The future of Cybersecurity in Italy: Strategic focus area

This volume has been created as a continuation of the previous one, with the aim of outlining a set of focus areas and actions that the Italian Nation research community considers essential. The book touches many aspects of cyber security, ranging from the definition of the infrastructure and controls needed to organize cyberdefence to the actions and technologies to be developed to be better protected, from the identification of the main technologies to be defended to the proposal of a set of horizontal actions for training, awareness raising, and risk management

Impact of Maker Movement on the Urban Resilience Development: Assessment Methodology and Analysis of EU Research and Innovation Projects

Cities are the engine of human development, and increasing urban sustainability is crucial to ensure human prosperity. The development of smart cities generally increases the sustainability of the cities. However, technical and environmental aspects are generally developed in smart cities neglecting socio-economic dimensions. The urban resilience concept includes the complex interactions of environmental, economic, and societal pillars. In this context, the emerging maker movement proposes an economic paradigm shift, with the interaction of humans and technology at the center of urban evolution. This paper proposes a multi-criteria methodology to define and assess the main characteristics of the resilient approach of the projects involving maker practices applied to urban development. The proposed methodology is based on the application of computer-assisted qualitative text analysis and a subsequent classification according to 12 indicators (community and urban efficiency, co-creation and professional, making sense and problem-solving, network and site-specific, implementation and optimization, sustainability-oriented and market-oriented) that define different dimensions of a bottom-up project’s resilient approach in three main key principles: inclusiveness, complexity, and durability. The method has been tested in 94 EU-funded projects. This analysis reveals the evolution and orientation of EU-funded projects from economic, technical, and social perspectives. Specifically, the patterns of remediation of non-participatory practices, the weak presence of open innovation initiatives, and the development of activities focusing on co-creation as a participatory tool. The applied methodology could be subsequently implemented at different scales and integrated with LCA in order to evaluate the sustainability of bottom-up projects toward urban development

Design and Emergence of a Pedagogical Online InfoSec Laboratory as an Ensemble Artefact

Information security (InfoSec) education becomes increasingly important. Building hands-on capabilities to tackle challenges is a precondition to mitigate and eliminate cyber threats. Existing studies, however, show that the field lacks pedagogically founded information security laboratories that can be used flexibly to educate both on-campus and online learners. To address this issue, this paper reports on an online InfoSec laboratory. Development of the laboratory follows an action design research approach. For this purpose, initial design principles were used that are derived from the existing pedagogical theories such as Conversational Framework, Constructive Alignment, and Personalized System of Instruction, literature reviews and empirical data. Through iterative cycles of building, intervention, and evaluation of an InfoSec laboratory, and side-by-side critical reflections, this study refines the conceptual model of an online InfoSec laboratory and initial design principles and provides general guidelines on the process of establishing a pedagogically underpinned online InfoSec laboratory for hands-on exercises. This study contributes by serving two major purposes. First, this study proposes a conceptual model of an online InfoSec laboratory that comprises important entities: Laboratory Infrastructure, Exercise (document), Exercise Processing and Management Interface (EPI), and Concrete Exercise Interface. Secondly, the research proposes design principles for implementing a conceptual model of an online InfoSec laboratory in different educational contexts

Parallel Architectures for Planetary Exploration Requirements (PAPER)

The Parallel Architectures for Planetary Exploration Requirements (PAPER) project is essentially research oriented towards technology insertion issues for NASA's unmanned planetary probes. It was initiated to complement and augment the long-term efforts for space exploration with particular reference to NASA/LaRC's (NASA Langley Research Center) research needs for planetary exploration missions of the mid and late 1990s. The requirements for space missions as given in the somewhat dated Advanced Information Processing Systems (AIPS) requirements document are contrasted with the new requirements from JPL/Caltech involving sensor data capture and scene analysis. It is shown that more stringent requirements have arisen as a result of technological advancements. Two possible architectures, the AIPS Proof of Concept (POC) configuration and the MAX Fault-tolerant dataflow multiprocessor, were evaluated. The main observation was that the AIPS design is biased towards fault tolerance and may not be an ideal architecture for planetary and deep space probes due to high cost and complexity. The MAX concepts appears to be a promising candidate, except that more detailed information is required. The feasibility for adding neural computation capability to this architecture needs to be studied. Key impact issues for architectural design of computing systems meant for planetary missions were also identified

Review of Quantitative Methods for Supply Chain Resilience Analysis

Supply chain resilience (SCR) manifests when the network is capable to withstand, adapt, and recover from disruptions to meet customer demand and ensure performance. This paper conceptualizes and comprehensively presents a systematic review of the recent literature on quantitative modeling the SCR while distinctively pertaining it to the original concept of resilience capacity. Decision-makers and researchers can benefit from our survey since it introduces a structured analysis and recommendations as to which quantitative methods can be used at different levels of capacity resilience. Finally, the gaps and limitations of existing SCR literature are identified and future research opportunities are suggested

Implementation issues in source coding

An edge preserving image coding scheme which can be operated in both a lossy and a lossless manner was developed. The technique is an extension of the lossless encoding algorithm developed for the Mars observer spectral data. It can also be viewed as a modification of the DPCM algorithm. A packet video simulator was also developed from an existing modified packet network simulator. The coding scheme for this system is a modification of the mixture block coding (MBC) scheme described in the last report. Coding algorithms for packet video were also investigated