Thinking ahead of disasters: the role of risk regulation in the European Union

The need to reduce the vulnerability of society against disasters has fostered the introduction of regulatory instruments which can anticipate protection before a danger is imminent and an emergency phase starts. Disaster risk regulation has therefore become a significant field of legislation aimed at complementing and supporting disaster relief measures through precautionary action. It however represents a specific issue of disaster management: given the low probability of high impact disasters, it is difficult to assess related risks, so their regulation involves balancing different rights and interests at stake with uncertain scenarios. The need to rationalise such precautionary protection requires regulatory instruments that take into account the very nature of disaster risks (low probability, high impact) as well as other competing situations of rights and interests which can be affected by regulatory measures. Moreover, in view of the aim of reducing vulnerability, disaster-related policies aim at achieving resilience against disasters. Being resilient means having the abilities to resist, adapt to stressful changes and to bounce back to the original structure. In a resilience-oriented context, what disaster risk mitigation should do is to facilitate the process of adaptation under stress by anticipating impact scenarios and the instruments of protection. This article examines the European Union\u2019s (EU) approach to the regulation of risks of potential catastrophic impact by framing it in the context of resilience. In so doing, it argues that this approach is shaped by the multilevel interdependencies that exist between the EU, national administrations, and private parties. These relationships, which govern the functioning of the EU legal order itself, impact on how protection against disaster is designed, shape the nature of regulation and create a number of challenges for regulators. The modes which disaster risk regulation follows in the EU are therefore analysed as a key issue for enhancing the understanding of this complex regulatory approach

A Knot Not to Be Cut? The Legacy of Brexit over the CJEU

What was the role of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in the Brexit saga? And what will the impact of Brexit be over the future structure and activity of the CJEU? This article deals with this twofold question and explores three different issues. Firstly, we will offer a reflection on the questions and the risks raised by the Wightman case, where the CJEU ruled on the unilateral revocation of the UK notification of its intention to withdraw from the European Union under Art. 50 Treaty of the EU. Secondly, we will analyse the impact of Brexit on the composition of the CJEU and, particularly, the risks for the independence of the Court raised by the advanced termination of the mandate of the British Advocate General. Thirdly, we will provide some insights on the scope of the jurisdiction of the CJEU in the post-Brexit Union, emphasising how the Withdrawal Agreement maintained its jurisdiction during and even beyond the transition period. This article reflects the events that took place up to 6 October 2020

Wightman and the perils of Britain's withdrawal

On 10 December 2018, the Court of Justice (CJEU) delivered the Wightman judgment and recognized the unilateral revocability of the notification ex Art. 50 Treaty on European Union (TEU). This article offers a critical analysis of the decision by insisting above all on the national background of the ruling and the political risks stemming from the decision. The article is structured as follows. Firstly, it analyses the legal questions of the Scottish case, which constituted the ground for the admissibility of the preliminary ruling and showed the perils for the exercise of national sovereign rights embedded in the lack of clarity on revocation options. It thus reconstructs the critical aspects of the preliminary ruling of the CJEU. Subsequently, the article examines the implications of the ruling for the EU legal order. On the one hand, the analysis considers the conception of the EU membership by comparing the approach of the CJEU and that of Advocate General Campos Sánchez Bordona in Wightman

Mellowing Meroni: how ESMA can help build the single market

On January 22nd, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) gave its longawaited opinion in the case concerning the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA).1 The ruling is important in order to appreciate the modern understanding of the Meroni non-delegation doctrine. It is not the purpose of this CEPS Commentary to provide a fully-fledged analysis of the ESMA ruling,2 but rather to extract the potential implications of the ESMA case for the place and significance of the Meroni doctrine in building up the single market. We aim to demonstrate that the ESMA case is yet another manifestation of a slow process of \u201cmellowing Meroni\u2019. This is a critical condition for a new single market strategy aiming to end the remaining fragmentation of the single market \u2013 not only in financial markets but also in network industries \u2013 and ensure its \u2018proper functioning\u2019

A low-rank matrix equation method for solving PDE-constrained optimization problems

PDE-constrained optimization problems arise in a broad number of applications such as hyperthermia cancer treatment and blood flow simulation. Discretization of the optimization problem and using a Lagrangian approach result in a large-scale saddle-point system, which is challenging to solve, and acquiring a full space-time solution is often infeasible. We present a new framework to efficiently compute a low-rank approximation to the solution by reformulating the KKT system into a Sylvester-like matrix equation. This matrix equation is subsequently projected onto a small subspace via an iterative rational Krylov method, and we obtain a reduced problem by imposing a Galerkin condition on its residual. In our work we discuss implementation details and dependence on the various problem parameters. Numerical experiments illustrate the performance of the new strategy also when compared to other low-rank approaches

Order reduction approaches for the algebraic Riccati equation and the LQR problem

We explore order reduction techniques for solving the algebraic Riccati equation (ARE), and investigating the numerical solution of the linear-quadratic regulator problem (LQR). A classical approach is to build a surrogate low dimensional model of the dynamical system, for instance by means of balanced truncation, and then solve the corresponding ARE. Alternatively, iterative methods can be used to directly solve the ARE and use its approximate solution to estimate quantities associated with the LQR. We propose a class of Petrov-Galerkin strategies that simultaneously reduce the dynamical system while approximately solving the ARE by projection. This methodology significantly generalizes a recently developed Galerkin method by using a pair of projection spaces, as it is often done in model order reduction of dynamical systems. Numerical experiments illustrate the advantages of the new class of methods over classical approaches when dealing with large matrices

Solid state joining of thin hybrid sandwiches made of steel and polymer: A feasibility study

The growing demand for more environmentally friendly vehicles has led to an increased use of light materials in the transportation industry with the aim to reduce structural weight, fuel consumption, and gas emissions, thereby boosting cost-effectiveness and recyclable properties. Complex multi-material steel-based components would allow to improve mechanical properties and minimize weight even further. In particular, new sandwich materials made by steel outer skins and a polymeric internal layer seems very promising for obtaining mechanical performance and lightness at the same time. Unfortunately, traditional welding techniques, like arc welding, laser welding, and resistance spot welding, usually used to join steels and aluminum alloys, cannot be applied for these materials due to their peculiar nature. In this paper, the feasibility of Friction Stir Welding to join thin sandwich components made of two steel outer layers and an internal polymeric layer was assessed. Both a pin and a pinless tool were used to weld the upper and the lower surface of the joint in order to obtain solid state bonding of the metal and fusion welding of the polymer at the same time. © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 23rd International Conference on Material Forming

Books That Tell My Story: Transforming the Attitudes of Australian Preservice Teachers Towards Children’s Diverse and Multicultural Literature.

Children’s literature is ubiquitous in Australian classrooms with picture books playing a particularly important role in early childhood classrooms. Teachers use children’s literature to teach early literacy concepts including vocabulary and to help children learn about the world and their identity. Historically, the majority of children’s literature has featured White characters and perspectives, excluding many children from seeing themselves and their lives reflected in books. The aim of this study was to explore how an assessment task that asked preservice teachers (PSTs) to select an underrepresented aspect of children’s literature, locate books on that topic, and reflect upon their own reading experiences as a child, could change their attitudes towards future classroom practice. Reflections from 40 PSTs revealed that many PSTs had not previously considered the experiences of children whose lives were not mirrored in books, the need for authentic texts written by people who identified as members of diverse groups, or the importance of diversity in children’s literature. Recommendations for teacher education programs in increasingly multicultural Australia are discussed