Negotiating Matters of Concern: Expertise, Uncertainty, and Agency in Rhetoric of Science

Debates over GMOs, vaccines, and climate change are but a few examples that highlight a growing body of high-stakes scientific controversies and the manifest difficulties inherent in communicating about them. Addressing these and similar issues requires navigating a wide array of competing scientific, technological, social, democratic, environmental, and economic exigencies. The development of scholarly approaches that can account for the complexity and dynamism of these cases is an essential part of ensuring effective, ethical interaction between scientists and publics. In this dissertation, I explore one such case, the L’Aquila earthquake controversy, in which seven technical experts were charged with manslaughter for failing to warn the public. With the addition of the trial, this earthquake overflowed the boundaries of seismology, entangling the public, political, and technical and foregrounding the specific challenges of public-expert communication about risk and uncertainty. To better account for and negotiate public-expert interaction, my dissertation develops rhetorically-oriented approaches for improving communication about risk and uncertainty. In so doing, I explore new synergies among three concepts – agency, expertise, and uncertainty – which have previously been treated separately by rhetoricians but are inextricably entangled in situations like L’Aquila

Environmental and territorial modelling for planning and design

[English]: Between 5th and 8th September 2018 the tenth edition of the INPUT conference took place in Viterbo, guests of the beautiful setting of the University of Tuscia and its DAFNE Department. INPUT is managed by an informal group of Italian academic researchers working in many fields related to the exploitation of informatics in planning. This Tenth Edition pursed multiple objectives with a holistic, boundary-less character, to face the complexity of today socio-ecological systems following a systemic approach aimed to problem solving. In particular, the Conference will aim to present the state of art of modeling approaches employed in urban and territorial planning in national and international contexts. Moreover, the conference has hosted a Geodesign workshop, by Carl Steinitz (Harvard Graduate School of Design) and Hrishi Ballal (on skype), Tess Canfield, Michele Campagna. Finally, on the last day of the conference, took place the QGIS hackfest, in which over 20 free software developers from all over Italy discussed the latest news and updates from the QGIS network. The acronym INPUT was born as INformatics for Urban and Regional Planning. In the transition to graphics, unintentionally, the first term was transformed into “Innovation”, with a fine example of serendipity, in which a small mistake turns into something new and intriguing. The opportunity is taken to propose to the organizers and the scientific committee of the next appointment to formalize this change of the acronym. This 10th edition was focused on Environmental and Territorial Modeling for planning and design. It has been considered a fundamental theme, especially in relation to the issue of environmental sustainability, which requires a rigorous and in-depth analysis of processes, a theme which can be satisfied by the territorial information systems and, above all, by modeling simulation of processes. In this topic, models are useful with the managerial approach, to highlight the many aspects of complex city and landscape systems. In consequence, their use must be deeply critical, not for rigid forecasts, but as an aid to the management decisions of complex systems.[Italiano]:Dal 5 all’8 settembre 2018 l’Università della Tuscia e il Dipartimento di Scienze Agrarie e Forestali - DAFNE hanno ospitato la decima edizione del Congresso Internazionale INPUT. INPUT è un gruppo informale di ricercatori accademici italiani che operano in molti settori connessi all’uso dell’informatica nella pianificazione. Questa decima edizione del Congresso ha perseguito obiettivi multipli con un carattere olistico, senza confini, per affrontare la complessità degli attuali sistemi socio-ecologici seguendo un approccio sistemico finalizzato alla risoluzione dei problemi. In particolare, la conferenza è stata orientata a presentare lo stato dell'arte degli approcci di modellazione impiegati nella pianificazione urbana e territoriale in contesti nazionali e internazionali. Inoltre, la conferenza ha ospitato un seminario di Geodesign, di Carl Steinitz (Harvard Graduate School of Design) e Hrishi Ballal (via skype), Tess Canfield e Michele Campagna. Infine, l'ultimo giorno della conferenza, si è svolto l’hackfest di QGIS, in cui oltre 20 sviluppatori di software open source provenienti da tutta Italia hanno discusso le ultime novità e gli aggiornamenti dalla rete QGIS. L'acronimo “INPUT” è nato come “INformatics per Urban and Regional Planning”. Nella transizione alla grafica, involontariamente, il primo termine è stato trasformato in "Innovazione", con un bell'esempio di serendipità, in cui un piccolo errore si trasforma in qualcosa di nuovo e intrigante

