Smart Cloud Engine and Solution Based on Knowledge Base

AbstractComplexity of cloud infrastructures needs models and tools for process management, configuration, scaling, elastic computing and healthiness control. This paper presents a Smart Cloud solution based on a Knowledge Base, KB, with the aim of modeling cloud resources, Service Level Agreements and their evolution, and enabling the reasoning on structures by implementing strategies of efficient smart cloud management and intelligence. The solution proposed provides formal verification tools and intelligence for cloud control. It can be easily integrated with any cloud configuration manager, cloud orchestrator, and monitoring tool, since the connections with these tools are performed by using REST calls and XML files. It has been validated in the large ICARO Cloud project with a national cloud service provider

Tentative recognition of the Italian seismic zones most prone to next strong earthquakes (as a tool for reduction of seismic risk)

A large portion of the building heritage in Italy has not been realized to resist the seismic shaking caused by earthquakes occurred in the past. Thus, the limited economic resources now available are largely insufficient to obtain a significant reduction of the seismic risk throughout the whole country. A way to achieve such objective might be identified by exploiting the fact that most probably in the next tens of years only few Italian zones will be hit by strong earthquakes and that, consequently, for such period the restoration of weak buildings and critical infrastructures will be urgent only in a very limited portion of the national territory. Thus, if the present scientific knowledge allowed us to reliably identify the location of the next major shocks, a significant reduction of the of seismic risk in Italy could become economically and operationally feasible. The hope of realizing such very attractive possibility should strongly increase the attention of Civil Protection authorities towards the researches that may provide the information cited above. As a first contribution towards that objective, this report describes a procedure that might allow the recognition of the Italian zone most prone to the next strong earthquake

Terremoti avvenuti in Appennino centrale nel periodo Agosto-Ottobre 2016: un chiaro esempio di come le attuali carte di pericolosità sismica sottovalutano il problema

Le attuali carte di pericolosità in Italia sono basate sullo studio della sismicità passata condotto con metodologie statistiche (Cornell, 1968; McGuire, 1978). In vari articoli (si vedano, ad esempio, Viti et al., 2009 e Mantovani et al., 2012, 2013, 2014a, 2014b), il gruppo di ricerca geofisica che fa capo al Dipartimento di Scienze Fisiche, della Terra e dell’Ambiente (DSFTA) dell’Università di Siena ha sottolineato che i risultati ottenuti da tale tipo di approccio possono portare a significative sottovalutazioni della pericolosità

Seismotectonics of the Padanian region and surrounding belts: which driving mechanism?

It is argued that the complex tectonic pattern observed in the study area can plausibly be explained as an effect of the kinematics of the Iberia and Adria blocks, induced by the NNE ward motion of Africa and the roughly westward motion of the Anatolian- Aegean system with respect to Eurasia. These boundary conditions cause the constrictional regime which is responsible for the observed shortening processes in the Padanian region and Western Alps. The proposed dynamic context can plausibly account for the peculiar distribution of major seismic sources, located in the northern Apennines, the Giudicarie fault system, the offshore of the western Ligurian coast and the Swiss Alps. The observed tectonic pattern in Western Europe and the study area can hardly be reconciled with the implications of the roughly NWward convergence between Africa and Eurasia proposed by global kinematic models, whereas it is compatible with the alternative Africa-Eurasia kinematics and plate mosaic proposed by [1]

Best strategy for the development of a seismic prevention plan

An effective mitigation of seismic risk in Italy can hardly be obtained without a tentative recognition of few priority zones, where the limited resources available in the short term can be concentrated. A reliable recognition of the zones where the probability of major earthquakes is highest must be carried out by a deterministic approach, exploiting the profound knowledge acquired about the present seismotectonic context in the zones involved. Some years ago, this kind of procedure led us to identify the central-northern Apennines (i.e. the zone hit by the recent major earthquakes, 2016 and 2017) as the Italian area most prone to next strong shocks. The reliability of the methodology here proposed is also supported by the fact that the implications of the adopted tectonic setting can provide plausible and coherent explanations for the spatio-temporaldistribution of major earthquakes in the central Mediterranean area in the last six centuries

Possible location of the next major earthquakes in the northern Apennines: present key role of the Romagna-Marche-Umbria wedge

It is argued that in some zones of the Northern Apennines, in particular the Rimini-Ancona thrust system, the Romagna Apennines and the Alta Valtiberina trough, the probability of major earthquakes is now higher than in other Apennine zones. This hypothesis is suggested by the comparison of the present short-term kinematics of the Romagna-Marche-Umbria wedge in the Northern Apennines, deduced by the distribution of major shocks in the last tens of years, with the previous repeated behavior of the same wedge, evidenced by the distribution of major earthquakes in the last seven centuries. The seismotectonics of the Apennine region here considered is closely connected with the larger context that involves the progressive migration (from south to north) of seismicity along the peri-Adriatic zones. The information provided by this study can be used to better manage the resources for prevention in Italy