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Neurodevelopmental disorders are a group of complex conditions with onset in the developmental period, that produce impairments of global functioning. For these features, the rehabilitative approaches should be flexible, tailored to the individual characteristics of each patient, and characterized by a standardized multidimensional view, for taking into consideration all the several areas of neurodevelopment. This single-arm clinical trial aims to investigate the features, feasibility, and limitations of Neuro-Psychomotor (NPM) intervention, an Italian naturalistic model for children with Neurodevelopmental Disorders. 30 children (16 with Mixed Specific Developmental Disorder vs 14 with Intellectual Disability) were recruited and their parents filled out two validated tools questionnaires (Developmental Profile-3 and Sensory Processing Measure), before and after 6 months of NPM intervention. Although with some limitations, findings showed that NPM intervention is reliable, flexible, and helpful for children with different neurodevelopmental disorders. Further studies are necessary to investigate its efficacy on a larger sample.

Sensory processing abilities play important roles in child learning, behavioural and emotional regulation, and motor development. Moreover, it was widely demonstrated that numerous children with neurodevelopmental disabilities show differences in sensory processing abilities and self-regulation compared with those of typical children. For these reasons, a complete evaluation of early symptoms is very important, and specific tools are necessary to better understand and recognize these difficulties during childhood. The main aim of this study was to translate, culturally adapt, and validate in a population of Italian typically developing (TD) children the Sensory Processing and Self-Regulation Checklist (SPSRC), a 130-item caregiver-reported checklist, covering children’s sensory processing and self-regulation performance in daily life. Preliminary testing of the SPSRC-IT was carried out in a sample of 312 TD children and 30 children with various developmental disabilities. The findings showed that the SPSRC-IT had high internal consistency, a good discriminant, and structural and criterion validity about the sensory processing and self-regulation abilities of children with and without disabilities. These data provide initial evidence on the reliability and validity of SPSRC-IT, and the information obtained by using the SPSRC-IT may be considered a starting point to widen the current understanding of sensory processing difficulties among children.

Digital Twins (DTs), enriched with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Blockchain technology, promise a revolutionary breakthrough in smart asset management and predictive maintenance in the built environment. This study aims to portray a conceptual framework of Blockchain and AIbased DTs and outline its key characteristics, requirements, and system architecture by composing a functional model using IDEF0. Such an approach is expected to enhance predictive maintenance in building facilities, simplify the management and operation of smart built environments, and ultimately deliver valuable outcomes for facility operators, real estate practitioners, and end-users.

Background: To identify indicators of guideline-concordant care in lung cancer, to implement such indicators with cancer registry data linked to health databases, and to pilot them in a cohort of patients from the cancer registry of the Milan Province. Methods: Thirty-four indicators were selected by revision of main guidelines by cancer epidemiologists, and then evaluated by a multidisciplinary panel of clinicians involved in lung cancer care and working on the pathway of lung cancer diagnosis and treatment in the Lombardy region, Italy. With a modified Delphi method, they assessed for each indicator the content validity as a quality measure of the care pathway, the degree of modifiability from the health professional, and the relevance to the health professional. Feasibility was assessed using the cancer registry and the routine health records of the Lombardy region. Feasible indicators were then calculated in the cohort of lung cancer patients diagnosed in 2007–2012 derived from the cancer registry of the Milan Province. Criterion validity was assessed reviewing clinical records of a random sample of 114 patients (threshold for acceptable discordance ≤20%). Finally, reliability was evaluated at the provider level. Results: Initially, 34 indicators were proposed for evaluation in the first Delphi round. Of the finally 22 selected indicators, 3 were not feasible because the required information was actually not available. The remaining 19 were calculated on the pilot cohort. After assessment of criterion validity (3 eliminated), 16 indicators were retained in the final set and evaluated for reliability. Conclusion: The developed and piloted set of indicators is now available to implement and monitor, over time, quality initiatives for lung cancer care in the studied health system.

Due to its complexity and high variability in symptomology, autism spectrum disorder (ASD) requires a coordinated and multidisciplinary intervention to better support the different programs over time and to promote social interactions in all contexts of life. Telemedicine can offer a valuable contribution in this regard, providing low-cost and portable applications. In this paper, we presented an Italian project, SUPER, which aimed to foster collaboration and information sharing between ASD families, health services, and schools. SUPER provided a digital platform with several tools that were useful both to enhance general and specific ASD knowledge and to promote personalized programs for children with ASD. We conducted a preliminary user test for the platform with 30 participants (18 therapists and 12 parents of children with ASD) using the system usability scale (SUS). The total mean SUS score (89.2) showed that SUPER is an excellent, usable system. Moreover, we extracted the usability and learnability mean components from the SUS scores, which were 96.1 and 61.7, respectively. Our preliminary results indicate that SUPER is a very user-friendly application and its innovative telemedicine approach could be ahelpful communication and collaboration tool among the different contexts of care for children with ASD.

