part of the activities carried out at IRES Piemonte to support the sustainability-oriented transport plan of the Piedmont region. An overview of the plan’s context is presented along with the hypotheses underlying the design of the analytic tool. Attention focuses on the tool’s component which identifies the candidate actions of policy packages, taking into account the views expressed by different stakeholders. Network analysis is used to model how actions can be organized in coherent sets. Results of an application of this component are presented and the implications for the plan’s implementation pathways discussed.

Analysis of road crashes at the local level is necessary for targeting and implementing effective countermeasures. This chapter presents a contribution to this task. It describes the research carried out in Piedmont, Italy, where an exploratory approach has been used to link road crash data with information about the spatial characteristics of urban settlements. The analytic strategy is developed in three steps. First, fine-grained spatial data for road crashes, land use, traffic counts, and population distribution are linked by GIS methods. Second, a selection of the data is implemented at the municipality level and processed through a cluster analysis to identify territorial accident profiles. Finally, to show their analytic potential, one case study is discussed that considers road segments as main observation units.

In the policy domain, the investigation of the topic has been mainly revolved on how to fine-tune action design to problem handling, a main focus of attention in several study fields such as cybernetics, system analysis and organizational studies. Failing to address the latter is likely to negatively affect the co-evolution between policy design and process, thus hampering the transformative process necessary for innovation to occur in public administration. Often neglected is the fact that the generally larger and multi-actor policy partnerships created by Information and Communication Technologies are likely to adopt different stances in defining public value, depending on the role of the engaged actors. A set of meta-models is focused in identifying policy problems with owners progressively might devise as changes occur in issues, affecting engaged stakeholders and context. The chapter argues that the analytic exercise offers insights into a system’s viability conditions thus sharpening the understanding of the co-evolution between policy design and process.

Notwithstanding considerable efforts are being made to gather transport and mobility data, by means of new technological devices, in Italy a major spatially comprehensive source of information is the population census. Data about journeys-to-work and journeys-to-school at municipality level have been made available by the Italian Central Bureau of Statistics (ISTAT) at 1991, 2001 and 2011 census years. Such data provide a sound information basis for drawing retrospective accounts of mobility. However, it is likely to be unsatisfactory for a number of planning activities, such as monitoring and forward looking investigations. They often require expensive individual surveys which may be inaccessible, either for public and private agencies. This study aims at alleviating the problem by developing a computational and analytic tool for estimating journeys-to-work at sub-regional level. The study proposes a strategy which links the reconstruction of yearly mobility flows, based on available spatially fine-grained socioeconomic information, with the generation of new flow matrices, depending on regional socioeconomic scenarios. In this application to Piedmont, we first reconstruct the mobility flows in the 2001–2013 period according to sub regional population and employment data as well as the census mobility tables. Econometric regression techniques have been used to estimate the origin and destination totals of mobility matrices; Wilson’s entropy maximization approach to fully constrained spatial interaction models has been applied to compute the matrix cell values. The mobility deterrence parameter series associated with the flow matrices have been analyzed according to a set of socioeconomic variables, for which regional level demographic and economic trends from 2014 to 2020 are provided by ISTAT (population forecasts) and Prometeia (macro-economic studies). Parameters estimates have been obtained which, together with auto-regressively calculated origin and destinations totals of mobility tables, have been used to infer the regional flow matrices from 2014 to 2020. In discussing the main results of the approach attention focuses on its practical relevance for planning purpose and its portability. Some methodological issues concerning the calculation of the deterrence parameter are also mentioned.

Today, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are an essential determinant of urban change. They make it possible to build new Socio-Technical Systems (STS) where the knowledge flow initiated by the interactions of ICT-enabled nodes has a crucial role. This contribution illustrates examples of these systems. Reference is made to the Piedmont Region, where a socio-technical system had to be established in order to support the monitoring of the regional road safety policy. The contribution is divided into two main parts. First, insights for developing the STS are given and an overview of the road safety planning issues in Piedmont is presented; there then follows a description of the STS and an account of its regional application and installation. Aujourd’hui les technologies de l’information et de la communication (TIC) sont un déterminant essentiel pour les transformations des territoires. Elles permettent de construire de nouveaux Systèmes Socio Techniques (STS) où le flux des connaissances engendrées grâces aux TIC ont un rôle crucial. Dans cette contribution, un exemple de ces systèmes est illustré. Il fait référence à la région Piémont, où un système socio technique a été mis en place pour assurer le suivi de la politique régionale en matière de sécurité routière. Le texte est articulé en deux parties. Tout d’abord, on présente un aperçu des questions de planification de la sécurité routière dans la région Piémont. Ensuite, une description théorique du STS est offerte et son application à la mise en place d’un système d’information pour la sécurité routière décrite.

