Cluster dynamics and innovation in SMEs: the role of culture

The territorial agglomeration of interdependent enterprises has a positive influence on the competitiveness, the performance and the development of national economies. This is a widely accepted intuition in economie theory, and it dates back to the works of Alfred Marshall. In particular, these phenomena have been depicted through the theoretical framework of the "IndustriaI Districts". Another signifieant impulse to the debate was provided by the GREMI (Groupe de Recherche Européen sur les Milieux Innovateurs), through the concepì of milieu innovateur. Later, Michael Porter's studies and dissemination works granted great visibility to the dynamics of agglomeration of industries, which since then afe better known among policy makers as "clusters". At any rate, the importance of the cultural element in the concepts of "cluster", milieu, and "district" is undeniable. This is evident also when observing the phenomenon from a historieal perspective. Evidence shows that the strength of a loeal economie system, and its eapacity to grow and 10 innovate, afe closely related 10 the pattern of knowledge (thus cultural) stratifieation, to the territory itself and to learning eapacity. Moreover, one can observe that cultural socio­economie elements afe embedded in technology, thus they play a key role when considering the dynamics of innovation process and growth opportunities for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). With this respect, the paper wìll present some relevant case studies of technical assistance earried out by in the field of industriai cooperation with several non-ED Mediterranean countries. In particular, the paper will present those case studies where initiatives were sei up with a view 10 encourage cluster dynamics in regions (i.e. Aleppo, Syria or Yazd, Iran), where the main sector of activity (textile and clothing industry) is his1orically and culturally based. In particular, several factors were involved, such as the cohesion of stakeholders for the creation of innovation, the development of new products, and the competìtive advantages for the loeal productìve system. The project approach and its conclusions confirm the fundamental role of culture and culture-based activities in the process of economie development, especially when considering SMEs, where culture represents both an embedded strategie foundatìon for the creation of cluster dynamics, and a signifieant potential for their future development affecting innovation trajectories.

Virtual Networking Performance in OpenStack Platform for Network Function Virtualization

The emerging Network Function Virtualization (NFV) paradigm, coupled with the highly flexible and programmatic control of network devices offered by Software Defined Networking solutions, enables unprecedented levels of network virtualization that will definitely change the shape of future network architectures, where legacy telco central offices will be replaced by cloud data centers located at the edge. On the one hand, this software-centric evolution of telecommunications will allow network operators to take advantage of the increased flexibility and reduced deployment costs typical of cloud computing. On the other hand, it will pose a number of challenges in terms of virtual network performance and customer isolation. This paper intends to provide some insights on how an open-source cloud computing platform such as OpenStack implements multitenant network virtualization and how it can be used to deploy NFV, focusing in particular on packet forwarding performance issues. To this purpose, a set of experiments is presented that refer to a number of scenarios inspired by the cloud computing and NFV paradigms, considering both single tenant and multitenant scenarios. From the results of the evaluation it is possible to highlight potentials and limitations of running NFV on OpenStack

Insider Threats in Emerging Mobility-as-a-Service Scenarios

Mobility as a Service (MaaS) applies the everything-as- \ a-service paradigm of Cloud Computing to transportation: a MaaS \ provider offers to its users the dynamic composition of solutions of \ different travel agencies into a single, consistent interface. \ Traditionally, transits and data on mobility belong to a scattered \ plethora of operators. Thus, we argue that the economic model of \ MaaS is that of federations of providers, each trading its resources to \ coordinate multi-modal solutions for mobility. Such flexibility comes \ with many security and privacy concerns, of which insider threat is \ one of the most prominent. In this paper, we follow a tiered structure \ — from individual operators to markets of federated MaaS providers \ — to classify the potential threats of each tier and propose the \ appropriate countermeasures, in an effort to mitigate the problems

A Hessenberg Markov chain for fast fibre delay line length optimization

In this paper we present an approach to compute the invariant vector of the N + 1 state Markov chain P presented in (Rogiest et al., Lecture Notes in Computer Science, NET-COOP 2007 Special Issue, pp. 4465:185-194) to determine the loss rate of an FDL buffer consisting of N lines, by solving a related Hessenberg system (i.e., a Markov chain skip-free in one direction). This system is obtained by inserting additional time instants in the sample paths of P and allows us to compute the loss rate for various FDL lengths by solving a single system. This is shown to be especially effective in reducing the computation time of the heuristic LRA algorithm presented in (Lambert et al., Proc. NAEC 2005, pp. 545-555) to optimize the FDL lengths, where improvements of several orders of magnitude can be realized

Perception and localization techniques for navigation in agricultural environment and experimental results

