Design and Social Innovation for the Development of Human Smart Cities

Urban transformation is widely recognized as a complex phenomenon, rich in uncertainty. It is the unpredictable consequence of complex interplay between urban forces (both top-down or bottom-up), urban resources (spatial, social, economic and infrastructural as well as political or cognitive) and transformation opportunities (endogenous or exogenous). The recent attention to Urban Living Lab and Human Smart City initiatives is disclosing a promising bridge between the micro-scale environments and dynamics of such forces and resources and the urban governance mechanisms. This bridge is represented by those urban collaborative ecosystems, where processes of smart service co-design take place through dialogic interaction with and among citizens within a situated and cultural-specific frame. As a response to new emerging needs and ways of generating value, during the last decades the design discipline - traditionally bound to the development of tangible artefacts - has expanded its focus on intangible artefacts such as signs, interactions, processes, and services. In this framework design is orienting its theories and practices towards a different object, putting people at the centre of the smartness of cities by recognizing the need of developing sustainable, micro and contextualized solutions that could eventfully be scaled up to achieve larger social impacts (Murray, Caulier- Grice and Mulgan, 2010). The Human Smart City paradigm (Concilio, Deserti and Rizzo, 2014) relies on the capability of the cities to realize and scale up services more sustainable because collaborative in nature based on anthropocentric networks that support the emergence of new typologies of partnerships of actors interested to solve some unmet societal problem. The paper presents this vision by discussing the results of a long-term experimentation conducted in the city of Milano under the framework of the My Neighbourhood European project

Introducting Design Thinking in Social Innovation and in Public Sector: A design-based learning framework

Design Thinking (DT) is becoming a mantra in the different areas of innovation: including SI and public sector (Manzini and Rizzo, 2011; Deserti and Rizzo, 2015). Despite its large success DT is still applied in peripheral areas of public sector and SI where it is used as a methodology to conduct small scale experiments often supported by national and EU funds. This article focus on the interaction between DT, public sector innovation and SI from a twofold perspective: as an emergent trajectory of innovation in public sector; and as a framework on which to design processes of change in public organisations.The first line of research deals with the issue of how to produce new services in public sector SI inspired considering constraints like budget cut and the users’ expectations for high quality of delivery and interactions; the second one is putting attention on how to support capacity building in public sector in order to develop new competences to deal with innovation. The paper then reports a case conducted in the Municipality of Turin during which DT has been introduced as a design based learning framework to support employees to develop new competences by taking part in a service design project

Introducing Design Thinking in Social Innovation and in the Public Sector: a design based learning framework

Design Thinking (DT) is becoming a mantra in the different areas of innovation: including SI and Public sector (Manzini&Rizzo, 2011; Deserti&Rizzo, 2015). But despite its large success in literature, DT is still applied in peripheral areas of Public sector where it is in place as methodology to conduct research and innovation pilots. The article focus on the interaction between DT, public sector innovation and SI as both: an emergent trajectory of innovation in Public sector (that under the umbrella of the “co” paradigm puts together the need to develop complex co-design processes with the need to face public societal challenges) and as a framework for designing processes of learning within public organisation that could eventually lead to the introjection of new competences on how to lead innovation in public sector and ultimately to organisation change

Active power loss minimization in electric power systems through chaotic artificial bee colony algorithm

Optimizacija reaktivne snage - Reactive power optimization (RPO) - osnovno je područje istraživanja u svrhu sigurnog i ekonomičnog rada energetskih sustava. RPO se može primijeniti za smanjenje gubitaka aktivne snage, reguliranje napona te za optimizaciju energetskih koeficijenata u energetskim sustavima. Funkcija ne-linearnog gubitka snage koristi se kao funkcija cilja koju treba smanjiti. U ovom se radu algoritam Kaotične umjetne kolonije pčela - Chaotic Artificial Bee Colony (CABC) - primjenjuje za smanjenje gubitka aktivne snage u energetskim sustavima. Rabe se kaotične mape kao što su logistička mapa i Henon mapa. CABS se primjenjuje na provjeravanim sustavima IEEE 6-sabirnice i IEEE 30-sabirnice i daju se rezultati. Provjerom rezultata ustanovilo se da primjena kritičnih vrijednosti stabilnosti dobivenih pomoću CABS može rezultirati dobrim potencijalnim rješenjima. Rezultati simulacije su obećavajući i pokazuju učinkovitost primijenjenog pristupa.Reactive power optimization (RPO) is a major field of study to ensure power systems for operating in a secure and economical manner. RPO can be used for decreasing of active power losses, voltage control, and for the optimization of the power coefficients in power systems. The non-linear power loss function is used as an object function that will be minimized. In this study Chaotic Artificial Bee Colony (CABC) algorithm is used to minimize the active power loss of power systems. Chaotic maps such as logistic map and Henon map are used against the random number generator. CABC is applied on the IEEE6-bus and IEEE 30-bus test systems and the results are shown. Accordingly, the results have been evaluated and observed that the stability critical values found by CABC can be used to produce good potential solutions. Simulation results are promising and show the effectiveness of the applied approach

