Leave blank (2009/2010)

Leave blank (2009/2010

PUMAS Voyage: A Participatory Approach towards Healthy School Travel

Schooltravel plays an important role in the development of citizens’ mobility. For students, school travel is the first way of commuting, for parents it is often the first context in which they take responsibility for traffic conditions motivated by the care for their children. Consequently, the reflection on school travel is part of the general curriculum in some countries (e.g., in Germany, cf. KMK, 2012). At the same time, school travel is an important field for participation in general. By involving in school travel planning, children and parents can in an ideal case experience a child friendly city that takes into consideration the competencies and needs of children. This larger view on the relationship between cities and children gained attention through the Child Friendly City (CFC) programme of the United Nations Children’s Fund (IRC, 2004). It aims at a high commitment to children’s rights in the development of cities, including among others, the rights of children to express their opinion for changing their city, increased participation of children in social life, better road safety, less pollution, and green spaces in the city. Given the fact that school travel is a big step for children in taking responsibility for their mobility in the city, it should be considered as an important field of action for a city that wants to become a CFC in the above sense. In Italy, the CFC has a long history. In 1998, the Ministry for Environment initiated the Sustainable Cities for Boys and Gils (CSDBB) initiative (cf. CORSI, 2002). Consequently, Italian CFCinitiatives among others focussed on “reduction of air pollution, […] enhancing green spaces, […] promoting mobility, [… and ] participation.” (ibid, pp. 170f.) A fundamental factor for a child friendly city is the “direct involvement of children in the initiatives proposed.” (ibid.). In the following years, the encouragement of free movement has become an integral part of the Italian CFC initiatives (IRC, 2005, p. 37f.). It also became clear that this topic has to involve not only children but also their parents, teachers, and city planners.The authors of the report already observed that opening up the process leads to a higher level of complexity (ibid., p. 41). Within the European project PUMAS that investigates sustainable urban mobility planning in the Alpine space, one pilot activity coordinated by the City of Venice focused on a multi-stakeholder process for the participatory planning of healthy and safe school travel in the sense outlined above. The goal of the pilot was manifold: Children and parents should reach an increased awareness on healthy and safe school travel, all stakeholders (children, parents, teachers, planners, and politicians) should engage in a process for identifying challenges in local school travel and envisioning new ideas for a healthier and safer school travel, and finally, low-cost measures should be implemented and other measures planned in order to raise the perceived empowerment and responsibility of the stakeholders for their city. The initiative was planned as a technology-supported participative process. A mobile participation software, PUMAS Voyage, developed at the FernUniversität in Hagen, enabled situated communication and participation of different stakeholders. Within this paper, we first summarize existing approaches for participation and empowerment in the context of school travelplanning and identify reasons why such activities are needed and why they contribute to a child friendly city. While the current state of the art provides valuable examples for school travel planning, we assume that new technologies can be an additional way for reaching the goal of a participative initiative towards a child friendly city. We present and describe an integrated process for school travel planning that can be applied in primary schools and outline the various stages in which awareness on traffic behaviour is established and communication takes place. It makes use of the PUMAS Voyage applicationto reflect on current school travel behaviour and envision new solutions. The process and the technology have been applied in six primary schools in Venice. We report on experiences with the process and the technology involving a large number of students and parents and show how the participating students, parents, teachers, and planners developed a vision for a safer and healthier home-school journey. Finally, we provide an outlook on how these insights of the process will lead to concrete measures in the updated mobility plan of Venice

Structural health monitoring (SHM) and Nondestructive testing (NDT) of slender masonry structures: A practical review

[EN] The scientific community is hardly working to propose reliable methodologies of analysis and non-invasive technologies of investigation to assess the current state of conservation of historic buildings to verify their ability to resist future threats. These structures, mostly made of masonry, are difficult to assess due to the heterogeneity of materials and their mechanical behavior, but it is vital to preserve this invaluable cultural heritage by suitable structural assessment techniques. A great deal of research atten-tion has been paid to monitoring their structural health; in many recent publications new advanced tech-nological methods have been provided such as cheaper sensors, wireless connections, non-contact surveys and continuous monitoring. A bibliometric study has shown that more than half of the papers on Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) and Nondestructive Testing (NDT) on masonry have been pub-lished between 2018 and 2020, and 30% of those published in 2020 were on 'slender' elements like tow-ers, chimneys or minarets. This paper presents a wide-ranging review of static and dynamic studies published on SHM and NDT of slender masonry structures summarizing and discussing the different experimental techniques used. With respect to the dynamic testing, Operational Modal Analysis (OMA) by accelerometers is the mostly frequent used technique by scholars, but other promising methods such as radar interferometry are also reported. This overall discussion is concluded with a short review of some examples on numerical structural health assessment and signal processing tools. An inclusive list of papers is provided describing the most important slender masonry structures characteristics, natural frequencies, experimental and numerical techniques employed and reference values. This paper, set on a practical perspective, is expected to be of interest to those researchers and practitioners who require an extensive and up-to-date review of this topic.Pallarés Rubio, FJ.; Betti, M.; Bartoli, G.; Pallarés Rubio, L. (2021). Structural health monitoring (SHM) and Nondestructive testing (NDT) of slender masonry structures: A practical review. Construction and Building Materials. 297:1-33. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2021.123768S13329

