GEOMATICS IN BRIDGE STRUCTURAL HEALTH MONITORING, INTEGRATING TERRESTRIAL LASER SCANNING TECHNIQUES AND GEOTECHNICAL INSPECTIONS ON A HIGH VALUE CULTURAL HERITAGE

Abstract. The paper presents preliminary findings from a research study designed to assess the health status of a medieval bridge built on 1500 under the Medici dynasty over the river Sieve, close to Florence. The structure, a two span stone bridge with a main central pillar, experienced some restructuring interventions from 1555 to the present. The left span has been closed for some decades, and for many years the water has been allowed to float under it in case of severe flood only. At the beginning of year 2000 the left span has been opened to the regular flux of water. After opening, a maelstrom has been noticed as permanently present at the main pier's basis highlighting the presence of a fracture in the concrete base around the central pile of the bridge. In order to investigate structural health and to assess bridge's stability structural inspections and hydraulic surveys have been carried out. This manuscript reports Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) survey results. Surface comparisons to identify anomalies and defromations have been carried out by exploiting Two TLS campaigns that were performed within a 6 years time span.</p

Mechanisms to engage an online community in crowdsourcing: insights from an idea contest in training

Knowledge sharing is particularly important for co-creating, discussing, or acquiring innovative ideas. Crowdsourcing, as an enabler of open innovation, has raised the question about the kind of organising forms and/or managerial interventions it may require or underpin. However, there is little consensus in management studies on how to best design a crowdsourcing initiative (contest) with regard to the mechanisms to engage an online community. In this paper, starting from an exploratory case study on the project “Stati Generali della Formazione e del Lavoro” (General Assembly on Training and Work)—a crowdsourcing experience designed for a large community of professional trainers, planned and managed by University of Milano-Bicocca and AIF Academy (Associazione Italiana Formatori), a broad representative association of Italian trainers—we study the factors influencing the decision of the participants (a.k.a., solvers) to become involved (and to what extent) in a contest. The study could contribute to the debate on crowdsourcing by both underlining important governance factors involved and providing empirical evidence of the link between management strategies and crowdsourcing success

Day-night and inter-habitat variations in ant assemblages in a mosaic agroforestry landscape

Throughout the Mediterranean basin, the long-term interaction between human activities and natural processes has led to the formation of unique ecosystems whose biodiversity may be higher than that of the “original” systems. This is particularly true in the case of transformations of continuous stretches of closed forest into a complex mosaic of open and closed habitat over the course of centuries. In this study, we assessed the variation in diversity of ant assemblages in a typical patchy landscape, sampling ants in the three most important constituting habitats: olive plantation, harvested forest, and mature forest. In the study we used two different sampling methods—pitfall traps and observation at baits—which provided information on species presence at different temporal scales. The three habitats displayed different species assemblages, and considerable variation in species composition was observed at different times of the day, particularly in the harvested forest. Functional group analysis showed that the olive plantation, although the most artificial habitat, displayed the highest number of functional groups, suggesting a wider spectrum of available ecological niches for ant species within this habitat type. Overall, it was concluded that each of the three habitats contributes to enhance diversity at the landscape scale, which is greater than that expected from a more homogeneous habitat composition

Symbol–Relation Grammars: A Formalism for Graphical Languages

AbstractA common approach to the formal description of pictorial and visual languages makes use of formal grammars and rewriting mechanisms. The present paper is concerned with the formalism of Symbol–Relation Grammars (SR grammars, for short). Each sentence in an SR language is composed of a set of symbol occurrences representing visual elementary objects, which are related through a set of binary relational items. The main feature of SR grammars is the uniform way they use context-free productions to rewrite symbol occurrences as well as relation items. The clearness and uniformity of the derivation process for SR grammars allow the extension of well-established techniques of syntactic and semantic analysis to the case of SR grammars. The paper provides an accurate analysis of the derivation mechanism and the expressive power of the SR formalism. This is necessary to fully exploit the capabilities of the model. The most meaningful features of SR grammars as well as their generative power are compared with those of well-known graph grammar families. In spite of their structural simplicity, variations of SR grammars have a generative power comparable with that of expressive classes of graph grammars, such as the edNCE and the N-edNCE classes

Metric documentation of cultural heritage: Research directions from the Italian gamher project

GAMHer is a collaborative project that aims at exploiting and validating Geomatics algorithms, methodologies and procedures in the framework of new European regulations, which require a more extensive and productive use of digital information, as requested by the Digital Agenda for Europe as one of the seven pillars of the Europe 2020 Strategy. To this aim, GAMHer focuses on the need of a certified accuracy for surveying and monitoring projects with photogrammetry and laser scanning technologies, especially when used in a multiscale approach for landscape and built heritage documentation, conservation, and management. The approach used follows a multi-LoD (level of detail) transition that exploits GIS systems at the landscape scale, BIM technology and "point cloud based" 3d modelling for the scale of the building, and an innovative BIM/GIS integrated approach to foster innovation, promote users' collaboration and encourage communication between users. The outcomes of GAMHer are not intended to be used only by a community of Geomatics specialists, but also by a heterogeneous user community that exploit images and laser scans in their professional activities

METRIC DOCUMENTATION OF CULTURAL HERITAGE: RESEARCH DIRECTIONS FROM THE ITALIAN GAMHER PROJECT

GAMHer is a collaborative project that aims at exploiting and validating Geomatics algorithms, methodologies and procedures in the framework of new European regulations, which require a more extensive and productive use of digital information, as requested by the Digital Agenda for Europe as one of the seven pillars of the Europe 2020 Strategy. To this aim, GAMHer focuses on the need of a certified accuracy for surveying and monitoring projects with photogrammetry and laser scanning technologies, especially when used in a multiscale approach for landscape and built heritage documentation, conservation, and management. The approach used follows a multi-LoD (level of detail) transition that exploits GIS systems at the landscape scale, BIM technology and "point cloud based" 3d modelling for the scale of the building, and an innovative BIM/GIS integrated approach to foster innovation, promote users' collaboration and encourage communication between users. The outcomes of GAMHer are not intended to be used only by a community of Geomatics specialists, but also by a heterogeneous user community that exploit images and laser scans in their professional activities