Ecology-based planning. Italian and French experimentations

This paper examines some French and Italian experimentations of green infrastructures’ (GI) construction in relation to their techniques and methodologies. The construction of a multifunctional green infrastructure can lead to the generation of a number of relevant bene fi ts able to face the increasing challenges of climate change and resilience (for example, social, ecological and environmental through the recognition of the concept of ecosystem services) and could ease the achievement of a performance-based approach. This approach, differently from the traditional prescriptive one, helps to attain a better and more fl exible land-use integration. In both countries, GI play an important role in contrasting land take and, for their adaptive and cross-scale nature, they help to generate a res ilient approach to urban plans and projects. Due to their fl exible and site-based nature, GI can be adapted, even if through different methodologies and approaches, both to urban and extra-urban contexts. On one hand, France, through its strong national policy on ecological networks, recognizes them as one of the major planning strategies toward a more sustainable development of territories; on the other hand, Italy has no national policy and Regions still have a hard time integrating them in already existing planning tools. In this perspective, Italian experimentations on GI construction appear to be a simple and sporadic add-on of urban and regional plans

Numerical Weather Prediction Applied to Aeronautical Meteorology : Study of Local Hazardous Phenomena

Tesis inédita de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Ciencias Físicas, leída el 27-11-2020Aviation and meteorology are intrinsically related. Even if the safety level of the industry is indisputable, the sustained growth represents a constant challenge to maintain the standards assumed today. In this task weather hazards are one of the priorities, as some of these still pose alarge risk for aircraft operation. The main objective of this doctoral thesis is to improve the knowledge of numerical weather prediction models when applied to aeronautical meteorology events. This is done by means of the evaluation of four different hazards: mountain wave icing, low visibility, deep convective precipitation and microbursts. These phenomena are linked not only by the disruption they may create to aircraft operation, but also by the fact that they can occur in very local and reduced spatiotemporal domains, which renders them very difficult to predict. The events are analysed using simulations run by a mesoscale atmospheric numerica lmodel, mostly the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. Different parametrizations and configurations are tested. Several skill scores and validation methods are applied, adapted to each phenomenon. Other nowcasting techniques, not based in numerical weather prediction, are used to support the assessment...La aviación y la meteorología están intrínsecamente relacionadas. A pesar de que los niveles de seguridad operacional de la industria son indiscutibles, el crecimiento sostenido supone un desafío constante para mantener los estándares asumidos a día de hoy. En esta tarea, los peligros relacionados con la meteorología son una de las prioridades, ya que algunos de ellos todavía suponen un gran riesgo para la operación de aeronaves. El objetivo principal de esta tesis doctorales mejorar el conocimiento de la predicción numérica aplicada a eventos de meteorología aeronáutica. El mismo se lleva a cabo a través de la evaluación de cuatro eventos peligrosos diferentes: engelamiento en onda de montaña, baja visibilidad, precipitación por convección profunda y micro bursts. Estos fenómenos están relacionados no solo por la alteración que pueden ocasionar en la operación de aeronaves, sino también por el hecho de que pueden darse endominios espacio-temporales muy reducidos y locales, lo cual los hace muy difíciles de predecir. Los eventos se analizan usando simulaciones realizadas con un modelo atmosférico mesoescalar, mayormente el modelo Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF). Se prueban diferentes parametrizaciones y configuraciones. También se aplican diferentes métodos de validación y criterios de cualificación. La evaluación se complementa con el uso de otras técnicas de nowcasting, no basadas en predicción numérica...Fac. de Ciencias FísicasTRUEunpu

Environmental and territorial modelling for planning and design

Between 5th and 8th September 2018 the tenth edition of the INPUT conference took place in Viterbo, guests of the beautiful setting of the University of Tuscia and its DAFNE Department. INPUT is managed by an informal group of Italian academic researchers working in many fields related to the exploitation of informatics in planning. This Tenth Edition pursed multiple objectives with a holistic, boundary-less character, to face the complexity of today socio-ecological systems following a systemic approach aimed to problem solving. In particular, the Conference will aim to present the state of art of modeling approaches employed in urban and territorial planning in national and international contexts. Moreover, the conference has hosted a Geodesign workshop, by Carl Steinitz (Harvard Graduate School of Design) and Hrishi Ballal (on skype), Tess Canfield, Michele Campagna. Finally, on the last day of the conference, took place the QGIS hackfest, in which over 20 free software developers from all over Italy discussed the latest news and updates from the QGIS network. The acronym INPUT was born as INformatics for Urban and Regional Planning. In the transition to graphics, unintentionally, the first term was transformed into “Innovation”, with a fine example of serendipity, in which a small mistake turns into something new and intriguing. The opportunity is taken to propose to the organizers and the scientific committee of the next appointment to formalize this change of the acronym. This 10th edition was focused on Environmental and Territorial Modeling for planning and design. It has been considered a fundamental theme, especially in relation to the issue of environmental sustainability, which requires a rigorous and in-depth analysis of processes, a theme which can be satisfied by the territorial information systems and, above all, by modeling simulation of processes. In this topic, models are useful with the managerial approach, to highlight the many aspects of complex city and landscape systems. In consequence, their use must be deeply critical, not for rigid forecasts, but as an aid to the management decisions of complex systems