Caregivers of children with neurodevelopmental disorders play a central role during the rehabilitation and education processes, but they have an increasing risk of psychosocial problems even if the literature is not so agreed upon the specific and predisposing factors to that. The aim of this study was to examine possibly differences of burden levels in an Italian sample of principal caregivers of children with different kinds of neurodevelopmental disorders and to investigate the possible links between some clinical and sociodemographic variables and the levels of caregiver’s burden. 105 caregivers of school-aged children with neurodevelopmental disorders were included in the study and completed three online questionnaires (General Questionnaire, Caregiver Burden Inventory, Zarit Caregiver Burden Scale). Results highlighted that about the half of caregivers show from moderate to high levels of stress, but parents of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Intellectual Disability show greater difficulties than parents of children with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Language and/or Learning Disorder, and Developmental Coordination Disorder. Moreover, it was evident a negative correlation between the burden levels and the age of children, but also a direct correlation between the burden levels and the weekly hours of rehabilitation. These findings show that severity of caregiver’s burden is dependent by the type of neurodevelopmental disorder and suggest that an ecological and family-centred approach is necessary to guarantee the life health developmental course of these children.

Sensory Processing Disorders (SPDs) define dysfunctions in modulating, organising, and using information from several sensory channels for regulating motor, behavioural, emotional and attention responses. Although SPD can be identified also as an isolated condition in young children, its presence in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) population is really frequent. The study purpose is to explore the SPD clinical expression and the putative correlation with several behavioural aspects both in children with ASD and in those with isolated SPD. Therefore, 43 preschool-aged children (25 ASD vs. 18 SPD) were recruited, and their parents completed three questionnaires (Developmental Profile-3, Sensory Processing Measure–Preschool, Repetitive Behaviour Scale-Revised) to evaluate behavioural alterations and developmental levels. The main result is that both ASD and SPD groups had significantly sensory-related behavioural symptoms, although ASD children seem to be more impaired in all areas. Several significant correlations were found between sensory processing difficulties and repetitive behaviours, but in the SPD group a specific relationship between Body Awareness and Ritualistic/Sameness Behaviour was found. Conversely, in the ASD group, more diffuse interlinks between sensory processing difficulties and motor behaviours were significant. In conclusion, the present study confirms the key role of sensory–motor skills in early diagnosis and intervention among children at risk for neurodevelopmental disorders.

The digitalization of the process for building permit (involving the use of 3D information systems) is seen as a priority in a wide part of the world. Since it is a very multidisciplinary use case, involving a variety of stakeholders tackling complex issues and topics, some of them joined their efforts and skills in the European Network for Digital Building Permit. The initial activity of the network, after a review of on-going experiences, was a workshop to share knowledge about the topics involved and to identify the main ambitions of the network with respect to three pillars (i.e. Process - Rules and Requirements - Technology) and the related requirements. It was achieved through a collective brainstorming activity guided by digital tools, whose results were further analysed in a post-processing phase. Such results are presented in this paper and will be the base for planning the future network activity., Urban Data Science

Energy consumption of the EU has a crucial environmental impact; several efforts are nowadays thus directed into massively reducing energy consumption by envelope improvement, system efficiency and smart control. On the other hand, the indoor thermal and lighting conditions significantly influence users' wellbeing and productivity, which is especially important when dealing with educational and working facilities. Strategies to enhance system efficiency are focused on design and construction aspects. These strategies ease to promote a powerful approach which is needed when focusing on existing buildings in need of retrofit measures. When dealing with new or refurbished buildings, energy saving has a further step to achieve. In the last years, research trends moved towards an increasing inclusion of human factors in energy evaluation. This allows to account for the occupancy variability in the energy analyses, considering how to bridge the performance gap between predictive models and actual consumptions due to indoor thermal settings. In empty buildings energy consumption is huge and economic efforts are wasted, due to unconscious energy-wasting behaviors. Previous studies with Interactive Virtual Environments confirmed that indoor environments illuminated by different color lights lead to the perception of different levels of thermal comfort. The results of the present paper replicate previous evidence collected in real conditions, suggesting that Virtual Reality is a valid and reliable tool to assess thermal comfort more quickly and cheaply. This paper provides a further perspective on this topic, including also the use of different fragrances to understand how the indoor environment could be enhanced and manipulated to increase wellbeing, thermal perception and finally energy saving.

Recently, designers of the home automation framework are looking to the Internet of Things (IoT) model to make it easier to deploy devices capable of gathering data from various plants. This situation is pushing a further evolution: from the conventional building automation, where the logic is determined by the installer or by the customer, to a cognitive system, capable of learning from the customers' preferences what the best plant configuration would be. The aim of this research work is to identify issues related to the implementation of cognitive solutions during the renovation process of buildings. The paper proposes a cognitive framework to help the operation and management phases of buildings, by means of the digitalization of the supply chain of the construction industry, from the single building aspect to the entire construction cycle. The paper presents the design of smart building elements with integrated capability to generate a massive amount of data for monitoring the energy and maintenance status of renovated buildings. The IoT paradigm has been used to link the physical word of building elements with the cognitive layer. The proposed approach has been applied and validated into a real test case. © 2020 IEEE.