MOBILITY AND URBAN AREAS INTERCHANGE

Urban transportation today is matching more and more new needs for mobility due to the continuous change of urban functions. Nowadays, the concept of the city transcends the vision of a constructed and circumscribed space to reach the valence of a service system, linked by an infrastructure network which allows the same functionality. In this sense, mobility has suffered substantial modification in adapting to the changing needs of the local populations. Thus, the interpretation of urban mobility must change in satisfying three instances: the routes, means of transport, and mode change. Above all, the mode change needs to be adequately exploited to support new mobility. It is necessary to improve integration between different transfer modality, and to affect the propensity (favored by major guarantees of quality of travel) of the users to the use of public transport. This work is aimed to identify those parameters which are useful in planning an area where two or more transport networks can be employed. Thus, even if they are hierarchically different, they must be connected and their functions and equipment must be concentrated to facilitate the transition from one system of transport to another

Optimal randomness certification in the quantum steering and prepare-and-measure scenarios

Quantum mechanics predicts the existence of intrinsically random processes. Contrary to classical randomness, this lack of predictability can not be attributed to ignorance or lack of control. Here we find the optimal method to quantify the amount of local or global randomness that can be extracted in two scenarios: (i) the quantum steering scenario, where two parties measure a bipartite system in an unknown state but one of them does not trust his measurement apparatus, and (ii) the prepare-and-measure scenario, where additionally the quantum state is known. We use our methods to compute the maximal amount of local and global randomness that can be certified by measuring systems subject to noise and losses and show that local randomness can be certified from a single measurement if and only if the detectors used in the test have detection efficiency higher than 50%.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures. v2: Published versio

A Multiple Case Study Investigating Principles of Design and Implementation of Operational Safety Plans for Crises at Colleges, Universities, and Affiliated Institutions

In the wake of the 2007 Virginia Tech tragedy, the Virginia state legislature mandated that all college-affiliated institutions create an operational safety plan for natural and manmade crises. Previous empirical research has mostly focused on documenting faculty and students’ perceptions of campus safety, preparations for manmade crises over natural disasters, and enhancing specific aspects of emergency responses for future incidents. Thus, design and implementation “best practices” for higher education operational safety plan protocols is an understudied, yet burgeoning area of inquiry. To address this literature gap, a comparative case study of five institutions was conducted using a novel document analysis protocol and interviews to analyze current operational safety plans through the lenses of open systems, rational choice, and chaos theories. Data revealed three guiding principles for design, four factors identified for successful implementation, and five candidate “best practices,” which aligned with the training, emergency threat assessment, emergency management, resources, communication and coordination protocol themes. A practical implication from this study was that the selected institutions placed more attention on operational safety plan response elements than on preparation components, which may mean less than optimal plan execution. Moreover, a significant theoretical implication was the discovery that emergency managers rationalized their operational safety plan decisions based on perceived costs and benefits, which may deprive these plans of the most up-to-date, peer reviewed information. Future studies will contribute additional novel practical and theoretical guidance regarding the essential components for effective operational safety planning that would increase the capability of senior administrators and campus safety personnel to manage risks associated with emergency disasters

Urban regeneration and bioregionalism

The sustainable development and the bioregionalism find their meeting point in the strategies of urban regeneration adoptable in the Campania Region. In the article, following a brief consideration about possible scenarios of short chain to be triggered between the agricultural and the building sector, three samples of experimental actions are described, which are under development in three areas, in S. Arsenio in the Diano valley, in S. Antonio Abate and in Naples. All the here presented cases are object of a collaboration between the University (Research and education institution), the local authorities and the Small and Medium Enterprises of the bioregions, which has led to application of those principles within design proposals of sustainable and bioregionalist urban regeneration. The sustainable development and the bioregionalism find their meeting point in the strategies of urban regeneration adoptable in the Campania Region. In the article, following a brief consideration about possible scenarios of short chain to be triggered between the agricultural and the building sector, three samples of experimental actions are described, which are under development in three areas, in S. Arsenio in the Diano valley, in S. Antonio Abate and in Naples. All the here presented cases are object of a collaboration between the University (Research and education institution), the local authorities and the Small and Medium Enterprises of the bioregions, which has led to application of those principles within design proposals of sustainable and bioregionalist urban regeneration

Necessary detection efficiencies for secure quantum key distribution and bound randomness