Notoriously, the agricultural work environment is very hard, where the operator manually carry out any job, often in extreme weather conditions or anyway heat, cold and rain, or simply where the working hours last from dawn to sunset. Recently, the application of automation in agriculture is leading to the development of increasingly autonomous robots, able to take care of different tasks and avoid obstacles, to collaborate and interact with human operators and collect data from the surrounding environment. The latter can then be shared with the user, informing him about the soil moisture rather than the critical health conditions of a single plant. Thus borns the concept of precision agriculture, in which the robot performs its tasks according to the environment conditions it detects, distributing fertilizers or water only where necessary and optimizing treatments and its energy resources. The proposed thesis project consists in the development of a tractor prototype able to automatically act in agricultural semi-structured environment, like orchards organized in rows, and navigating autonomously by means of a laser scanner. In particular, the work is divided into three steps. The first consists in design and construction of a tracked robot, which has been completely realized in the laboratory, from mechanical, electric and electronic subsystems up to the software structure. The second is the development of a navigation and control system, which makes a generic robot able to move autonomously in the orchard using a laser scanner as main sensor. To achieve this goal, a localization algorithm based on rows estimation has been developed. Moreover, a control law has been designed, which regulates the kinematics of the robot. Once the navigation algorithm has been defined, it is necessary to validate it. Indeed, third point consists of experimental tests, with the aim of testing both robot and developed navigation algorithm

Privacy-Preserving Design of Data Processing Systems in the Public Transport Context

The public transport network of a region inhabited by more than 4 million people is run by a complex interplay of public and private actors. Large amounts of data are generated by travellers, buying and using various forms of tickets and passes. Analysing the data is of paramount importance for the governance and sustainability of the system. This manuscript reports the early results of the privacy analysis which is being undertaken as part of the analysis of the clearing process in the Emilia-Romagna region, in Italy, which will compute the compensations for tickets bought from one operator and used with another. In the manuscript it is shown by means of examples that the clearing data may be used to violate various privacy aspects regarding users, as well as (technically equivalent) trade secrets regarding operators. The ensuing discussion has a twofold goal. First, it shows that after researching possible existing solutions, both by reviewing the literature on general privacy-preserving techniques, and by analysing similar scenarios that are being discussed in various cities across the world, the former are found exhibiting structural effectiveness deficiencies, while the latter are found of limited applicability, typically involving less demanding requirements. Second, it traces a research path towards a more effective approach to privacy-preserving data management in the specific context of public transport, both by refinement of current sanitization techniques and by application of the privacy by design approach. Available at: https://aisel.aisnet.org/pajais/vol7/iss4/4

The Use of Renewable and Alternative Fuel in the Heavy Clay Industry

Abstract The heavy clay industry brick is in many countries a very important economic factor with far reaching financial and environmental impacts. In the industrialized countries the use of alternative fuels in the heavy clay industry is rather limited.The European brick industries common current research activity is mainly focused on synthgas from waste streams. In-house research activity by single brick companies does, at least in Europe, not take place at the moment. The situation in the developing and industrializing countries is far different: The use of alternative,fossil and renewable, fuels in these countries is still wide spread. The use of such fuels does sometimes have severe negative impacts on the environment. This paper gives an overview of the use of various renewable and alternative fuels in the heavy clay industry in several countries and the environmental and financial impacts these fuels have or might have on the operation of a typical installation in various parts of the world (Maghreb, Europe, USA, Australia,India, Vietnam). Two examples in which alternative fuels have been or are used, one in an industrializing and one in an industrialized country, are briefly presented. A comparative product life cycle analysis, LCA, is presented

Federated Platooning: Insider Threats and Mitigations

Platoon formation is a freight organization system where a group of vehicles follows a predefined trajectory maintaining a desired spatial pattern. Benefits of platooning include fuel savings, reduction of carbon dioxide emissions, and efficient allocation of road capacity. While traditionally platooning has been an exclusive option limited to specific geographical areas managed by a single operator, recent technological developments and EU initiatives are directed at the creation of an international, federated market for platooning, i.e., a consortium of platoon operators that collaborate and coordinate their users to constitute freights covering international routes. In this paper, we look at federated platooning from an insiders\u27 perspective. In our development, first we outline the basic elements of platooning and federation of platooning operators. Then, we provide a comprehensive analysis to identify the possible insiders (employees, users, operators, and federated members) and the threats they pose. Finally, we propose two layered, composable technical solutions to mitigate those threats: \emph{a}) a decentralized overlay network that regulates the interactions among the stakeholders, useful to mitigate issues linked to data safety and trustworthiness and \emph{b}) a dynamic federation platform, needed to monitor and interrupt deviant behaviors of federated members