The survey on Near Field Communication

PubMed ID: 26057043Near Field Communication (NFC) is an emerging short-range wireless communication technology that offers great and varied promise in services such as payment, ticketing, gaming, crowd sourcing, voting, navigation, and many others. NFC technology enables the integration of services from a wide range of applications into one single smartphone. NFC technology has emerged recently, and consequently not much academic data are available yet, although the number of academic research studies carried out in the past two years has already surpassed the total number of the prior works combined. This paper presents the concept of NFC technology in a holistic approach from different perspectives, including hardware improvement and optimization, communication essentials and standards, applications, secure elements, privacy and security, usability analysis, and ecosystem and business issues. Further research opportunities in terms of the academic and business points of view are also explored and discussed at the end of each section. This comprehensive survey will be a valuable guide for researchers and academicians, as well as for business in the NFC technology and ecosystem.Publisher's Versio

Estimating oxygen consumption of rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) in a raceway: a precision fish farming approach

3openInternationalItalian coauthor/editorThe Precision Fish Farming (PFF) approach was applied to the estimation of fish oxygen consumption of rainbow trout in a raceway farm. A dynamic model, simulating the evolution of Dissolved Oxygen concentration, was identified: the daily oscillation of fish oxygen consumption rate was simulated by means of a sinusoidal function. The model was applied to the data set collected during a four-week field study, which was carried out in July 2019. Water temperature and Dissolved Oxygen concentration were measured with an hourly frequency in farm influent and effluent. Fish biomass was monitored on a daily basis by combining the data provided by a state-of-the art system for non-invasive estimation of fish weight distribution with mortality counting. The monitoring period was partitioned into two time-windows, as fish was not fed during the first two weeks. These windows were further partitioned into a calibration and validation set. Three model parameters, i.e. the average daily respiration rate, the amplitude of its daily oscillation, and its phase were estimated by fitting the model output to the time series of DO concentration in the effluent. The results of the calibration show that: 1) the daily average oxygen consumption rate is consistent with the literature; 2) the amplitude of the daily oscillation when fish is regularly fed is more than twice that estimated for fasting fish. The results of the validation suggest that the model could be used to implement a cost-effective automatic control of oxygen supply, based on the short-term prediction of oxygen demandopenRoyer, E.; Faccenda, F.; Pastres, R.Royer, E.; Faccenda, F.; Pastres, R

Final report on dissemination, regulation, standardization, exploitation & training : D6.3

In D6.1 deliverable project dissemination, exploitation and training plans, as well as standardization & regulatory approach strategy was presented. The D6.2 reported on the necessary updates of these strategies and the actions taken by the partners in line with them, as well as the obtained results. In this D6.3 deliverable, a full set of project dissemination activities, standardization & regulatory contributions as well as an operator’s “cook book” outlining steps necessary for full deployment of ON functionality and services, are presented.Deliverable D6.3 del projecte OneFITPostprint (author’s final draft

Strategies for the deployment of microclimate sensors in spaces housing collections

[EN] The study of the microclimate is pivotal for the protection and conservation of cultural heritage. This paper describes specifc procedures aimed at the deployment of microclimate sensors in spaces housing collections (e.g., museums) under diferent scenarios. The decision making involves a multidisciplinary discussion among museum manager, con¿ servator and conservation scientist and implies fve steps. Since the sensor¿s deployment depends on the number of available sensors, we have identifed two possible circumstances: (a) artwork-related deployment (i.e., there are as many sensors as the number of artworks) and (b) artwork-envelope-related deployment (i.e., the number of available sensors is less than the number of artworks). The former circumstance is advisable when the artwork is often moved from a museum to another one. The latter circumstance is usually the case of permanent collections, and, according to the Museum Scenario (MS), the related procedures can be further subdivided into basic (MSI and MSII) and advanced (MSIII and MSIV). Advanced procedures are preferable over basic procedures when several time series of microcli¿ mate data have been collected for at least one calendar year in several sampling points. All these procedures make it possible to design where to deploy sensors both in the case of an initial deployment and of optimisation of already installed sensors.This research was funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No.814624.Frasca, F.; Verticchio, E.; Peiró-Vitoria, A.; Grinde, A.; Bile, A.; Chimenti, C.; Conati Barbaro, C.... (2022). Strategies for the deployment of microclimate sensors in spaces housing collections. Heritage Science. 10(1):1-17. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40494-022-00831-111710