Today’s advancements in Information Communication Technologies (ICTs), and notably the increased spreading of web 2.0 Internet based services and mobile computing, make an information-rich environment increasingly available where new types of Socio-Technical Systems (STS) can be established. Because of the ICT increasing pervasiveness, designing and developing Socio Technical Systems are raising an increasing interest also from a policy point of view. In fact, they play a crucial role in the improvement of the so-called soft-infrastructures, a main asset for delivering social innovation. Raising the performance of such an infrastructure turns out to be a major challenge to be addressed in order to meet the EU requirements for a smart growth. In this contribution, a concept of STS is suggested, and its ICT-enabled implications for policy activity are highlighted. To support the discussion reference is made to some findings in the Piedmont region, where since 2006 the Piedmont ICT Observatory (PICTO) has been monitoring the spreading of ICT among citizens, firms and local governmental bodies. The experience of a STS project recently implemented to accompany the regional road safety policy is also mentioned.

The 1996 European program, the Inter Regional Information Society Initiative (IRISI)1, prompted the Piedmont Region to develop IRISI Piemonte, a milestone in regional policies designed to help crea...

This paper draws from a study which has been carried out by IRES to investigate the NICT initiatives launched and experienced in the Turin Metropolitan Area and Piedmont region., «Les communautés virtuelles comme agents des systèmes urbains. Etude de cas dans la région métropolitaine de Turin , Italie ». Cet article présente les résultats d’une étude menée par 1TRES sur les initiatives et expérimentations de NTIC dans la zone métropolitaine de Turin et dans la région du Piémont., Occelli Sylvie. Digital communities as collective agents of urban systems. Some evidence for the Turin Metropolitan Area (Italy). In: NETCOM : Réseaux, communication et territoires / Networks and Communication Studies, vol. 19 n°1-2,2005. Information technologies: from physical networks to digital communities / Technologies de l'information: des infrastructures matérielles aux communautés virtuelles. pp. 79-100.

Because of the advancements in Information Communication Technologies (ICTs), and notably the increased spreading of Web 2.0 Internet-based services and mobile computing, an increasingly information-rich environment is made available, where new types of Socio-Technical Systems (STS) can be established. Due to the pervasiveness of ICT, designing and developing Socio-Technical Systems is raising an increasing interest also from a policy point of view. They play a crucial role in the improvement of the so-called soft-infrastructures, a main asset for delivering social innovation. Raising the performance of such an infrastructure, in fact, turns out to be a major challenge to be addressed in order to meet EU requirements for smart growth. In this chapter, a concept of STS is suggested, and its ICT-enabled implications for policy activity are highlighted. As an example, the concept is used for designing a collaborative platform for health knowledge exchange at a regional level.

Extending our conventional notion of accessibility is a major topic of interest in the geographical and planning literature. This paper explores one of these possibilities. It describes individuals' action spaces and their associated accessibility by means of computer simulation. A multi-agent model is developed with the aim of providing a deeper understanding of daily life activities in a spatial setting. The SWARM software platform is used as a means to investigate the action spaces of individuals and their management strategies.

New model potentials exist for coping with the complexities of today’s cities. These are related to the cognitive mediation role that modeling allows one to establish between the abstraction process (internal loop) and the external environment to which a model application belongs (external loop). The focus is turned to the two main aspects involved in that role, i.e. the modeling task and the technological interface. As far as the first is concerned, there are claims that model building in geography involves three main components: a syntactic component (how are the mechanisms underlying the functioning of the system accounted for?), a representational (semantic) component (what kind of urban descriptions are conveyed by the model?) and a purposive investigation project component (what is the modeling activity intended for?). As they increasingly rely on computing technology, models as cognitive mediators are not just simple, autonomous entities, but active complex objects. A model can therefore be understood as an ALC (Action, Learning, Communication) agent, capable of performing a certain course of Action, and permitting a certain Learning ability, which, because of its cognitive mediating role, Communicates with other kinds of agents (other models). This notion is then related to the various aspects of model-building in geography as originally introduced in the early seventies. These aspects are re-interpreted in light of the above characteristics. We conclude the paper with some remarks about the implications which may be derived as far as the harnessing of complexity in urban systems is concerned.

