Measuring the Floor Area of Buildings. Problems of Consistency and a Solution

Measuring the floor area of a building may seem a straightforward activity, but it is not. What to be included and what to be considered vary in virtually every country, and definitions such as GFA (gross floor area), NRA (net rentable area), etc. are also misleading as they are not consistent. In an era in which international actors contribute for projects in all major cities, having a consistent system to measure the floor area of a building is of the utmost importance. Consistent measurements allow not just for easier and better design, but also for the comparison of buildings, as the floor area is the nominator of all parameters of sustainability, energy consumption, construction cost, occupancy ratios, cleaning fees, etc

A new approach for the freight transportation system in Venice

Venice is worldwide known as one of the most intriguing places, hosting an average of 15 million tourists per year. This paper describes the causes of the economical inefficiency of the freight transportation system in Venice, and analyses the problems caused by the damages done by the waves. A properly modified form of road pricing, aiming at improving the efficiency of the traffic chains by introducing the pressure of competition between the freight operators, is thereby conceived and the possible deriving scenarios are described

Building lease: a new financial opportunity for public infrastructures

The building lease is a new tool available to the government to finance public ‘cold’ infrastructures which allows to spread the investment over several years. Some major projects have recently been funded with this solution which can be used for both new works and for interventions on the existing buildings. The use of the building lease on existing assets (such as renovations or restorations), however, is still very rare, because of the need to «sale and lease back» the building concerned

Buildings that are sustainable

Often the word sustainability of a building concerns also its embodied energy, the consumption of natural resources, the use of land and so on, with issues that cover its entire life cycle. On the other hand, it`s easier to calculate the energy consumption than the other parameters of the building sustainability, and assessment methods (Leed, Spear etc.) are often considered too laborious to be adopted by small developers. Additionally it is possible to recognize some lacks in every rating system if they are compared with the most common definition of sustainability. The paper shows the intermediate step of a Research that aims to produce guideline for the building activity in the Rovigo area in Italy. The authors are working, together with the Rovigo public administration, to produce a actions to be taken by developers, architects and builders. The distinctive point of this work is the improvement of the voluntary adoptions of such actions, which differ from the compulsoriness of imposed regulations

Stiffness and Slip in Multi-dowel Timber Connections with Slotted-in Steel Plates

Large multi-dowel connections can provide the strength and ductility required for large, highly-loaded timber structures, but their slip under load is not well understood. This is an important gap in knowledge, because accumulated local displacements at connections represent a large part of the deformation of a timber structure. The empirical relationships used in design codes commonly scale a single-dowel stiffness by the number of dowels, so do not capture the dowel interaction effects of the multi-dowel connections used in larger structures. We present the results of an experimental test series, elastic model and probabilistic numerical analysis investigating the development of stiffness in multi-dowel timber connections with slotted-in steel plates. Novel test methods record the development of stiffness due to each individual connector to show that the stiffness of the complete connection is not proportional to the number of dowels. An elastic stress-function model shows that this is partly due to interaction of the stress field around the dowels. For the first time, this work quantitatively considers the influence of misalignment of dowels due to manufacturing tolerances, and it is shown that this may greatly reduce the overall stiffness of a multi-dowel connection. The test series is used to validate a probabilistic model of this misalignment for the stiffness of such a connection. The model incorporates the nonlinear stiffness and hole opening observed in single-dowel connections to predict the behaviour of the group. The study shows that the random misalignment of dowels in multi-dowel connections reduces the range of displacements over which the connection displays zero stiffness slightly, but that this zone is not eliminated as a result of irreversible hole opening under load, even for a connection with 35 dowels and three steel plates. We conclude that two parameters are important for the design of these connections: the unload-reload stiffness and the zero-stiffness region measured between the zero load intercept of the unload-reload linear fit. With these, a reasonable estimate can be made of the displacement at any serviceability load level in either tension or compression

