Distance entropy cartography characterises centrality in complex networks

We introduce distance entropy as a measure of homogeneity in the distribution of path lengths between a given node and its neighbours in a complex network. Distance entropy defines a new centrality measure whose properties are investigated for a variety of synthetic network models. By coupling distance entropy information with closeness centrality, we introduce a network cartography which allows one to reduce the degeneracy of ranking based on closeness alone. We apply this methodology to the empirical multiplex lexical network encoding the linguistic relationships known to English speaking toddlers. We show that the distance entropy cartography better predicts how children learn words compared to closeness centrality. Our results highlight the importance of distance entropy for gaining insights from distance patterns in complex networks.Comment: 11 page

Collective engagement:From disaster-prone to disaster-resilient city

The dissertation is about building urban resilience through collective engagement, with a particular interest in flood-prone cities and their efforts to become disaster-resilient. It looks into the interrelationship, the vertical, horizontal, and transversal, between collective engagement and urban resilience, how collective engagement takes place in cities, and what role it plays in transforming disaster-prone cities to disaster-resilient cities

Digital construction and management the public’s infrastructures

The purpose of the present paper “Digital construction and management the public’s infrastructures” is to propose an interconnected development approach, in the management of public infrastructure asset, that through of digital modeling (BIM*) and interoperability provides tools to support decision-making processes. In detail, this work analyzes the innovative process of developing digital tools for the institutional tasks of supervision and support for the management of land transport infrastructure in the Italian national system. Therefore, trough of one assumed a georeferenced network of “digital twins” have been valued the scenarios obtainable whit the digitalization of the public works and of the territory’s surveys. The principles for managing information flows for Italian’s public transport infrastructures have been developed in accordance with national legislation and the reference UNI standards. The assumed flow is on the exchange of data between the managing subjects with the owners’ authorities and surveillance bodies, taking as pivot element the Index public work (IOP) code attributed to each public work. Finally, a conceptual model has been proposed for the energy analysis of the road section and the identification of the best areas to create the “green islands” to produce renewable energy, for the management of infrastructure and for the recharging of electric vehicles

Global Risks 2014, Ninth Edition.

The Global Risks 2014 report highlights how global risks are not only interconnected but also have systemic impacts. To manage global risks effectively and build resilience to their impacts, better efforts are needed to understand, measure and foresee the evolution of interdependencies between risks, supplementing traditional risk-management tools with new concepts designed for uncertain environments. If global risks are not effectively addressed, their social, economic and political fallouts could be far-reaching, as exemplified by the continuing impacts of the financial crisis of 2007-2008

Governing Ecological Connectivity in Cross-Scale Dependent Systems.

Ecosystem management and governance of cross-scale dependent systems require integrating knowledge about ecological connectivity in its multiple forms and scales. Although scientists, managers, and policymakers are increasingly recognizing the importance of connectivity, governmental organizations may not be currently equipped to manage ecosystems with strong cross-boundary dependencies. Managing the different aspects of connectivity requires building social connectivity to increase the flow of information, as well as the capacity to coordinate planning, funding, and actions among both formal and informal governance bodies. We use estuaries in particular the San Francisco Estuary, in California, in the United States, as examples of cross-scale dependent systems affected by many intertwined aspects of connectivity. We describe the different types of estuarine connectivity observed in both natural and human-affected states and discuss the human dimensions of restoring beneficial physical and ecological processes. Finally, we provide recommendations for policy, practice, and research on how to restore functional connectivity to estuaries

Urban disaster resilience: learning from the 2011 Bangkok flood

Reducing disaster risk, managing rapid urbanisation and tackling poverty is an enormous challenge, particularly in vulnerable neighbourhoods in low and middle-income countries. By 2050, two-thirds of the world’s population will live in towns and cities, with 95 per cent of future urban expansion in the global South. At the same time, disasters are increasing in frequency, severity and intensity. Poorer people in vulnerable neighbourhoods are least equipped to cope with the threat of disaster. When flooding struck Thailand’s capital city Bangkok in 2011, the United Nations estimated that 73 per cent of low-income households were badly affected (UNISDR 2013). With disasters in cities on the rise, current thinking suggests that resilience offers valuable insights for reducing risk. This research seeks to develop and validate a conceptual framework for understanding urban disaster resilience in low-income neighbourhoods. It combines two urban approaches. The first, complex adaptive systems (CAS), views the city as a combination of inter-dependent parts working together at a multitude of scales that shapes its overall behaviour. The second, urban morphology, seeks to understand the creation of urban form by establishing connections between the city’s historical economic, political and social transformations to its modern day form. The conceptual framework was applied to three low-income neighbourhoods in Bangkok affected by the 2011 flood. Through a case study approach, qualitative information was gathered and analysed in order to understand city-scale and neighbourhood level transformations that built patterns of vulnerability and resilience to chronic stresses and acute shocks. This research concludes that combining CAS and morphology provides a valuable conceptual framework for understanding urban disaster resilience. Such a framework places people at the centre while providing a scalar and temporal analysis of co-evolving acute and chronic risks in urban areas. Moreover, the intersections of CAS and urban morphology identify dimensions of resilience, where human systems and the built environment affect each other in a positive or negative ways – before, during and after a disaster. Overall, this research concludes that resilience needs to be built both before and after a disaster to be effective, and that disaster itself is a test of how systems and the built environment have learned from history about how to cope with and adapt to shocks and stresses. To these ends, urban disaster resilience can be defined as the ways in which the built environment, complex adaptive systems and people interact to cope, adapt and transform in order to reduce disaster risk

