Competitiveness and Social Cohesion in Western European Cities

European cities are historically characterised by a strong association between social cohesion and competitiveness. However, in recent years, this stability has been affected by strains induced by rising new inequalities and increasing competition among cities. These facts have raised the need for a new understanding of the relationship between cohesion and competitiveness. This paper draws on a selection of social and economic indicators to explore this multifaceted relationship in 50 European cities, selected on the basis of their size and international role. The aims of the analysis are to assess the position of each European city, to identify clusters of cities and to suggest an interpretative hypothesis in order to characterise the particularities of this relationship in European cities. </jats:p

The policy framework in Bologna

The FLOWS (Impact of local welfare systems on female labour force participation and social cohesion) project has been funded under the EU FP7 program, grant Agreement no: 26680

Restructuring the welfare state: reforms in long-term care in Western European countries

Faced with the problems associated with an ageing society, many European countries have adopted innovative policies to achieve a better balance between the need to expand social care and the imperative to curb public spending. Although embedded within peculiar national traditions, these new policies share some characteristics: (a) a tendency to combine monetary transfers to families with the provision of in-kind services; (b) the establishment of a new social care market based on competition; (c) the empowerment of users through their increased purchasing power; and (d) the introduction of funding measures intended to foster care-giving through family networks. This article presents the most significant reforms recently introduced in six European countries (France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK) as regards long-term care. It analyses their impact at the macro- (institutional and quantitative), meso- (service delivery structures) and micro-level (families, caregivers and people in need). As a result the authors find a general trend towards convergence in social care among the countries, and the emergence of a new type of government regulation designed to restructure rather than to reduce welfare programmes

A comprehensive database on synoptic and local circulation over Sicily for mesoscale applications

The aim of this work is to present a database of information available on the island of Sicily (Italy) to be used for the evaluation and/or the calibration of the numerical mesoscale meteorological models. The database relates to land type and land cover of the island as well as to meteorological fields collected at various locations over a time span of various years. The analysis of the database provides information on spatiotemporal variability of characteristic meteorological patterns on the mesoscale range over the island. Specific wind and temperature values characteristic of the regional circulation on the island are presented in the database and analyzed in this paper. The available data have different sources (fixed monitoring stations or measuring campaigns, remote-sensing instruments), and refer to vertical soundings or to measurements at fixed heights. Air temperature, wind speed and wind direction are among the meteorological parameters taken into account. The temporal frequency of the data ranges from 10 minutes to 24 hours

Urban Policy in Times of Crisis: The Policy Capacity of European Cities and the Role of Multi-Level Governance

publishedVersio

Experimental study of socio chatbot usability

Máster en Investigación e Innovación en Inteligencia Computacional y Sistemas InteractivosBackground: The use of chatbots especially with ability of natural language processing (NLP) has increased considerably in recent years. These chatbots are being used in different areas and by a wide variety of users. Due to this variety of users, it is essential to incorporate usability in the development of chatbots. Objective: The objective of this research is to firstly identify the state of the art of the chatbots usability and the applied human-computer interaction (HCI) techniques and analyze how to evaluate the chatbots usability, secondly to evaluate the usability of chatbot SOCIO (which helps user to create class diagram), as well as the quality of the class diagram realized. Method: For the aim of this research, the literature was first reviewed for the purpose of specifying the state of the art in the usability of chatbot. To this end, a systematic mapping study (SMS) was be conducted through Scopus, ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplorer, SpringerLink and ScienceDirect using a predefined search strategy. In addition, the articles and the results were analyzed. Finally, from the point of view of 18 teams of three members each, the usability of the web application CREATELY and chatbot SOCIO as well as the quality of the class diagrams obtained at using these tools were compared by executing a within-subjects cross-over design experiment. Each of 18 teams realized two class diagrams about a college and an online store by using chatbot SOCIO and CREATELY. Results: The search retrieved 170 papers and 19 are retained as primary studies. There are few papers reviewed the chatbots usability. A proposal of usability of chatbot is proposed. Compared with CREATELY, usability of the chatbot SOCIO is evaluated in aspects of efficiency, effectiveness, satisfaction and quality. The results of this experiment indicate that the chatbot SOCIO has a positive effect on the effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction of the participants when they create the class diagrams, as well as its quality. Conclusions: We categorized according to four criteria: usability techniques, usability characteristics, research methods and type of chatbots. The chatbots usability is an emerging field of research, where the published studies were mainly survey, usability test, and experiments. The results of the experiment executed indicate that chatbot SOCIO performed better than CREATELY in aspects of effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction when team making the class diagram as well as the quality of class diagrams