Exceptional atmospheric events resilience of the curtain wall

The paper presents the results of a research conducted on codes and standards adopted internationally for the design, construction and testing of hurricane- and tornado-resistant façades. These façades are built using technologies that pass tests in order to verify the resistance of both the frame and the glazed surface to the impacts caused by wind-borne debris during these extreme meteorological events. The aim of the research is the identification of the best practices that have been adopted, in order to increase the resilience of building envelopes to this weather phenomenon, evaluating the possible applicability of adopting the principles to the specific needs of the European and Italian market

La resilienza del curtain wall ad eventi atmosferici eccezionali

The paper presents the results of a research conducted on codes and standards adopted internationally for the design, construction and testing of hur- ricane- and tornado-resistant fa\ue7ades. These fa\ue7ades are built using technologies that pass tests in order to verify the resist- ance of both the frame and the glazed sur- face to the impacts caused by wind-borne debris during these extreme meteorologi- cal events. The aim of the research is the identification of the best practices that have been adopted, in order to increase the resilience of building envelopes to this weather phenomenon, evaluating the pos- sible applicability of adopting the principles to the specific needs of the European and Italian market

Linguistic profile automated characterisation in pluripotential clinical high-risk mental state (CHARMS) conditions: methodology of a multicentre observational study

Introduction: Language is usually considered the social vehicle of thought in intersubjective communications. However, the relationship between language and high- order cognition seems to evade this canonical and unidirectional description (ie, the notion of language as a simple means of thought communication). In recent years, clinical high at-risk mental state (CHARMS) criteria (evolved from the Ultra-High-Risk paradigm) and the introduction of the Clinical Staging system have been proposed to address the dynamicity of early psychopathology. At the same time, natural language processing (NLP) techniques have greatly evolved and have been successfully applied to investigate different neuropsychiatric conditions. The combination of at-risk mental state paradigm, clinical staging system and automated NLP methods, the latter applied on spoken language transcripts, could represent a useful and convenient approach to the problem of early psychopathological distress within a transdiagnostic risk paradigm. Methods and analysis: Help-seeking young people presenting psychological distress (CHARMS+/− and Clinical Stage 1a or 1b; target sample size for both groups n=90) will be assessed through several psychometric tools and multiple speech analyses during an observational period of 1-year, in the context of an Italian multicentric study. Subjects will be enrolled in different contexts: Department of Neuroscience, Rehabilitation, Ophthalmology, Genetics, Maternal and Child Health (DINOGMI), Section of Psychiatry, University of Genoa—IRCCS Ospedale Policlinico San Martino, Genoa, Italy; Mental Health Department—territorial mental services (ASL 3—Genoa), Genoa, Italy; and Mental Health Department—territorial mental services (AUSL—Piacenza), Piacenza, Italy. The conversion rate to full-blown psychopathology (CS 2) will be evaluated over 2 years of clinical observation, to further confirm the predictive and discriminative value of CHARMS criteria and to verify the possibility of enriching them with several linguistic features, derived from a fine-grained automated linguistic analysis of speech. Ethics and dissemination: The methodology described in this study adheres to ethical principles as formulated in the Declaration of Helsinki and is compatible with International Conference on Harmonization (ICH)-good clinical practice. The research protocol was reviewed and approved by two different ethics committees (CER Liguria approval code: 591/2020—id.10993; Comitato Etico dell’Area Vasta Emilia Nord approval code: 2022/0071963). Participants will provide their written informed consent prior to study enrolment and parental consent will be needed in the case of participants aged less than 18 years old. Experimental results will be carefully shared through publication in peer- reviewed journals, to ensure proper data reproducibility. Trial registration number DOI:10.17605/OSF.IO/BQZTN

Oltre le regole

Lo spunto dell’articolo parte dall’osservazione delle recenti tendenze progettuali degli edifici alti che possono essere divisi in tre famiglie: grattacieli tortili, piramidali o fuori piombo. Queste tre famiglie sono caratterizzate da ben specifiche problematiche di carattere strutturale, funzionale e costruttivo. L’articolo sottolinea le tecnologie e i materiali disponibili per assecondare la continua ricerca di forme “inusuali” per i grattacieli