An application of cooperative game theory

Die Dissertation besteht aus drei unabhängigen Essays zur Anwendung der kooperativen Spieltheorie auf den internationalen Erdgashandel. Das internationale Erdgasnetz wird von einem stilisierten quantitativen Modell dargestellt, welches aus den wichtigsten Produzenten, Verbrauchern, Pipelines und LNG-Terminals besteht. Die Koalitionsfunktion berücksichtigt wesentliche Merkmale des internationalen Gashandels und schildert die Abhängigkeiten zwischen den Akteuren. Das Spiel wird mit dem Shapley-Wert und dem Nukleolus gelöst, welche alternative Indizes für die Darstellung der Machtstruktur sind. Kapitel 1 versucht die Interessen der Spieler in drei Pipeline-Projekte, d.h. Nord Stream, South Stream und Nabucco, zu rationalisieren. Das Kapitel ordnet die Investitionen in die neuen Pipelines ihren Auswirkungen auf die Verhandlungsmacht der Akteure zu und zieht dabei Rückschlüsse auf die Aussagekraft der Lösungskonzepte. Der Shapley-Wert rechtfertigt die jüngsten Investitionen in die Pipelines als rationale Versuche, die Machtstruktur zu verändern. Im Gegensatz zum Shapley-Wert kann der Nukleolus die empirischen Beobachtungen nicht nachbilden. Kapitel 2 studiert Pipeline-Projekte im zentralasiatischen Raum. Die Ergebnisse erklären die Unterstützung der zentralasiatischen Länder für eine nach China verlaufende Pipeline statt einem nach Europa führenden Projekt, und zeigen, dass die Konkurrenz zwischen China und Europa für das zentralasiatische Erdgas vernachlässigbar ist. Kapitel 3 untersucht die bedeutendsten Entwicklungen in Angebot und Nachfrage im globalen LNG-Markt sowie deren Einfluss auf die Machtstruktur im eurasischen Erdgashandel. Die Entwicklungen kommen den europäischen Verbrauchern deutlich zugute, aber scheitern dabei, die Macht der etablierten Anbieter um Europa, beispielsweise Russlands, einzudämmen.The dissertation contains three independent essays on the application of cooperative game theory on the international natural gas trade. The international natural gas network is represented by a stylized disaggregated quantitative model consisting of its major producers, customers, trunk-pipelines and LNG terminals. The value function considers essential characteristics of the international gas trade and characterizes the interdependencies between the major actors. The game is solved with the Shapley value and the nucleolus as alternative indexes for capturing the power of different players. Chapter 1 aims to rationalize players'' interest in the three pipeline projects, i.e., Nord Stream, South Stream, and Nabucco. The chapter relates the investments into the new pipelines to their impact on the power structure and thereby makes conclusions about the explanatory power of the solution concepts. While the Shapley value can explain the recent investments in the new pipelines as a rational attempt to alter the power structure in the network, the nucleolus, in contrast, fails to replicate the empirical evidence. Chapter 2 studies pipeline options of the Central Asian countries aimed at diversifying their transit routes and export markets. The results explain the Central Asian countries'' endorsement for an eastbound pipeline to China rather than a Europe-bound option, and show negligible demand competition between China and Europe for Central Asian supplies. Chapter 3 investigates major supply and demand developments in the global LNG market as well as their impact on the power structure in the Eurasian natural gas trade. The developments benefit European consumers significantly, but barely curtail the power of the established suppliers in close proximity to Europe, such as Russia

Pipeline Power: A Case Study of Strategic Network Investments

We analyze the impact of three controversial pipeline projects on the power structure in the Eurasian network for natural gas. Two pipelines, “Nord Stream” and “South Stream,” allow Russian gas to bypass transit countries, Ukraine and Belarus. The third project, “Nabucco,” aims at diversifying Europe’s gas imports by accessing producers in Middle East and Central Asia. If network power is measured with the Shapley Value we obtain a clear ranking of the projects which corresponds to the observed investment patterns. Nord Stream’s strategic value is huge, easily justifying the high investment cost for Germany and Russia. The additional leverage obtained through South Stream is much smaller and Nabucco is not viable. For the nucleolus in contrast, none of the pipelines has any strategic relevance at all, which contradicts the empirical evidence on investment

From Social Design to Design for Social Innovation

Design has a long tradition of relation with the social. Back in the sixties \u201csocial design\u201d emerged as a critical perspective on the role of design in building a more equitable and sustainable society, with strong political accents but limited capacity to achieve a real impact. In more recent years, the change of the economic paradigm and the growing demand for participation set the conditions for the introduction of design knowledge and practices in new domains, including social innovation. This new scenario led to an interesting evolution and to many new opportunities, but is at the same time posing relevant questions that in the following we try to face on the interactions between SI and design thinking

Pipeline Power

We use cooperative game theory to analyze the impact of three controversial pipeline projects on the power structure in the Eurasian trade of natural gas. Two of them, Nord Stream and South Stream, allow Russian gas to bypass transit countries, Ukraine and Belarus. Nord Stream’s strategic value turns out to be huge, justifying the high investment cost for Germany and Russia. The additional leverage obtained through South Stream, in contrast, appears small. The third project, Nabucco, aims at diversifying Europe’s gas imports by accessing producers in Middle East and Central Asia. It curtails Russia’s power, but the benefits accrue mainly to Turkey, while the gains for the EU are negligible