Advancements in Road Safety Management Analysis

Road Safety Management (RSM) can be briefly defined as the tasks of preparing and implementing road safety policies. Many studies have been carried out on RSM, trying to identify success factors and reference best practice examples, but the complexity of the subject and the difficulty of quantitative data collection make it difficult a clear and comprehensive understanding. According to the EC-funded DACOTA research project, the weakest components of RSM systems in Europe are policy implementation and funding and the lack of knowledge-based road safety policy making. The main objective of the research, undertaken within the FERSI's working group on Road Safety Management (RSM), is to better investigate in several European countries those two RSM key functions: funding and research. Particularly the study aims at 1) exploring the existing structures, processes and factors affecting funding and research performances; 2) defining an assessment framework able to measure single country performances with reference to the efficiency and effectiveness of road safety funding and research, possibly shifting from a qualitative to a more quantitative approach. Based on the available knowledge on these two topics (research and funding), an assessment framework is defined and a set of qualitative and quantitative indicators for funding and research performance measurement is proposed. A desk analysis aiming at collecting available data useful to estimate the proposed indicators is conducted and a preliminary analysis with this subset of indicators is undertaken. A subset of research indicators (bibliometric) are used to estimate road safety research outputs performance of a country in terms of productivity and quality of research and international collaboration activities. Preliminary results show a positive correlation among them, even if the linear correlation turns to be not so strong. Countries are ranked on the basis of a composite index of all the three indicators

INDICATORS OF THE GLOBAL REPORTING INITIATIVE REGARDING SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Ample debates took place and numerous methods were elaborated in order to assessthe environment performance of an entity. The simplest and fastest method consists in applyingenvironment indicators which can present the multitude of environment data in a much clearerformat. Environment indicators play an important role in decision making and this is why numerousorganisms and institutions are interested in their development. This article presents the activities ofGRI with regard to this issue.environmental indicators, annual report, sustainable development

PopRank: Ranking pages' impact and users' engagement on Facebook

Users online tend to acquire information adhering to their system of beliefs and to ignore dissenting information. Such dynamics might affect page popularity. In this paper we introduce an algorithm, that we call PopRank, to assess both the Impact of Facebook pages as well as users' Engagement on the basis of their mutual interactions. The ideas behind the PopRank are that i) high impact pages attract many users with a low engagement, which means that they receive comments from users that rarely comment, and ii) high engagement users interact with high impact pages, that is they mostly comment pages with a high popularity. The resulting ranking of pages can predict the number of comments a page will receive and the number of its posts. Pages impact turns out to be slightly dependent on pages' informative content (e.g., science vs conspiracy) but independent of users' polarization.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure

Determinants of impact : towards a better understanding of encounters with the arts

The article argues that current methods for assessing the impact of the arts are largely based on a fragmented and incomplete understanding of the cognitive, psychological and socio-cultural dynamics that govern the aesthetic experience. It postulates that a better grasp of the interaction between the individual and the work of art is the necessary foundation for a genuine understanding of how the arts can affect people. Through a critique of philosophical and empirical attempts to capture the main features of the aesthetic encounter, the article draws attention to the gaps in our current understanding of the responses to art. It proposes a classification and exploration of the factors—social, cultural and psychological—that contribute to shaping the aesthetic experience, thus determining the possibility of impact. The ‘determinants of impact’ identified are distinguished into three groups: those that are inherent to the individual who interacts with the artwork; those that are inherent to the artwork; and ‘environmental factors’, which are extrinsic to both the individual and the artwork. The article concludes that any meaningful attempt to assess the impact of the arts would need to take these ‘determinants of impact’ into account, in order to capture the multidimensional and subjective nature of the aesthetic experience

