The citizens’ perspective : awareness, feelings and acceptance of surveillance and surveillance systems for fighting crime in Italy. A quantitative study

This document presents the results for Italy within the framework of a larger study undertaken as part of the RESPECT project – “Rules, Expectations and Security through Privacy-enhanced Convenient Technologies” (RESPECT; G.A. 285582) – which was co-financed by the European Commission within the Seventh Framework Programme (2007-2013). Analyses are based on a survey regarding the perceptions, feelings, attitudes and behaviours of citizens towards surveillance for the purpose of fighting crime, carried out amongst a quota sample that is representative of the population in Italy for age and gender. Responses were gathered, predominantly, through an online survey supplemented by a number of questionnaires administered in face to face interviews, in order to fulfil the quota and also reach those citizens who do not use the internet. The questionnaire consisted of 50 questions and was available online in all languages of the European Union between November 2013 and March 2014. The face to face interviews were carried out between January and March 2014. The sample is based on the responses from 200 individuals who indicated Italy as their country of residence in the online survey or were administered the questionnaire face to face. As a result, the Italian respondents indicated overall a strongly felt lack of trust in the protection of, and control over, personal information gathered via surveillance. At the same time, it depends on the specific type of surveillance measure whether respondents feel more unhappy or happy with it. But despite the respondents’ general perception of surveillance measures being useful, surveillance measures currently reduce feelings of insecurity in less than 1 in 4 people, whereas in 1 out of 3 respondents the presence of surveillance produces feelings of insecurity. Analyses also indicate that whilst feeling happy or unhappy with surveillance is only weakly related to feeling more secure or insecure in the presence of surveillance, an increased belief in the effectiveness of laws regarding the protection of personal data gathered via surveillance may make citizens feel more secure. More research is needed to disentangle the relationships and effects between surveillance measures, feelings of security or insecurity, and citizens’ general quality of life feelings.This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 285582.peer-reviewe

Ehlers symmetry at the next derivative order

We analyse four-dimensional gravity in the presence of general curvature squared corrections and show that Ehlers' SL(2,R) symmetry, which appears in the reduction of standard gravity to three dimensions, is preserved by the correction terms. The mechanism allowing this is a correction of the SL(2,R) transformation laws which resolves problems with the different scaling behaviour of various terms occurring in the reduction.Comment: 13 pages. v2: updated referenc

Promoting Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) During Brazilian Activities of Genomic and Epidemiological Surveillance of Arboviruses

Zika infectio

Evaluative conversations: Translating between diverse stakeholders in regional RRI projects

Since the summer of 2020, researchers from ten projects pertaining to the Horizon2020 Science with and for Society (SwafS) call have been meeting virtually as the SwafS14 Monitoring and Evaluation ecosystem. Topics of discussion were the trials and tribulations of their regional Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) projects as well as their strategies for monitoring and evaluation. In this paper we make a first attempt at presenting these issues as problems of translation between different kinds of stakeholders. After an exploration of the diversity of stakeholders and the process of translation in regional RRI, we suggest evaluative conversations as a way of improving regional RRI. We intend to develop this idea in the future and that these conversations will facilitate more responsible and engaged monitoring and evaluation and contribute to better R&I policies

Dynamics of silo deformation under granular discharge

International audienceWe use Topological Data Analysis to study the post buckling behavior of laboratory scale cylindrical silos under gravity driven granular discharges. Thin walled silos buckle during the discharge if the initial height of the granular column is large enough. The deformation of the silo is reversible as long as the filling height does not exceed a critical value, Lc. Beyond this threshold the deformation becomes permanent and the silo often collapses. We study the dynamics of reversible and irreversible deformation processes, varying the initial filling height around Lc. We find that all reversible processes exhibit striking similarities and they alternate between regimes of slow and fast dynamics. The patterns that occur at the beginning of irreversible deformation processes are topologically very similar to those that arise during reversible processes. However, the dynamics of reversible and irreversible processes is significantly different. In particular, the evolution of irreversible processes is much faster. This allows us to make an early prediction of the collapse of the silo based solely on observations of the deformation patterns