Il peso dei numeri dalla antichita al mondo attuale ed i problemi dello oggi alla luce di questi pesi.

Il peso dei numeri attraversa la storia della avventura umana e la precede nelle azioni cognitive di certi animali. Prove scientifiche recenti mostrano che il cervello umano possiede innati una grammatica sintattica (come sostenuto da Chomsky), alberi di classificazione, strutture di ordine, ecc. Del fatto che queste certezze scientifico-sperimentali siano della fine del 900 e la loro conoscenza teorica della fine dello 800 è irrilevante. Il peso dei numeri determina parti importanti della vita personale e sociale, privata e pubblica, economica e politica, culturale ed ideologica/religiosa di singoli uomini ed intere società (come mostrato dal formalismo di Russell e del primo Wittgenstein e dallo sperimentalismo del secondo Wittgenstein). La matematica e le scienze matematiche hanno un grande sviluppo nella Grecia antica e nel mondo ellenistico/ alessandrino/bizantino. Tuttavia una eredità nascosta è già presente nello antico Egitto, nella Mesopotamia sumera e babilonese che con il mondo greco ed i suoi eredi aprono la via alla scienza araba. Altre eredità più lontane, in Cina ed in India, irraggiano nello estremo oriente e nel sud-est asiatico. Inoltre tramite lo impero mongolo in Cina ed in modo diretto in India, gli arabi sono anche traghettatori, da oriente verso occidente (dalle teste di ponte in Maghreb, Spagna e Sicilia), di nuovi campi della matematica, contribuendo alla sua rinascita, dopo i secoli bui dello alto medioevo. Dopodiché la matematica europea si sviluppa, su linee proprie, in contemporanea allo straorinario, ma controverso, sviluppo di manifattura, industria ed automazione/ informatizzazione (in questo caso, a partire dalle intuizioni di Wiener e dai progetti di Turing), a volte prima ed altre volte rincorrendo i ritrovati empirici della tecnologia. Di certo, si ha sviluppo e progresso, ma anche limiti e contraddizioni (a riguardo, una importante riflessione è proposta da Cassirer) che ormai si mostrano con evidenza. Ovviamente nessun sogno regressivo e/o nostalgico, ma la chiara coscienza che non tutto sia possibile, costituisca un bene e sia un contributo alle aspettative di larga parte della umanità. Certamente sarebbe più facile costruire una democrazia ristretta per una elite di ottimati, ma folle di persone si affacciano da ogni luogo, reclamando insieme i loro diritti non solo negativi verso le libertà democratiche, ma anche positivi per una giustizia, intesa come equità. Le risposte sono difficili e tutte le soluzioni in grande sono miseramente fallite. Tuttavia piccole intese possono essere concepite e messe in atto, collegandosi tra loro in una rete connessa che scambia informazioni, esperienze e mette in guardia verso limiti e contraddizioni. Qualche buon esempio esiste, qualche altro può essere attuato: serve buona volontà e sano realismo. Infatti se qualcuno disponesse di un filo diretto con la verità e disponesse di una bacchetta magica, forse tutto sarebbe più semplice. Tuttavia queste due sono solo vuote illusioni e chi le brandisce è un vacuo e forse pericoloso pifferaio magico. Non si hanno certezze assolute, non si possiede la verità, non si hanno capacità sovrannaturali (anche in matematica esistono verità indicibili, come ben dimostrato da Gödel). Scetticismo e relativismo moderati sono la debole bussola della ragione, come tolleranza ed impegno sono la altrettanto debole bussola della azione. Nemmeno una etica alta è data per sempre, ma solo una etichetta, liberamente contrattata e condivisa, simile al godimento comune dei criteri della estetica corrente

From paper maps to the Digital Earth and the Internet of Places

Maps have always been tools that have fascinated men, for their ability to make us see the world that surrounds us. They were and are the outcome of models and methods applied to the observation of the world, starting from geodesy, surveying photogrammetry and remote sensing. All these disciplines, which we now group under the new name of geomatics, have had a tremendous boost in recent years. However, the synergy with information computer technology is probably the aspect that is revolutionizing more cartography. Earlier computers and after the Internet have brought us to new concepts and tools that will have profound effects not only in the world of niche of cartographers, but also more generally in the life of all human beings. The Digital Earth, proposed in 1998 by Al Gore, has been enriched in just twenty years of a set of new demands, which make even more interesting and challenging being cartographers today. The paper, without claiming to be comprehensive, aims at providing a concise overview of the state of art and of the advancement in this area. Moreover, it urges the community of geomatics to be protagonist and promoter of a new cartography, largely to be reinvented, and that would put us at the center of processes of knowledge and management of the Earth. The map makers in the past helped discovering new worlds, now the challenge is to rediscover our common world with new eyes of environmental, social, economic equity, sustainability and participation

