Diogenes Wanders the Superhighway: A Proposal for Authentication of Publicly Disseminated Documents on the Internet

On the national level, there are proposals to make the Internet the primary, and even the exclusive, means of disseminating certain government information. Concurrently, corporations and other private organizations may adopt a similar approach for their reports and other documents. Intertwined with these official and quasi-official documents are innumerable others created by individuals around the world. With so many documents, there is potential for dissemination of false, biased, and even fraudulent information. This is the source of the authentication problem

Diogenes Wanders the Superhighway: A Proposal for Authentication of Publicly Disseminated Documents on the Internet

On the national level, there are proposals to make the Internet the primary, and even the exclusive, means of disseminating certain government information. Concurrently, corporations and other private organizations may adopt a similar approach for their reports and other documents. Intertwined with these official and quasi-official documents are innumerable others created by individuals around the world. With so many documents, there is potential for dissemination of false, biased, and even fraudulent information. This is the source of the authentication problem

Self-organizing distributed digital library supporting audio-video

The StreamOnTheFly network combines peer-to-peer networking and open-archive principles for community radio channels and TV stations in Europe. StreamOnTheFly demonstrates new methods of archive management and personalization technologies for both audio and video. It also provides a collaboration platform for community purposes that suits the flexible activity patterns of these kinds of broadcaster communities

Training of Crisis Mappers and Map Production from Multi-sensor Data: Vernazza Case Study (Cinque Terre National Park, Italy)

This aim of paper is to presents the development of a multidisciplinary project carried out by the cooperation between Politecnico di Torino and ITHACA (Information Technology for Humanitarian Assistance, Cooperation and Action). The goal of the project was the training in geospatial data acquiring and processing for students attending Architecture and Engineering Courses, in order to start up a team of "volunteer mappers". Indeed, the project is aimed to document the environmental and built heritage subject to disaster; the purpose is to improve the capabilities of the actors involved in the activities connected in geospatial data collection, integration and sharing. The proposed area for testing the training activities is the Cinque Terre National Park, registered in the World Heritage List since 1997. The area was affected by flood on the 25th of October 2011. According to other international experiences, the group is expected to be active after emergencies in order to upgrade maps, using data acquired by typical geomatic methods and techniques such as terrestrial and aerial Lidar, close-range and aerial photogrammetry, topographic and GNSS instruments etc.; or by non conventional systems and instruments such us UAV, mobile mapping etc. The ultimate goal is to implement a WebGIS platform to share all the data collected with local authorities and the Civil Protectio

Leading change in information management

Introducing and leading change in any field is a difficult and complex task with no mapped path or certain route that guarantees success. Working in a public and administrative institution rarely offers opportunities for introducing and leading creative and innovative changes. However, my work on various information management tasks gave me a chance to lead change in a number of international organizations for which I worked, discovering new or improved information solutions, products and services. In retrospect, leading change in information management was a sine qua non of my long career and is a major focus of this Context Statement. This Context Statement offers a review of my own public works and achievements during my long professional career in information management. It concentrates on four public works, describing them in chronological order. It defines main influencers, theories, concepts and people that made the greatest impact on my career; evaluates the work performed, the technology used, the results achieved, and the lessons learned. The Context Statement also offers a thematic review of my public works, putting them in the perspective of the dramatically changed world of information management, the global impact of information, the democratisation of scientific and technical information, and the information ethics. The Context Statement concludes that, if we - the information managers - do not lead change and instigate constant innovation and modernization of our field, we will become museum custodians, instead of a leading avant-garde in today’s knowledge economy and the information world in which we live