Cultural Heritage and natural disasters: the insurance choice of the Italian Cathedrals

Given the threat of natural disasters to Cultural Heritage, this paper aims to investigate how the use of the insurance instrument contributes to the definition of an adequate risk management strategy. The analysis focuses on the role that insurance can play both by supplying policies covering damage and proactively stimulating prevention behaviors, taking into consideration information imperfections (i.e., adverse selection, moral hazard and charity hazard). Through a survey among Italian Dioceses, data about the diffusion of insurance contracts were collected together with other qualitative and quantitative elements linked to the decisional process of insuring Italian Cathedrals. The empirical analysis shows that the administrators of the Dioceses are aware of the economic value of the cultural assets and in safeguarding the Cathedrals they identify in the insurance system a useful and efficient risk management instrument

A fitness model for the Italian Interbank Money Market

We use the theory of complex networks in order to quantitatively characterize the formation of communities in a particular financial market. The system is composed by different banks exchanging on a daily basis loans and debts of liquidity. Through topological analysis and by means of a model of network growth we can determine the formation of different group of banks characterized by different business strategy. The model based on Pareto's Law makes no use of growth or preferential attachment and it reproduces correctly all the various statistical properties of the system. We believe that this network modeling of the market could be an efficient way to evaluate the impact of different policies in the market of liquidity.Comment: 5 pages 5 figure

Caesar II: An Italian decision support tool for the seismic risk. The case study of Torre Pellice, Villar Pellice and Pinerolo municipalities

Italy is a country with high seismic risk; however, a broad seismic classification of the national territory has been introduced only in the last twenty years. Therefore, most of the existing buildings stock do not comply with the current anti-seismic codes. In recent years, the seismic events that occurred in Italy have highlighted the complexity of emergency management and the great challenge for public authorities called to answer to the post-event reconstruction and the planning of effective risk prevention and mitigation measures implemented in "peacetime". In this perspective, the CAESAR II project (Controlling, Mitigating and Managing Earthquake Emergency: Cost-Benefit and Multi-criteria Analysis of Impact Scenarios for Risk Reduction and Increased Resilience) has been developed as a decision support system for public authorities engaged in the development of seismic disaster risk reduction plans. CAESAR II includes a module for the simulation of retrofitting measures applied at the municipal scale, integrating different categories of anti-seismic and energy improvement measures based on the vulnerability analysis of the existing buildings stock. The CAESAR II tool's core is the module for evaluating "seismic impact scenarios" based on the end-users' hazard. The output of the model includes information on expected damage levels for buildings (from D0-no damage to D5- total collapse) and population (dead, injured and homeless). Impact scenarios can be customised according to the minimum unit of analysis assumed (municipality or 250x250m square mesh grid) and the availability of exposure data (from national census data or survey on the spot building by building according to the PLINIVS form). Scenarios include geo-referenced data managed by geo-servers to exchange data in a format compliant with OGC (Open Gis Consortium) standards and the European INSPIRE Directive. Simulation results can be further processed through the Multi-Criteria and Cost-Benefit Analysis modules to support the comparative assessment of alternative seismic and energy measurements. In this work, the procedures included in CAESAR II are described and a case study is reported. It concerns the analysis of the expected damage assessment on buildings and population for three municipalities in northern Italy, Torre Pellice, Villar Pellice and Pinerolo (Piedmont Region)

Large deviations for the macroscopic motion of an interface

We study the most probable way an interface moves on a macroscopic scale from an initial to a final position within a fixed time in the context of large deviations for a stochastic microscopic lattice system of Ising spins with Kac interaction evolving in time according to Glauber (non-conservative) dynamics. Such interfaces separate two stable phases of a ferromagnetic system and in the macroscopic scale are represented by sharp transitions. We derive quantitative estimates for the upper and the lower bound of the cost functional that penalizes all possible deviations and obtain explicit error terms which are valid also in the macroscopic scale. Furthermore, using the result of a companion paper about the minimizers of this cost functional for the macroscopic motion of the interface in a fixed time, we prove that the probability of such events can concentrate on nucleations should the transition happen fast enough

Free Energy Minimizers for a Two--Species Model with Segregation and Liquid-Vapor Transition

We study the coexistence of phases in a two--species model whose free energy is given by the scaling limit of a system with long range interactions (Kac potentials) which are attractive between particles of the same species and repulsive between different species.Comment: 32 pages, 1 fig, plain tex, typeset twic

Multi-mode TES bolometer optimization for the LSPE-SWIPE instrument

In this paper we explore the possibility of using transition edge sensor (TES) detectors in multi-mode configuration in the focal plane of the Short Wavelength Instrument for the Polarization Explorer (SWIPE) of the balloon-borne polarimeter Large Scale Polarization Explorer (LSPE) for the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarization. This study is motivated by the fact that maximizing the sensitivity of TES bolometers, under the augmented background due to the multi-mode design, requires a non trivial choice of detector parameters. We evaluate the best parameter combination taking into account scanning strategy, noise constraints, saturation power and operating temperature of the cryostat during the flight.Comment: in Journal of Low Temperature Physics, 05 January 201

A neurodevelopment approach for a transitional model of early onset schizophrenia

In the last decades, the conceptualization of schizophrenia has dramatically changed, moving from a neurodegenerative process occurring in early adult life to a neurodevelopmental disorder starting be-fore birth, showing a variety of premorbid and prodromal symptoms and, in relatively few cases, evolving in the full-blown psychotic syndrome. High rates of co-occurring different neurodevelopmental disorders such as Autism spectrum disorder and ADHD, predating the onset of SCZ, and neurobio-logical underpinning with significant similarities, support the notion of a pan-developmental disturbance consisting of impairments in neuromotor, receptive language, social and cognitive development. Con-sidering that many SCZ risk factors may be similar to symptoms of other neurodevelopmental psychi-atric disorders, transition processes from child & adolescent to adult systems of care should include both high risk people as well as subject with other neurodevelopmental psychiatric disorders with different levels of severity. This descriptive mini-review discuss the need of innovative clinical approaches, re-considering specific diagnostic categories, stimulating a careful analysis of risk factors and promoting the appropriate use of new and safer medications

Current reservoirs in the simple exclusion process

We consider the symmetric simple exclusion process in the interval $[-N,N]$ with additional birth and death processes respectively on $(N-K,N]$, $K>0$, and $[-N,-N+K)$. The exclusion is speeded up by a factor $N^2$, births and deaths by a factor $N$. Assuming propagation of chaos (a property proved in a companion paper "Truncated correlations in the stirring process with births and deaths") we prove convergence in the limit $N\to \infty$ to the linear heat equation with Dirichlet condition on the boundaries; the boundary conditions however are not known a priori, they are obtained by solving a non linear equation. The model simulates mass transport with current reservoirs at the boundaries and the Fourier law is proved to hold

Diffusive behavior for randomly kicked Newtonian particles in a spatially periodic medium

We prove a central limit theorem for the momentum distribution of a particle undergoing an unbiased spatially periodic random forcing at exponentially distributed times without friction. The start is a linear Boltzmann equation for the phase space density, where the average energy of the particle grows linearly in time. Rescaling time, the momentum converges to a Brownian motion, and the position is its time-integral showing superdiffusive scaling with time $t^{3/2}$. The analysis has two parts: (1) to show that the particle spends most of its time at high energy, where the spatial environment is practically invisible; (2) to treat the low energy incursions where the motion is dominated by the deterministic force, with potential drift but where symmetry arguments cancel the ballistic behavior.Comment: 55 pages. Some typos corrected from previous versio