Gestione sostenibile delle foreste Mediterranee e uso energetico delle biomasse forestali residuali

he book describes the reasons that led the Regional Department of Rural and Territorial Development to take part in the PROFORBIOMED Project. They can be summarized by the need to dispose of a tool for the sustainable management of all the state-owned forests of the Region. As a matter of fact, the Project aims at developing a model of sustainable forest management, through the recovery and reuse of wood scraps from ordinary silvicultural operations, to be used for the production of power and heat inside of a process adopting natural renewable energy sources. The main actions taken and the methodologies adopted are described, as well as the principles and instruments required for the setting up and execution of the work. Some of the most relevant are: the drafting of “Forest Management Plans”, the “Short Supply Chain” and the “Biomass Traceability Protocol”, together with the application of “Best Practices” of Management and the “Monitoring of impacts” caused by the woody biomass extraction procedures. The “forest – wood – energy” chain developed and proposed is exclusively related to the territory pertaining to one municipality, and with CHP plants fed with biomass exclusively produced within the territory of each municipality, in strict compliance with the “sustainable forest management” principles, as well as with the fundamental principle of “short supply chain”. For these reasons the CHP plans proposed shall be sized according to the biomass available in each municipality, with the possibility of integrating residual forest biomass with other waste wood resources potentially available in the territory and coming from prunings in agricultural activities. Therefore, the replicable model prepared and proposed by PROFORBIOMED aims at appraising from the economic point of view a waste product, such is currently considered the residual forest biomass from the forests of Sicily, and at the same time significantly improving the natural environment, thanks to the reduction in oil consumption

Representing sign language

This paper aims to address and clarify one issue we believe is crucial for making significant progresses in the analysis and description of Sign Languages (SL): identifying appropriate tools for representing in written form SL productions of any sort, i.e. lexical items, utterances, discourse at large

Strumenti per la traduzione e rappresentazione della Lingua dei Segni Italiana: critiche e proposte per una ricerca responsabile

A discussion of the most relevant critical issues for the development of translation tool for Italian Sign Language and for the representation of indipendent formal properties of the sign units

The Representation Issue and its Multifaceted Aspects in Constructing Sign Language Corpora: Questions, Answers, Further Problems

This paper aims to address and clarify one issue we believe is crucial in constructing Sign Languages (SL) corpora: identifyingappropriate tools for representing in written form SL productions of any sort, i.e. lexical items, utterances, discourse at large. Towardsthis end, building on research done within our group on multimedia corpora of both SL and spoken or verbal languages (vl), we firstoutline some of the major requirements and guidelines followed in current work with vl corpora (e.g. regarding transcription,representation [mark-up], coding [or annotation] Chiari, 2007; Edwards & Lampert; 1993; Leech & al, 1995; Ochs, 1979; Powers, 2005,among others). We highlight that a basic requirement of vl corpora is an easily readable transcription that, aside from specialist linguisticannotations, allows anyone who knows the object language to reconstruct its forms, and its form-meaning correspondences. Second, wepoint out how this basic requirement is not met in most current work on SL, where the ‘transcription’ of SL productions consists primarily of word-labels taken from vl, inappropriately called ‘glosses’. As argued by different authors (e.g. Cuxac, 2000; Pizzuto & al,2006; Leeson & al, 2006), the use of such word-labels as a primary representation tool grossly misrepresents SL, even when supportedby specialist linguistic annotations. Drawing on a relevant work on SL lexicon and discourse (e.g. Cuxac, 2000; Brennan, 2001; Cuxac &Sallandre, 2007; Russo, 2004; Pizzuto & al, 2008), we illustrate how the ‘transcriptions’ most widely used for SL are especiallyinadequate for representing complex sign units that are very frequent in SL discourse, and exhibit highly iconic,multidimensional/multilinear features that have no parallel in vl. Third, we discuss findings from ongoing research on Italian SignLanguage (LIS) in which experienced deaf signers explore the use of SignWriting (SW: Sutton, 1999) as a tool for both composing textsconceived in written form -- thereby creating a corpus of written LIS -- and for transcribing corpora of face-to-face LIS discourse (DiRenzo & al, 2006; Di Renzo, in press; Lamano & al, in press). The results show that deaf signers can easily represent the form-meaningpatterns of their language with an accuracy never experienced with other representation or annotation systems. We illustrate examples of SW-encoded vs. ‘gloss’-based transcripts which suggest that SW can be a valuable tool for addressing the representation issue inconstructing SL corpora. However, the present computerized form of SW poses problems that constrain its use. We conclude specifyingsome of the problems that need to be faced on the route towards identifying more appropriate written representations of S

Towards improving the e-learning experience for deaf students: e-LUX

Deaf people are more heavily affected by the digital divide than many would expect. Moreover, most accessibility guidelines addressing their needs just deal with captioning and audio-content transcription. However, this approach to the problem does not consider that deaf people have big troubles with vocal languages, even in their written form. At present, only a few organizations, like W3C, produced guidelines dealing with one of their most distinctive expressions: Sign Language (SL). SL is, in fact, the visual-gestural language used by many deaf people to communicate with each other. The present work aims at supporting e-learning user experience (e-LUX) for these specific users by enhancing the accessibility of content and container services. In particular, we propose preliminary solutions to tailor activities which can be more fruitful when performed in one's own "native" language, which for most deaf people, especially younger ones, is represented by national SL. © 2014 Springer International Publishing