In recent years, several hacking attacks have broken the security of quantum cryptography implementations by exploiting the presence of losses and the ability of the eavesdropper to tune detection efficiencies. We present a simple attack of this form that applies to any protocol in which the key is constructed from the results of untrusted measurements performed on particles coming from an insecure source or channel. Because of its generality, the attack applies to a large class of protocols, from standard prepare-and-measure to device-independent schemes. Our attack gives bounds on the critical detection efficiencies necessary for secure quantum distribution, which show that the implementation of most partly device independent solutions is, from the point of view of detection efficiency, almost as demanding as fully device-independent ones. We also show how our attack implies the existence of a form of bound randomness, namely non-local correlations in which a non-signalling eavesdropper can find out a posteriori the result of any implemented measurement.Comment: 5 pages. v2: new title, published versio

Detection loophole attacks on semi-device-independent quantum and classical protocols

Semi-device-independent quantum protocols realize information tasks - e.g. secure key distribution, random access coding, and randomness generation - in a scenario where no assumption on the internal working of the devices used in the protocol is made, except their dimension. These protocols offer two main advantages: first, their implementation is often less demanding than fully-device-independent protocols. Second, they are more secure than their device-dependent counterparts. Their classical analogous is represented by random access codes, which provide a general framework for describing one-sided classical communication tasks. We discuss conditions under which detection inefficiencies can be exploited by a malicious provider to fake the performance of semi-device-independent quantum and classical protocols - and how to prevent it.Comment: 13 pages, 1 figure, published versio

Tools for the analysis of the landscape structure and its configuration and resilience.

The st udy wi l l pr o po se an application on Cilento’s rural landscape to test a method of analysing the syntactical aspects and of identifying the dynamics of transformation in order to control changes and to define those elements that are resilient to change and how they can be modified to be consistent with emerging new needs. The perceptual dimension of the landscape is affected by many factors that may give rise to numerous and different evaluations; the study, by identifying the syntactic elements and the rules that govern the composition of a perspective system, allows the orderly return of what is recognized by the experiential memory. The study is aimed to define tools in order to educate the residents to avoid insertions or removals, booth natural or artificial components, inconsistent with the rules that govern the identity of the landscape

Robustness of Device Independent Dimension Witnesses

Device independent dimension witnesses provide a lower bound on the dimensionality of classical and quantum systems in a "black box" scenario where only correlations between preparations, measurements and outcomes are considered. We address the problem of the robustness of dimension witnesses, namely that to witness the dimension of a system or to discriminate between its quantum or classical nature, even in the presence of loss. We consider the case when shared randomness is allowed between preparations and measurements and we provide a threshold in the detection efficiency such that dimension witnessing can still be performed.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, published versio

The drivers of eco‐innovations in small and medium‐sized enterprises: A systematic literature review and research directions

The debate on innovations that contributes to the decoupling of economic growth and environmental degradation or fosters the transition from the brown to the green economy is becoming increasingly relevant in the academic and business worlds, fuelling a research stream that is proving very interesting for its economic, environmental and social implications. Although the debate on the adoption of environmental innovations is well underway, the discussion on eco-innovation in the context of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is at a less developed stage and deserves more attention, especially given the relevance of these companies in the economic system of several countries. Thus, this study proposes a systematic literature review of the determinants of eco-innovation in SMEs and explores the relationships among them by starting from the criticalities highlighted in the five literature reviews of determinants of eco-innovations in SMEs that have been recently published. The first step of the research concerns a detailed description of the selection process of the articles under consideration and of their characteristics. In the second step, 14 main categories of determinants are identified. Additionally, in the third step, as result of this investigation, three basilar research directions and 13 related research questions emerged

Physical constraints on global social-ecological energy system

Energy is the main driver of human Social-Ecological System (SES) dynamics. Collective energy properties of human SES can be described applying the principles of statistical mechanics: (i) energy consumption repartition; (ii) efficiency; (iii) performance, as efficient power, in relation to the least-action principle. International Energy Agency data are analyzed through the lens of such principles. Declining physical efficiency and growth of power losses emerge from our analysis. Losses mainly depend on intermediate system outputs and non-energy final output. Energy performance at Country level also depends on efficient power consumption. Better and worse performing Countries are identified accordingly. Five policy-relevant areas are identified in relation to the physical principles introduced in this paper: Improve efficiency; Decouple economic growth from environmental degradation; Focus on high value added and labor-intensive sectors; Rationalize inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption; Upgrade the technological capabilities. Coherently with our findings, policies should support the following actions: (1) redefine sectoral energy distribution shares; (2) Improve Country-level performance, if needed; (3) Reduce intermediate outputs and non-energy final output; (4) Reduce resources supply to improve eco-efficiency together with system performance