An economic model for constitutional designs: from nation-states to an 'Olympic world system'

Heartened by Aaron Director’s formation of a law-and-economics cluster at the University of Chicago, this paper proposes a new cluster that shares a post nation-state, city-centered, vision for constitutional organisation. To this end, the paper introduces an economic model to illustrate the role of polycentricity in the stability and prosperity of polities. The model is inspired by Tinbergen’s gravity model of international trade, and two-dimensional lattice models used in theoretical physics. The model suggests that constitutional constructs weave an evolutionary dialectic between different organisational scales (the local, national, and global). This dialectic continues to wreak havoc at the local scale, and can be interrupted only through explicit constitutional constraints on the size of ‘jurisdictional footprints’. Polycentricity is interpreted in the spirit of (non-contiguous) charter cities, and through the scholarship of Baruch Spinoza’s constitutional orders, as exemplified by the Dutch Republic (1581-1795). This rendition of sovereignty is imperative as much for countries facing the strife of civil war (including Libya, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and the Ukraine) as it is for maturing economies. In a globalizing world that is more and more imbued with nation-state morbidity, there is a pressing need for a city-centric, ‘Olympic world system’. A Chicago cluster bringing together scholars such as Gerald Frug, Paul Romer, Benjamin Barber, Yishai Blank, and Saskia Sassen, could see this vision come to fruition

Improving measures of topological robustness in networks of networks and suggestion of a novel way to counter both failure propagation and isolation

The study of interdependent complex networks in the last decade has shown how cascading failure can result in the recursive and complete fragmentation of all connected systems from the destruction of a comparatively small number of nodes. Existing "network of networks" approaches are still in infancy and have shown limits when trying to model the robustness of real-world systems, due to simplifying assumptions regarding network interdependencies and post-attack viability. In order to increase the realism of such models, we challenge such assumptions by validating the following four hypotheses through experimental results obtained from computer based simulations. Firstly, we suggest that, in the case of network topologies vulnerable to fragmentation, replacing the standard measure of robustness based on the size of the one largest remaining connected component by a new measure allowing secondary components to remain viable when measuring post-attack viability can make a significant improvement to the model. Secondly, we show that it is possible to influence the way failure propagation is balanced between coupled networks while keeping the same overall robustness score by allowing nodes in a given network to have multiple counter parts in another network. Thirdly, we challenge the generalised assumption that partitioning between networks is a good way to increase robustness and that isolation is a force as equally destructive as the iterative propagation of cascading failure. This result significantly alters where the optimum robustness lies in the balance between isolation and inter-network coupling in such interconnected systems. Finally, we propose a solution to the consequent problem of seemingly ever increasing vulnerability of interdependent networks to both cascading failure and isolation: the use of permutable nodes that would give such systems rewiring capabilities. This last concept could have wide implications when trying to improve the topological resilience of natural or engineered interdependent networks

Constructing living buildings: a review of relevant technologies for a novel application of biohybrid robotics

Biohybrid robotics takes an engineering approach to the expansion and exploitation of biological behaviours for application to automated tasks. Here, we identify the construction of living buildings and infrastructure as a high-potential application domain for biohybrid robotics, and review technological advances relevant to its future development. Construction, civil infrastructure maintenance and building occupancy in the last decades have comprised a major portion of economic production, energy consumption and carbon emissions. Integrating biological organisms into automated construction tasks and permanent building components therefore has high potential for impact. Live materials can provide several advantages over standard synthetic construction materials, including self-repair of damage, increase rather than degradation of structural performance over time, resilience to corrosive environments, support of biodiversity, and mitigation of urban heat islands. Here, we review relevant technologies, which are currently disparate. They span robotics, self-organizing systems, artificial life, construction automation, structural engineering, architecture, bioengineering, biomaterials, and molecular and cellular biology. In these disciplines, developments relevant to biohybrid construction and living buildings are in the early stages, and typically are not exchanged between disciplines. We, therefore, consider this review useful to the future development of biohybrid engineering for this highly interdisciplinary application.publishe