The Assessment of Real Estate Initiatives to Be Included in the Socially-Responsible Funds

The acknowledgment of the ongoing economic and financial crisis involving real estate, creates the need to formulate proposals and scenarios (in real estate) with the characteristics of socially responsible investments. These kind of investments aim towards “sustainable” development both environmentally (safeguarding the shortage of resources such as land, energy, and natural elements), and socially (protecting the population and raising its level of well-being) according to so-called “ethical finance”, instead of a mere “speculative” investment. Effectively, real estate is still an investment sector only marginally explored by the socially-responsible funds. Based on these premises, this paper will: (i) briefly analyze the nature of socially-responsible investments, setting their characteristics apart from “traditional investments”; and (ii) propose a possible procedure (of the multi-criteria type) which aims to assess socially-responsible investments in real estate. This will be applied to a case study regarding a social housing initiative in the municipality of Anguillara Sabazia (Rome, Italy)

Multi-Criteria Analysis in Compound Decision Processes. The AHP and the Architectural Competition for the Chamber of Deputies in Rome (Italy)

In 1967, a national architectural competition was released for a preliminary project proposal, aimed at the realization of the new building for the Chamber of Deputies in Rome. The outcomes of that competition were unusual: eighteen projects were declared joint winners, and no winner was consequently selected. With reference to that event, this research aims to examine the usefulness of the evaluation tools that are currently employed and the positive effects that one of these techniques would have had, as support for the identification of the “winner” project, are highlighted. Therefore, an hypothetical examination/adjustment of the decision process of that competition through the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is developed, analyzing the outputs obtained by the implementations of this technique on the final decision. In addition to confirming the usefulness of the evaluation tools for compound and conflicting decision processes, the results of this experiment led to a further understanding of the socio-cultural dynamics related to the original outcomes of the competition analyzed. View Full-Tex

Peer-to-peer and community-based markets: A comprehensive review

The advent of more proactive consumers, the so-called "prosumers", with production and storage capabilities, is empowering the consumers and bringing new opportunities and challenges to the operation of power systems in a market environment. Recently, a novel proposal for the design and operation of electricity markets has emerged: these so-called peer-to-peer (P2P) electricity markets conceptually allow the prosumers to directly share their electrical energy and investment. Such P2P markets rely on a consumer-centric and bottom-up perspective by giving the opportunity to consumers to freely choose the way they are to source their electric energy. A community can also be formed by prosumers who want to collaborate, or in terms of operational energy management. This paper contributes with an overview of these new P2P markets that starts with the motivation, challenges, market designs moving to the potential future developments in this field, providing recommendations while considering a test-case

Usage of Network Simulators in Machine-Learning-Assisted 5G/6G Networks

Without any doubt, Machine Learning (ML) will be an important driver of future communications due to its foreseen performance when applied to complex problems. However, the application of ML to networking systems raises concerns among network operators and other stakeholders, especially regarding trustworthiness and reliability. In this paper, we devise the role of network simulators for bridging the gap between ML and communications systems. In particular, we present an architectural integration of simulators in ML-aware networks for training, testing, and validating ML models before being applied to the operative network. Moreover, we provide insights on the main challenges resulting from this integration, and then give hints discussing how they can be overcome. Finally, we illustrate the integration of network simulators into ML-assisted communications through a proof-of-concept testbed implementation of a residential Wi-Fi network

3D MODELING of A COMPLEX BUILDING: From MULTI-VIEW IMAGE FUSION to GOOGLE EARTH PUBLICATION

This paper presents a pipeline that aims at illustrating the procedure to realize a 3D model of a complex building integrating the UAV and terrestrial images and modifying the 3D model in order to publish to Google Earth in an interactive modality so as to provide better available models for visualization and use. The main steps of the procedure are the optimization of the UAV flight, the integration of the different UAV and ground floor images and the optimization of the model to be published to GE. The case study has been identified in a building, The Eremo di Santa Rosalia Convent in Sicily which hash more staggered elevations and located in the hills of the hinterland and of which, the online platform only indicate the position on Google Maps (GM) and Google Earth (GE) with a photo from above and a non-urban road whose GM path is not corresponding with the GE photo. The process highlights the integration of the models and showcases a workflow for the publication of the combined 3D model to the GE platform

Sustainability Assessment in Singular Structures, Foundations and Structural Rehabilitation in Spanish Legislation

The objective of this work is twofold: to determine the scope of the tools currently available for the assessment of sustainability of structures in Spanish legislation; and to identify environmental aspects that have yet to be covered, especially in the case of foundations and of measures aimed at the structural rehabilitation of singular buildings. To this end, the method proposed in the Spanish Instruction of Structural Concrete is applied to the particular case of the supported foundations of the Cylindrical and Colonel buildings in the construction of the new Faculties of Law and of Work Sciences, of the University of Seville during the period between 2005 and 2008. This case was chosen for its special uniqueness and for its inclusion of environmental aspects that remain outside the scope of existing methods. Most of these aspects are also of great relevance in structural rehabilitation activities carried out in urban environments and neighbourhoods, where a major surge is currently underway due to the economic crisis that has hit projects of newly constructed buildings. By virtue of the work carried out in recent years in the field of sustainability and the environment by several research groups at the University of Seville, a number of alternatives are proposed for the quantification of those aspects that remain to be considered. These techniques are based on tools that allow the agents to intervene in a flexible and effective way in the project implementation phase