La biomassa forestale come risorsa sostenibile: il Progetto MED PROFORBIOMED in Italia

Nell’ambito del Programma MED, 18 partner di 6 paesi europei e 16 regioni mediterranee sono coinvolti nel progetto PROFORBIOMED finalizzato a promuovere l’uso della biomassa forestale come fonte di energia rinnovabile per lo sviluppo di una strategia integrata della gestione sostenibile delle foreste mediterranee. Tale strategia si basa sulla valorizzazione delle foreste e della loro potenzialità economica e sociale nelle aree rurali. Il progetto prevede il coinvolgimento di tutti i soggetti interessati, lo sviluppo di cluster e reti e il rafforzamento della cooperazione tra attori pubblici e privati, sviluppando impegni politici e sociali e iniziative comuni. Il progetto, iniziato nel 2011, prevede di sostenere nelle zone rurali i cambiamenti che determinano impatti strategici a lungo termine nell’area MED. Questi impatti strategici sono legati a due diversi aspetti: (1) promozione di un nuovo approccio di gestione delle foreste mediterranee attraverso una cooperazione più stretta tra i diversi soggetti interessati e rafforzando la cooperazione tra gli attori pubblici e privati; (2) promozione di nuove dinamiche nelle aree rurali, concorrendo alla creazione di nuove opportunità e relazioni che possono contribuire alla loro rivitalizzazione basata sulla promozione dell’uso sostenibile della biomassa come fonte di energia. Questo implica un cambiamento delle politiche forestali per invertire il lento declino delle aree rurali che attualmente sono in declino a causa del mancato raggiungimento degli obiettivi di multifunzionalità della gestione forestale che le politiche rurali europee si erano prefissate. Nel progetto partecipano 3 partner italiani: (i) FLA è impegnata a sviluppare un protocollo per la tracciabilità della biomassa forestale per valutare la qualità nella filiera sviluppando anche piani di gestione sostenibile della biomassa forestale. FLA, inoltre, sta sviluppando un portale web per il networking e le attività di clustering per tenere in contatto gli utenti forestali e produttori per promuovere l’uso della biomassa forestale nell’area MED; (ii) ISPRA è impegnata a valutare l’impatto della raccolta/estrazione della biomassa forestale sulla funzionalità delle foreste e sulla biodiversità a diversi livelli e a monitorare l’impatto della SRF, in particolare dei genotipi esotici (come Robinia pseudoacacia), sulla biodiversità; (iii) DRAFD ha il compito di promuovere iniziative capaci di sviluppare alleanze tra partner locali per realizzare un impianto di cogenerazione, alimentata con la biomassa residua generata dalla gestione dei rimboschimenti localizzati sui Monti Sicani. Infine esempi di buone pratiche di gestione forestale sull’uso biomassa saranno trasferite in tutti i paesi e in tutte le regioni dei partner coinvolti nel progetto

ForBioEnergy - Forest Bioenergy in the Protected Mediterranean Areas

The ForBioEnergy project, funded within the INTERREG MED Programme 2014-2020, involved a Lead Partner (Regional Department for the Rural and Territorial Development, Sicily Region), 8 project partners from 4 Mediterranean countries (Italy, Spain, Slovenia and Croatia) and 4 Associate Partners from Italy (Ente Parco delle Madonie, AIEL, Enviland, Petralia Sottana) and Croatia. It is an innovative project which bets on the chance to favor the sustainable development of the rural areas through the exploitation of the forest biomass for the production of bioenergy. However, most of the Mediterranean forests are within protected areas, where the current regulatory restrictions and the lack of management plans impede and slow down the possibility to exploit woody biomass. The main objective of the project was to fostering the bioenergy production in the protected areas, providing trans-national solutions for reducing barriers that currently hinder the development of the biomass sector, planning models in order to exploit the potential of biomass, whereas preserving the forest biodiversity. To achieve these goals the project includes an Action Plan for shaping new regulatory framework and permit route aimed at removing the administrative, technical and socio-economic barriers that hinder the use of biomass, a multi-level planning process, a set of sustainability requirements and quality standards of forest biomass. The key actors and stakeholders involved with bioenergy and biodiversity issues were identified, including institutions, and social and productive organization at regional and local level. A permanent technical panel has been established in each involved country to promote the exchange of knowledge and information between private and public key actors. The project provides a three-level approach to the planning process for the use of forest biomass: sub-regional (useful for the connections with the large scale energy planning), local (useful for the development of best practices for sustainable forest management), operating (useful for planning and management of the supply chain). The main results achieved by the project are: GIS applications for implementing the planning activities and for identifying the Biomass Districts; Decision Support Systems (DSS) to guide the competent public authorities in the choice of the best solutions to increase the sustainable production of biomass according with sustainability objectives established for protected areas; a methodology for evaluating threats and benefits deriving from biomass harvesting and extraction; the drawing up of a forest management plan at biomass district scale; the definition of a traceability system and quality standards for woody biomass in order to ensure the respect of the sustainability criteria necessary for the development of the biomass chain in protected areas. A set of specific indicators has been defined to evaluate the positive and negative impacts that the forestry interventions could have on the biotic, abiotic, and socio-economic components, in the short, medium and long period. The transferring activities, as well as the communicative ones, contributed to spread the know-how and the results gained during the project implementation not only at a local level but also at a regional and national level, in order to favor high levels of replicability all over the MED Programme cooperation area