During the current process of EU enlargement, regions are confronted with a need to revise their relative position within the newly formed socio-economic, spatial and cultural spaces. As existing equilibria are severely affected, the type and direction of developmental trends of member states (and regions) are increasingly questioned. Concerns are being raised about the risks that the annealing process would trigger a number of undesirable processes, i.e. loss of comparative advantages, regions lagging behind, accentuation of socio-economic gaps, social unbalances resulting from migration flows of poor population. These might hamper the path of European integration and eventually result in a reinforcement of the more accessible well developed areas and a loss of more peripheral and relatively underdeveloped ones. In this context, cooperation amongst the member states, and in particular, their local governments, may play a significant role to both overcome those risks and favouring the EU integration process. Information on cooperation (and integration) for the European countries is extensive and provides detailed accounts of the initiatives which have been undertaken since the establishment of EU programs in the early sixties. Although the variety of cooperation (integration) programs which have been launched as the EU unification progressed are well documented, existing studies have rarely questioned the kind of evolution ( i.e. type and extent of the changes underlying the various initiatives) those programs underwent. The aim of this paper is to undertake a preliminary step in this analysis. A claim is made that: a. on the one hand, the widening of the scopes of cooperation programs and increasing number of eligible actors involved are significantly reinforcing the potentials of cooperation in favouring the integration process not only among the member countries but also different kind of areas (i.e. between metropolitan and peripheral cities); b. on the other hand, there is a need to refine the current approaches to cooperation and develop a conceptual framework which serves as a basis for both formulating the various initiatives and defining effective benchmarks for their evaluation. The paper is organized in three main sections. The first addresses some methodological questions about the definition of what should be understood as a cooperation situation. An effort is made to identify a conceptual framework which might be relevant for dealing with cooperative actions in a institutionalised setting. This is then used in the second section to provide an account of the evolution of the EU programs on cooperation. Finally, in the last section attention is turned to the strengths (i.e. greater attention to the spatial dimension of cooperation programs, more equalitarian relationships amongst the participants) and weaknesses (i.e. lack of a shared model of cooperative actions) of the current approaches to cooperation. An effort is made to emphasize a few relevant questions which can be challenging in the current EU policies and thinking.

New Information Technologies (NIT) have a pervasive impact on urban life and the socio-economic development of cities. However, studies on the relationship between NIT and the city are frequently accompanied by a sense of dissatisfaction. One possible reason is that the innovative role of NIT tends to be overlooked, from both a substantive and methodological point of view. In this paper, we address the issue by developing some previous works in which a distinction between the hard and soft components of innovation was emphasised. Such a distinction is important because it opens up new ways of thinking about urban processes and their management. While the hard component of NIT affects the city through evolutionary and co-evolutionary processes, the soft component changes our ways of perceiving them, thus affecting them yet further, causing an accelerating and self-reinforcing effect. This paper is organised as follows. Firstly, we propose a taxonomy of the areas of research with groupings suitable for constituting major components of a conceptual framework from which research agendas on the relationships between NTT and the city could be developed. We then present the results of an accessibility study recently carried out by 1RES in the Turin Metropolitan Area. This study was inspired by a desire to investigate the distinction between the hard and soft components of NIT, and to provide some empirical evidence on the perceived impact of NIT in a region which, underwent a Fordist-type of industrial development in the sixties, and is still subject to a process of socio-economic restructuring. The last section summarises the main findings of this study and makes some suggestions for future research., Afin d’étudier les possibles impacts des Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication (TIC) sur l’organisation des villes, l’auteur propose de mettre l’accent sur la distinction opposant les innovations “ hard ” et les innovations “soft”. Les premières affectent la dynamique urbaine et relèvent d’un caractère matériel, les secondes immatérielles transforment nos grilles de perceptions qui à leur tour modifient les usages matériels. Dans un premier temps, l’auteur propose une grille de lecture conceptuelle portant sur l'opposition entre ce double aspect de l’innovation selon que Ton aborde les TIC par une démarche analytique, ou par une démarche systémique. Dans un second temps, sont présentés les résultats d’une étude d’accessibilité menée sur les usagers dans la zone métropolitaine de Turin. Ainsi, l’auteur tente de mettre en évidence, par une analyse empirique, l’impact des TIC en terme de représentations et de perceptions., Occelli Sylvie. New Information Technologies and the City : Re-discovering people and places. In: NETCOM : Réseaux, communication et territoires / Networks and Communication Studies, vol. 15 n°3-4, december 2001. pp. 207-230.

Almost all urban systems in developed countries are undergoing a number of institutional, socio-economic and cultural changes, pushing them towards a ‘new’ societal configuration that is generally taken to be more democratic, better educated, culture-based, and environmentally sensitive, i.e., the so-called Post-Fordist society (Aminl994). Space-adjusting technologies, and particularly the New Information Technologies (NIT), are playing a substantial role in this transition, since they affect both the range and time-related organization of activities offered in an urban setting, as well as the ways in which individuals participate in them (see Castells 1989, Graham and Marvin 1996).