Development of a new device for the measurement and modeling of an innovative risk index for cultural heritage application

The monitoring, as a function of time, of environmental parameters in cultural heritage is essential to preserve materials, to recognize the reasons of degradation and to evaluate their effects. The degrading effects of objects in cultural heritage field, can be classified in optical, morphological, physical-chemical/mechanical and alterations and depend by micro-climatic conditions. For this reason, in recent years, several solutions have been developed and commercialized for environmental monitoring, some compatible with general advice and others OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturing). However, the trend of application between compliant and non-ISO-compliant devices has not yet been sufficiently analyzed. In this first section, we show how in the last ten years researchers have shifted their attention to custom-made devices based on new generation sensors despite the expense of units ISO certified. The study based on a review of scientific articles has shown that: with the increase of low-cost and open-source technologies applied in the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and in particular in the cultural heritage, led to a research advancement in the field, but, at the same time, increased non-homogeneity of the methods, impinging comparability of results. In recent years the trend is to use low-cost automatic wireless systems. This innovation, however, opens new scenarios and challenges on how to improve their stability, longevity, and sensitivity; reduce maintenance (battery replacement, including calibration or sensors); improve data analysis/management/display costs. In particular, it has highlighted the current difficulty of low-cost detectors to satisfy the robustness and reliability of regulatory and conventional stationary monitors at the expense of the periods and aesthetics. We have therefore paid particular attention to the sensitivity and reliability of the innovative solutions presented to overcome the traditional limitations, as well as to the real feasibility of solutions regarding sustainability, adaptability to the works of art or price. We also see the need for more communication between the scientific community and the decision-makers, who have only recently opened up to this paradigm. We highlighted the need to identify recurrent or innovative topics in the various documents concerning the approaches to preventive conservation, the preservation of damage and environmental management. After a review of state of the art regarding the different sampling device applied in cultural heritage and a survey of the parameters that involve a degradation effect on the materials, in this section, we focus our attention on a sensors-based prototype able to detect: (i) temperature and relative humidity; (ii) NO, NO2 and SO2; (iii) vibrations. In particular, this section describes the design and the validation of the Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) propose3, named WENDY, an acronym for Wireless Environmental moNitoring Device prototYpe. WENDY, built on a microcontroller of ATmega328P series, gathers signals from a sensor for temperature and relative humidity; a 9-axis MIMU; and three gas detection miniature boards (NO, NO2 and SO2). Complete the board a connector for memory card (SD) and an RTC. Additionally, a module based on the ZigBee standard could be used to transmit all data. In this section, precisely, we present the performances of the WSN node in detecting: structure tilt, vibrations and the daily cycle of humidity, temperature and gas deposition. The experimental setup used to evaluate the accuracy of MIMU system highlighted a relative error on shock acceleration measurement, in term of normalized root mean square error, lower than 0.1 % for the sinusoidal input and 0.51 % for cardinal sin input, with an average accuracy in the principal peak reconstruction of 1 % in the chosen frequency range (5 Hz to 50 Hz). The MIMU accuracy for tilt measurement, evaluated through the root mean square error was equal to 0.3° and a standard deviation always lower than 0.4° in the 0-90° tilt range. The gas detection and temperature/ humidity boards showed data comparable with the nearby certified ARPA system device. The aim of the applicative section is monitoring effects of different factors which affect the “Minerva Medica Temple,” an archeological site in Rome. In particular, we focus on: (i) the seasonal thermal variations on the structure; (ii) the contamination due to by local traffic regarding gaseous pollutant and (iii) the dynamic response of the structure to a tramway line located in Rome and called “Roma- Giardinetti.” The developed system allows for prioritization of intervention both for management and interventions planning, regarding restoration, consolidation, and conservation. Moreover, the software structure of the environmental monitoring device is presented and expounded in detail.4 Always in this section, an innovative procedure for the evaluation of the environmental hazard in cultural heritage is proposed. This risk assessment can be considered as a “relative risk assessment methodology.” In particular, it considers the impacts of microclimatic conditions on the monument, based on the international norms and the current scientific knowledge. For measurement campaigns with WENDY, the risk method proposed is applied to the results of two measurement campaigns carried out between 2017 and 2018 over two different periods (September-December and March-July), at “Minerva Medica Temple,” in Rome