MONALISA 2.0 and the sea traffic management - a concept creating the need for new maritime information standards and software solutions

Postprint (published version

A characteristics framework for Semantic Information Systems Standards

Semantic Information Systems (IS) Standards play a critical role in the development of the networked economy. While their importance is undoubted by all stakeholders—such as businesses, policy makers, researchers, developers—the current state of research leaves a number of questions unaddressed. Terminological confusion exists around the notions of “business semantics”, “business-to-business interoperability”, and “interoperability standards” amongst others. And, moreover, a comprehensive understanding about the characteristics of Semantic IS Standards is missing. The paper addresses this gap in literature by developing a characteristics framework for Semantic IS Standards. Two case studies are used to check the applicability of the framework in a “real-life” context. The framework lays the foundation for future research in an important field of the IS discipline and supports practitioners in their efforts to analyze, compare, and evaluate Semantic IS Standard

Smart Grid Technologies in Europe: An Overview

The old electricity network infrastructure has proven to be inadequate, with respect to modern challenges such as alternative energy sources, electricity demand and energy saving policies. Moreover, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) seem to have reached an adequate level of reliability and flexibility in order to support a new concept of electricity network—the smart grid. In this work, we will analyse the state-of-the-art of smart grids, in their technical, management, security, and optimization aspects. We will also provide a brief overview of the regulatory aspects involved in the development of a smart grid, mainly from the viewpoint of the European Unio

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

Towards a Context Knowledge Taxonomy. Combined Methodologies to Improve a Fast-Search Concept Extraction for an Ontology Population

Context in Architectural Design can be defined-related-comparable to hypothesis and boundary conditions in mathematics. An eco-system that influences it by means of natural and artificial events, space and time dimension. The research has the aim to analyze the critical issues related to Context by providing a contribution to the study of interactions between Context Knowledge and Architectural Design and how it can be used to improve the performance of the buildings and reducing design mistakes. The research focusing on formal ontologies, has developed a model that enables a semantic approach to design application programs, to manage information, to answer design questions and to have a clear relation between the formal representation of the context domain and its meanings. This context model provides an advancement on the state of the art in simplified design assumptions, in term of ontology ambiguity and complexity reduction, by using algorithms to extract and optimize branches of the graph. The extraction does not limit the number of relations, that can be extended and improve context taxonomy coherency and accuracy

Giving life to the map can save more lives. Wildfire scenario with interoperable simulations

Abstract. In the Mediterranean region, drier and hotter summers are leading to more likely and severe wildfires. The authors propose an innovative approach for situational awareness by giving life to maps and exploiting interoperable GIS, hazard models, simulations, and interconnection analysis processes aimed to enhance preparedness and strengthen the resilience of responding organizations. The information related to a virtual city and its countryside has been implemented in the terrain of simulation systems. The TIGER wildfire model software has been adapted to a scenario where districts, refugee camps and critical infrastructures can be impacted by a fire and has been linked to a smoke dispersion model, and associated impacts to the electricity network and roads. The transfer of computed fire propagation and combustion data to the AI-powered SWORD simulation enable more accurate computing of damage and loss. In SWORD, civil protection, military assets and humanitarian actions can be performed for training and operation preparation. The simulation data about fire and assets' deployments can feed a web app map or a command and control system, thus providing situational awareness for optimal decision-making, and analysis about people in danger, network interconnections and potential service disruption. Disaster managers and commanders can interact with simulated assets performing their chosen courses of action and analyse the outcomes.In conclusion, tests in a wildfire case study demonstrated a high level of interoperability among those systems and the possibility to provide updated situational awareness leading to better emergency preparedness and critical infrastructure resilience building, finally contributing to save more lives.</p

ClouNS - A Cloud-native Application Reference Model for Enterprise Architects

The capability to operate cloud-native applications can generate enormous business growth and value. But enterprise architects should be aware that cloud-native applications are vulnerable to vendor lock-in. We investigated cloud-native application design principles, public cloud service providers, and industrial cloud standards. All results indicate that most cloud service categories seem to foster vendor lock-in situations which might be especially problematic for enterprise architectures. This might sound disillusioning at first. However, we present a reference model for cloud-native applications that relies only on a small subset of well standardized IaaS services. The reference model can be used for codifying cloud technologies. It can guide technology identification, classification, adoption, research and development processes for cloud-native application and for vendor lock-in aware enterprise architecture engineering methodologies

Contribution of New Digital Technologies to the Digital Building Logbook

According to the European Commission, the Digital Building Logbook (DBL) is a repository of all of the relevant data of a building. It was first introduced at the European scale in the Renovation Wave strategy and was first defined in the proposal for the recast of the energy performance of buildings Directive in December 2021. The European DBL has not been implemented yet, since a common model does not yet exist. Even though great efforts are being made to establish it, some relevant issues need to be addressed first. One of them is the identification of data sources that will feed the DBL. Existing digital data sources have already been explored in some countries and they have been found to be insufficient. In this paper, new digital data sources suitable for the logbook are identified, and their contribution in terms of indicators and interoperability is analysed. The analysis shows that these sources have great potential to contribute to the DBL, because they bring the possibility to collect a great amount of real data on buildings. However, the main barrier for these tools to be incorporated into the DBL is that their linkage still requires further research