In a previous we argued that some major novelties to be addressed by a new generation of urban models should be related to: i) the knowledge expectations connected with the use of a model (i.e. epistemological background), ii) the feasibility of its application domain (i..e. the operational underpinnings) and iii) the urban phenomena and perceptions characterizing the present cities ( i.e. the so-called Post-Fordist cities). We also emphasized that many drawbacks and limitations which nowadays make the classical urban modelling unsatisfactory were not caused so much by their methodological underpinnings but rather by the limited scope of the whole model application. This paper presents an operational simulation model (the PFUS model) which broadens the focus of the classical model application and allows to explore some features of the new kind of development taking place in modern cities (i.e. the local-global interactions, the role of localized resources). The paper is articulated into three parts. Part 1 outlines the conceptual and formalised structure of the model. Part 2 presents the results of its application to the Piedmont region. Finally in part 3 the main novelties of the PFUS model application are discussed emphasizing in particular their implicattions for planning purposes.

This work addresses some questions which, in the view of the author, are particularly challenging. These questions stem from the recognition of the great contrast between the evident complexity of urban problems and the limitations of the tools available for dealing with them. Bearing in mind the inescapable need for a set of well-suited tools, we offer a tentative comment about the role of methods for the analysis, planning and control of urban systems.

Au cours de la dernière décennie, l'analyse de données de flux a été un des enjeux pratiques de nombreuses études de régionalisation, d'utilisation du sol et de transports. Les méthodologies existantes soulignent les difficultés qu'il y a à affronter la complexité croissante des structures spatiales, en raison de la diversité des rôles que les noeuds et les liens peuvent jouer dans la structure globale des interactions. En appliquant des considérations issues de la théorie des graphes, on pense qu'une investigation sur les réseaux peut révéler un éventail de "typologies" spatiales. La première section offre des arguments pour une meilleure compréhension des données de flux. On y montre qu'une conceptualisation des flux, comme un résultat des interactions entre les lieux définit une architecture générale selon laquelle un ensemble de formes d'interactions (ou de structures spatiales) peut être identifié. Deux applications empiriques sont décrites dans les sections suivantes. La troisième section présente un élargissement de l'approche dominante des flux, appliquée aux migrations pendulaires pour les régions du Piémont dans les trois dernières décennies. Au-delà de l'identification de la structure hiérarchique, la prise en compte des flux dominants et complémentaires permet de définir une typologies des relations et d'approfondir la question des changements dans l'organisation de la structure régionale de 1971 à 1991. Dans la quatrième section, une analyse de la mobilité résidentielle pour l'aire métropolitaine turinoise est menée. En observant le sous-ensemble des liens qui ont une stricte complémentarité, quelques structures en "circuit" peuvent être mise en évidence et interprétées comme des liaisons entre les aires de marchés résidentielles. In the past decade, analysis of flow data has been of practical concern in most studies dealing with regionalization and transportation land-use problems. Existing methodologies however show difficulties to cope with the increasing complexity of spatial structures because of the 'variety' of roles which nodes and links are likely to play within the overall interaction structure. By applying graph-theoretic considerations, it is argued that an investigation of both direction and versus of network links can reveal a whole range of spatial 'typologies' . The first section provides some arguments for a deeper understanding of flow data. It is shown that a conceptualisation of network flows as a result of interacting places defines a general framework according to which a whole range of interaction patterns (e.g. spatial structures) can be recognised. Two empirical applications of these ideas are described in the following sections. Section 3 presents an extension of the dominant-flow approach which is applied to the journey-to-work flows for the Piedmont region over the last three decades. Besides identifying the hierarchical structure, the consideration of the sub-dominant and complementary flows allows to identify a typology of relationships and get a deeper insight in the changes of the regional spatial structure during the 1971-1991 period. In section 4, an analysis of the residential mobility for the Turin metropolitan area is carried out. By analysing the sub-set of links which have a 'strict complementarity', some 'circuit-like-structures' are revealed which may be also interpreted as interlinked residential market areas.

At the threshold of the 21st century, any policy decision concerning transport, whether strategic, political or economic, must inevitably take into consideration other means of communication, and in particular the New Information Technologies (NIT). These are rapidly changing the ways in which we communicate and interact, influencing the functional and spatial organization of activities and hence patterns of mobility. Such changes are part of a wider framework of social and economic transformation - the globalization of the economy, the growing importance of the service sector and the crisis in the welfare state - which are leading us to revise the way in which urban policies are both conceived and implemented (Amin 1994, Harris 1994, Batten et al. 1995).