Integrated participatory modelling of irrigated agriculture: the case study of the reorganisation of a water management system in Italy

The paper presents an application of the new version of the 'Decision Support for Irrigated agriculture' DSIrr designed to integrate water and agricultural policy analysis and to support participatory decision process. The tool is a scenario manager for bio-economic farm models considering climatic, agronomic, hydraulic, socio-economic and environmental aspects. The paper offers some insight on the decomposition approach adopted to integrate economic analysis at different scales by illustrating a case study conducted in Italy to support an ex ante evaluation of a water management system reorganisation. Reduce water consumption is a strategic objective which pricing policy cannot address given technical constraints. The replacement of the existing low-efficiency irrigation system could be the solution, but the recover of cost creates an affordability problem. Results suggest that a dual network, integrating agricultural and rural urban sectors, represents a real challenge for the Irrigation Board since this option meets the environmental goal and pass the economic sustainability test.Water, Agriculture, Economic analysis, Modelling and tools, Participatory process, Agricultural and Food Policy, Land Economics/Use, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

INTEGRATED SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT: A MULTICRITERIA APPROACH

The paper presents the first results of a long term research aimed at producing a decision support system to deal with the integrated solid waste management planning at regional level. In the last years urban waste management has received a strong attention from the public authority in Italy culminating in a new national law, which has priorities such as waste prevention (waste avoidance and reduction) reuse and recycling. Italian Legislation requires to consider not only a series of waste management options aimed at source reduction but also to integrate the environmental soundness with economical viability and social equity. To support this integrated solid waste management it is necessary to ascertain the environmental, economic and social impacts associated with various waste management options so that decision makers can trade them off to achieve a better waste management strategy. To deal with the problem a three level process is suggested: zoning of the territory, implementation of the waste plan, Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) on the new facilities. The paper focuses, in a non technical way, on a dynamic mixed integer linear programming model to be used in the second phase of the previous process. A multicriteria approach has been adopted to manage waste as an integrated system of recollection, transportation, recovery and disposal activities. At the moment four objective functions have been defined: total cumulative distance, total discounted net cost, total cumulative impact on traffic due to waste transportation, total cumulative landfilling. The model includes different types of collection, as well as different technologies. The model gives the possibility to locate in the same site more facilities. In this way it is possible to construct waste integrated platforms which permit to reduce costs and impacts. The model chooses the sites to be developed, the types of technology that will be installed on such sites, and the schedule of activity. In accordance with the input concentration for each technology it is possible to specify the appropriate output coefficients. The model computes the yields of the intermediate technologies directly from the model parameters, such parameters are exogenously determined, case by case, on the basis of the technical information; all the yields are automatically recomputed by the model when they vary. In this way high flexibility is introduced into the model. According to the preference of the decision maker specific constraints can be introduced in order to limit the admitted technologies; such restrictions have yearly validity. In this way a good representation of a dynamic situation can be reached. The main aspects that can be studied in space and time are: waste recollection at municipality, destination of each type of waste, technologies operating at facilities, landfilling, material and energy recovering, cost, traffic impact due to waste transportation. The results of a first application referred to the Province of Ravenna, in Emilia Romagna Region, Northern Italy are presented in the final section.Environmental Economics and Policy,

Inter university cooperation and social education. multicultural frame and joint curricula

1. No doubt about being upper levels in education a prioritarian way for the universalization of knowledge, as the authors more than once argued (see their Presentation at the previous Conference on Education 2012) 2. Considering the building up of a multicultural frame in education, in today’s world, an unavoidable way and a shared aim across different countries, they synthetically delineate the possible contribution by the university. 3. Discussing the actual state of an inter-university cooperation Sapienza University of Rome/Moscow State University for Psychology and Education (MGPPU), they will comment upon the need for major economical involvement by Ministries of education and instruction, toward the organizing of joint Magister Curricula 4. In fact, is a more extended joint engagement by representatives of different cultures and ethnical communities required for this generalized new form of upper education, bringing about using major economic resources 5. Reference is made to a seminal way for rendering the historical cultural perspective in social science the main mediation, in building up a new “historical cultural” and “social” education, exposed by Rubzov, Margolis and Guruzhapov

AN INTEGRATED TERRITORIAL SIMULATION MODEL TO EVALUATE CAP REFORM ON MEDITERRANEAN AGRICULTURE. METHODOLOGICAL PROPOSAL AND FIRST APPLICATIONS IN APULIA REGION (SOUTHERN ITALY)