Measures for Ph.D. Evaluation: the Recruitment Process

Recently the quality of Higher Education (HE) system and its evaluation have been key issues of the political and scientific debate on education policies all over Europe. In the wide landscape that involves the entire HE system we draw attention on the third level of its organization, i.e. the Ph.D. In particular, this paper discusses the necessity of monitoring the recruitment process of Ph.D. system because it represents a fundamental aspect of the Ph.D. system as a whole. We introduce a set of concepts related to the recruitment process and then we make them computable with synthetic indicators. The study provides an empirical analysis based on doctoral schools of four academic years at the University of Siena. Proposed indicators are finally used for detecting weakness and strength of each Ph.D. school.Ph.D. schools, Ph.D.s. recruitment, diversity, external attractiveness, polarization

Dissemination of management into politics: Michael Porter and the political uses of management consulting

The article contributes to the literature on management dissemination by looking at how management fashions are diffused into and circulated in politics. The ideas of management have been increasingly disseminated into the realm of politics during recent decades. To illustrate how this takes place, this article examines the spread of Michael Porter’s ideas on national politics. Porter’s work is considered a management fashion that has been skilfully packaged; a new form of the 20th-century tradition of state-led social engineering which takes the form of management fashion-style packaging. For this he is seen as a global guru in national politics, and this development is regarded as a new form of consultocracy in the realm of democracies. In consultocracy, the ideas of management consulting are often adopted into politics as a common justifying rationality of power for the political elites. Thus we call for further research on the underlying dynamics of the power involved as management fashions are disseminated into the realm of politics

A Multifunctional Comparison of Conventional versus Alternative Olive Systems in Spain by Using AHP

Sustainability of agriculture is strongly related to the multifunctional role implicitly or explicitly recognized to it in the framework of the European Union CAP. This multifunctional role entails a multicriteria approach when assessing the performance and value for society of farming systems. Multicriteria assessment of agricultural systems is characterized by the existence of many criteria often conflicting among then, many stakeholders and decision-makers with competing interests, and lack of information. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is a multicriteria methodology that allows dealing with these problems, in a relatively easy, flexible and economical manner, and therefore it is a potentially useful tool in this field, although its application with this purpose has not been found in the literature. Therefore, this paper aims (1) to present AHP as a useful methodology to effectively assess and compare the multifunctional performances of agricultural systems, and (2) to apply AHP in the comparison, on the basis of experts' knowledge, of multiple functions -economic, technical, sociocultural and environmental- of conventional, organic and integrated olive producing systems in a region of Spain, and test the hypothetical superiority of the alternative systems with respect to the conventional one in the medium/long term and the average conditions of the region. Results confirm this global superiority thus providing a scientific base to endorse institutional and social support regarding the promotion and implementation of these alternative farming techniques. However, environmental issues are the more conflictive among experts and require a more in depth research in the future to clarify many of them.organic farming, integrated farming, olive-growing systems, AHP, multicriteria analysis., Crop Production/Industries, Q50, Q57, Q51, Q56, C6,

A framework for the selection of the right nuclear power plant

Civil nuclear reactors are used for the production of electrical energy. In the nuclear industry vendors propose several nuclear reactor designs with a size from 35–45 MWe up to 1600–1700 MWe. The choice of the right design is a multidimensional problem since a utility has to include not only financial factors as levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) and internal rate of return (IRR), but also the so called “external factors” like the required spinning reserve, the impact on local industry and the social acceptability. Therefore it is necessary to balance advantages and disadvantages of each design during the entire life cycle of the plant, usually 40–60 years. In the scientific literature there are several techniques for solving this multidimensional problem. Unfortunately it does not seem possible to apply these methodologies as they are, since the problem is too complex and it is difficult to provide consistent and trustworthy expert judgments. This paper fills the gap, proposing a two-step framework to choosing the best nuclear reactor at the pre-feasibility study phase. The paper shows in detail how to use the methodology, comparing the choice of a small-medium reactor (SMR) with a large reactor (LR), characterised, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (2006), by an electrical output respectively lower and higher than 700 MWe