Multidimensional virtual globe for geo big data visualization

In this paper, we presented a web application created using the NASA WebWorldWind framework. The application is capable of visualizing n-dimensional data using a Voxel model. In this case study, we handled social media data and Call Detailed Records (CDR) of telecommunication networks. These were retrieved from the "BigData Challenge 2015" of Telecom Italia. We focused on the visualization process for a suitable way to show this geo-data in a 3D environment, incorporating more than three dimensions. This engenders an interactive way to browse the data in their real context and understand them quickly. Users will be able to handle several varieties of data, import their dataset using a particular data structure, and then mash them up in the WebWorldWind virtual globe. A broad range of public use this tool for diverse purposes is possible, without much experience in the field, thanks to the intuitive user-interface of this web app

Mobile mapping for disaster relief

This special issue foreword focuses on methods and technologies developed by researchers, practitioners, and decision makers around the world for enabling and using mobile disaster respons

Using OpenStreetMap to Create Land Use and Land Cover Maps

OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a bottom up community-driven initiative to create a global map of the world. Yet the application of OSM to land use and land cover (LULC) mapping is still largely unexploited due to problems with inconsistencies in the data and harmonization of LULC nomenclatures with OSM. This chapter outlines an automated methodology for creating LULC maps using the nomenclature of two European LULC products: the Urban Atlas (UA) and CORINE Land Cover (CLC). The method is applied to two regions in London and Paris. The results show that LULC maps with a level of detail similar to UA can be obtained for the urban regions, but that OSM has limitations for conversion into the more detailed non-urban classes of the CLC nomenclature. Future work will concentrate on developing additional rules to improve the accuracy of the transformation and building an online system for processing the data

Capacity building for GIS-based SDG indicators analysis with global high-resolution land cover datasets

The support of geospatial data and technologies for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) framework is critical for assessing and monitoring key indicators, revealing the planet’s trajectory towards sustainability. The availability of global open geospatial datasets, especially high-resolution land cover datasets, provides significant opportunities for computing and comparing indicators across different regions and scales. However, barriers to their proficient use remain due to a lack of data awareness, management and processing capacities using geographic information systems software. To address this, the ”Capacity Building for GIS-based SDG Indicator Analysis with Global High-resolution Land Cover Datasets” project created open training material on discovering, accessing, and manipulating global geospatial datasets for computing SDG indicators. The material focuses on water and terrestrial ecosystems, urban environments, and climate, by leveraging world-class global geospatial datasets and using the Free and Open Source Software QGIS. The training material is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License, ensuring broad accessibility and facilitating continuous improvement.The Educational and Capacity Building Initiative 2022 of the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS).https://www.isprs.org/publications/archives.aspxam2024Geography, Geoinformatics and MeteorologySDG-02:Zero HungerSDG-06:Clean water and sanitationSDG-09: Industry, innovation and infrastructureSDG-11:Sustainable cities and communitiesSDG-12:Responsible consumption and productionSDG-13:Climate actionSDG-14:Life below waterSDG-15:Life on lan

Impact analysis of accidents on the traffic flow based on massive floating car data

The wide usage of GPS-equipped devices enables the mass recording of vehicle movement trajectories describing the movement behavior of the traffic participants. An important aspect of the road traffic is the impact of anomalies, like accidents, on traffic flow. Accidents are especially important as they contribute to the the aspects of safety and also influence travel time estimations. In this paper, the impact of accidents is determined based on a massive GPS trajectory and accident dataset. Due to the missing precise date of the accidents in the data set used, first, the date of the accident is estimated based on the speed profile at the accident time. Further, the temporal impact of the accident is estimated using the speed profile of the whole day. The approach is applied in an experiment on a one month subset of the datasets. The results show that more than 72% of the accident dates are identified and the impact on the temporal dimension is approximated. Moreover, it can be seen that accidents during the rush hours and on high frequency road types (e.g. motorways, trunks or primaries) have an increasing effect on the impact duration on the traffic flow

Virtual globes for 4D environmental analysis

Virtual globes were initially released as effective and intuitive tools to view satellite and aerial photos directly superimposed on the 3D modeling of the globe. The constant update of increasingly accurate and detailed images and the ability to customize the content through the direct mapping on the globe of any geographically localized phenomenon (physical, environmental, social, etc.) have increased not only the common and popular use of virtual globes but has also offered great opportunities for geographical representation and analysis in science. The paper presents solutions we implemented for environmental purposes; in particular, three different viewers for 4D environmental variables (3D location of the variable at different times) using an open-source virtual globe developed by NASA (NASA World Wind). The third solution presented is the most innovative one and uses a “doxel-based” approach for modeling environmental variable distributions. The choice of World Wind is due to its code openness and hence the possibility for both customizing and extending its functionality. The characteristic of being written in Java makes it a platform-independent program (viewer directly executable on different operation systems) and accessible by simple web-browsers (like applet or via Java Web Start technology). In detail, we present solutions that can be directly implemented using existing software tools and an innovative solution specifically developed