The implementation of most recent CAP and water policy reforms calls for simulation analytical tools able to quantify socio-economic and environmental impacts that can be different in terms of regions and farm type. This work proposes a territorial mathematical programming model that integrates hundreds of farm models clustered in a single meta-model at regional level that can be easily standardized having the FADN as the main data source. The tool has been experimentally applied to Apulia region and several simulations have been conducted in scenarios differing in terms of agricultural policies (total decoupling, increase of the modulation rate and introduction of a flat rate system for the Single Farm Payment), price of the water resource, market conditions (price of products and cost of inputs). For each simulation, farmers’ choices - cropping patterns and techniques-, the economic assessment of the effects of such choices -revenue, costs and incomes- and environment impacts -use of factors and resulting pressures on natural resources- have been analysed. The results of the analysis show that agricultural policies measures do not affect land use pattern or the agricultural pressure on water resources. But can have major income redistributive effects. On the contrary, water policy and market conditions impact on farmers’ choices, economic performance and environmental pressure.Agricultural policies, Water policy reforms, territorial mathematical programming model., Agricultural and Food Policy, Political Economy, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods, Q18, Q25, Q51.,

Spectral Efficiency of Random Time-Hopping CDMA

Traditionally paired with impulsive communications, Time-Hopping CDMA (TH-CDMA) is a multiple access technique that separates users in time by coding their transmissions into pulses occupying a subset of $N_\mathsf{s}$ chips out of the total $N$ included in a symbol period, in contrast with traditional Direct-Sequence CDMA (DS-CDMA) where $N_\mathsf{s}=N$. This work analyzes TH-CDMA with random spreading, by determining whether peculiar theoretical limits are identifiable, with both optimal and sub-optimal receiver structures, in particular in the archetypal case of sparse spreading, that is, $N_\mathsf{s}=1$. Results indicate that TH-CDMA has a fundamentally different behavior than DS-CDMA, where the crucial role played by energy concentration, typical of time-hopping, directly relates with its intrinsic "uneven" use of degrees of freedom.Comment: 26 pages, 13 figure

A Fiber Optical Sensor For Non-Contact Vibration Measurements

This paper describes an intensity based optical sensor for the evaluation of accelerations from non-contact displacement measurements. Plastic optical fibers are used to collect the reflected light from several points on the vibrating surface, allowing the reconstruction of the vibration distribution. Two compensation techniques to reduce systematic effects due to the target reflectivity are also described and compared: one is based on the spectral analysis of the received optical signal and the other takes advantage of a reference displacement sensor. Experimental results in real conditions during vibration tests have demonstrated the capability to measure sub-micrometer vibration amplitudes up to about 40 kH

3D scanning of cultural heritage with consumer depth cameras

Three dimensional reconstruction of cultural heritage objects is an expensive and time-consuming process. Recent consumer real-time depth acquisition devices, like Microsoft Kinect, allow very fast and simple acquisition of 3D views. However 3D scanning with such devices is a challenging task due to the limited accuracy and reliability of the acquired data. This paper introduces a 3D reconstruction pipeline suited to use consumer depth cameras as hand-held scanners for cultural heritage objects. Several new contributions have been made to achieve this result. They include an ad-hoc filtering scheme that exploits the model of the error on the acquired data and a novel algorithm for the extraction of salient points exploiting both depth and color data. Then the salient points are used within a modified version of the ICP algorithm that exploits both geometry and color distances to precisely align the views even when geometry information is not sufficient to constrain the registration. The proposed method, although applicable to generic scenes, has been tuned to the acquisition of sculptures and in this connection its performance is rather interesting as the experimental results indicate

Bragg spectroscopy of trapped one dimensional strongly interacting bosons in optical lattices: Probing the cake-structure

We study Bragg spectroscopy of strongly interacting one dimensional bosons loaded in an optical lattice plus an additional parabolic potential. We calculate the dynamic structure factor by using Monte Carlo simulations for the Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian, exact diagonalizations and the results of a recently introduced effective fermionization (EF) model. We find that, due to the system's inhomogeneity, the excitation spectrum exhibits a multi-branched structure, whose origin is related to the presence of superfluid regions with different densities in the atomic distribution. We thus suggest that Bragg spectroscopy in the linear regime can be used as an experimental tool to unveil the shell structure of alternating Mott insulator and superfluid phases characteristic of trapped bosons.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Probabilistic ToF and Stereo Data Fusion Based on Mixed Pixel Measurement Models

This paper proposes a method for fusing data acquired by a ToF camera and a stereo pair based on a model for depth measurement by ToF cameras which accounts also for depth discontinuity artifacts due to the mixed pixel effect. Such model is exploited within both a ML and a MAP-MRF frameworks for ToF and stereo data fusion. The proposed MAP-MRF framework is characterized by site-dependent range values, a rather important feature since it can be used both to improve the accuracy and to decrease the computational complexity of standard MAP-MRF approaches. This paper, in order to optimize the site dependent global cost function characteristic of the proposed MAP-MRF approach, also introduces an extension to Loopy Belief Propagation which can be used in other contexts. Experimental data validate the proposed ToF measurements model and the effectiveness of the proposed fusion techniques