The Future of Cities

This report is an initiative of the Joint Research Centre (JRC), the science and knowledge service of the European Commission (EC), and supported by the Commission's Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy (DG REGIO). It highlights drivers shaping the urban future, identifying both the key challenges cities will have to address and the strengths they can capitalise on to proactively build their desired futures. The main aim of this report is to raise open questions and steer discussions on what the future of cities can, and should be, both within the science and policymaker communities. While addressing mainly European cities, examples from other world regions are also given since many challenges and solutions have a global relevance. The report is particularly novel in two ways. First, it was developed in an inclusive manner – close collaboration with the EC’s Community of Practice on Cities (CoP-CITIES) provided insights from the broader research community and city networks, including individual municipalities, as well as Commission services and international organisations. It was also extensively reviewed by an Editorial Board. Secondly, the report is supported by an online ‘living’ platform which will host future updates, including additional analyses, discussions, case studies, comments and interactive maps that go beyond the scope of the current version of the report. Steered by the JRC, the platform will offer a permanent virtual space to the research, practice and policymaking community for sharing and accumulating knowledge on the future of cities. This report is produced in the framework of the EC Knowledge Centre for Territorial Policies and is part of a wider series of flagship Science for Policy reports by the JRC, investigating future perspectives concerning Artificial Intelligence, the Future of Road Transport, Resilience, Cybersecurity and Fairness Interactive online platform : https://urban.jrc.ec.europa.eu/thefutureofcitiesJRC.B.3-Territorial Developmen

Towards a General Method for Logical Rule Extraction from Time Series

Extracting rules from temporal series is a well-established temporal data mining technique. The current literature contains a number of different algorithms and experiments that allow one to abstract temporal series and, later, extract meaningful rules from them. In this paper, we approach this problem in a rather general way, without resorting, as many other methods, to expert knowledge and ad-hoc solutions. Our very simple temporal abstraction method allows us to transform time series into timelines, which can be then used for logical temporal rule extraction using an already existing temporal adaptation of the algorithm APRIORI. We have tested this approach on real data, obtaining promising result

New Pd/Pt on Mg/Al basic mixed oxides for hydrogenation and hydrogenolysis of naphtalene

New Pd/Pt catalysts supported on a basicMg/Al mixed oxide obtained by calcination of a commercial hydrotalcite (SASOL, D) have been fully characterized by XRD, SEM, and FTIR and investigated in the vapor-phase hydrogenation of naphthalene in order to put in evidence the role of the Pd/Pt active phase and the acidity of the support on the hydrogenolysis/ring-opening reaction as well as the thio-tolerance of the catalysts. After calcination the hydrotalcite support (HT) gave rise to a Mg/Al mixed oxide with high surface area and a “brain-like” surface morphology. The IR spectra after adsorption of CO over the reduced samples showed the interaction between bimetallic particles and Mg–Al(O) basic support. The main band in the range 2080–2070 cm−1 is due to on-top CO adsorbed over Pd0 or Pt0, while the complex absorption below 2000 cm−1 is due to CO species bridging over Pd0. All the samples showed mainly a hydrogenation activity, highlighting the role of the support acidity in the ring-opening reactions to high molecular weight (HMW) products, having a boosting effect on the cetane number of the fraction obtained. A significant increase in the amount of HMWproducts was obtained by decreasing the Pd/Pt ratio, showing also the role of hydrogenolysis reactions attributable mainly to Pt, thus suggesting a hydrogenolysis/ring-opening mechanism. Furthermore, the Pd/Pt on basic oxide catalysts did not give rise to useless low molecular weight (LMW) cracking compounds, which thus formed only on highly acid sites. Finally, these catalysts, investigated by feeding increasing amounts of dibenzothiophene (DBT), showed an almost constant activity up to 3000 wt ppm of DBT. This surprising result pointed out the intrinsic thio-resistance of the Pd/Pt pair, regardless of a possible contribution of the acid sites of the support, and is mainly attributed to its high hydrodesulfurization (HDS) activity

Physics-Based Approach to Define Energy-Based Seismic Input: Application to Selected Sites in Central Italy

For relevant engineering purposes a viable reliable alternative to standard estimates of seismic hazard is represented by the use of scenario earthquakes, characterized not only in terms of magnitude, distance and faulting style, but also taking into account the complexity of the kinematic source rupturing process. Multi-scenario-based NDSHA (Neo-Deterministic Seismic Hazard Assessment) effectively accounts for the tensor nature of earthquake ground motions, formally described as the tensor product of the earthquake source functions and the Green’s functions of the transmitting anelastic medium, naturally supplying realistic time series, readily applicable to engineering analysis. Furthermore, it does not rely on scalar empirical ground motion attenuation models (GMPEs), as these are often both weakly constrained by available observations and fundamentally unable to account for the tensor nature of earthquake ground motions. This methodology has been successfully applied to many urban areas worldwide for the purpose of seismic microzoning, to strategic buildings, lifelines and cultural heritage sites. Some examples for selected sites in Central Italy, affected by the seismic sequence started in 2016, are here discussed, analyzing the energy content of the synthetic strong motion time histories, including the ones that predicted the spectral characteristics of the ground shaking due to the 24 August 2016 event. Specifically, the energy content obtained from (1) linearly scaled real records, (2) spectral matched records, (3) artificial accelerograms and (4) physics-based NDSHA ground motions, selected for a bridge hypothetically located at Amatrice, is compared. The comparison shows that the generation of artificial accelerograms (3) and partially also the spectral matching process (2) are characterized by an increase of the ground motion energy parameters with respect to the physics-based synthetic signals (4) and the linearly scaled records (1)

Towards Interval Temporal Logic Rule-Based Classification

Supervised classification is one of the main computational tasks of modern Artificial Intelligence, and it is used to automatically extract an underlying theory from a set of already classified instances. The available learning schemata are mostly limited to static instances, in which the temporal component of the information is absent, neglected, or abstracted into atemporal data, and purely, native temporal classification is still largely unexplored. In this paper, we propose a temporal rulebased classifier based on interval temporal logic, that is able to learn a classification model for multivariate classified (abstracted) time series, and we discuss some implementation issues

Riduzione degli infortuni relativi alla movimentazione carichi/pazienti in un'Azienda Sanitaria Locale: analisi degli interventi preventivi prima e dopo

Aims. To evaluate the effectiveness of two training programs on the reduction of injuries from manual handling of patients in five hospitals under the district of Ferrara. Materials and Methods. We analyzed injuries that occurred between 2002 and 2010. In 2004/2005 and 2008/2010 the health-care workers underwent to two different training programs. In 2007, the hospitals purchased assistive devices. Results. In 2006 there were 82 accidents. After the acquisition of the assistive devices (2007) and the new training program (2008/2010), the accidents dropped to 32. Conclusions. The results highlight the effectiveness of the combined training programs and assistive devices in reducing the number of accidents

Combined use of single and double-cross steel wires for closure of midline sternotomy

BACKGROUND: We describe an improved technique for sternal closure which is performed using combined single and double-cross steel wires. We made a mechanical study of these single and double-cross shapes considering the effects of applied transverse and longitudinal shearing forces. METHODS: We used this technique in 80 patients who underwent coronary surgery with the use of bilateral internal mammary arteries. RESULTS: Among them no major wound complications occurred, and in all cases a firm stabilization of the sternum was achieved. CONCLUSIONS: We therefore consider this technique of sternal closure easy, safe and effective, also in patients considered at risk for sternal dehiscence