Assessing social sustainability for achieving sustainable architecture

Sustainability is an inherent urban and architectural problem. It is simultaneously characterized by many different dimensions, pursuing heterogeneous and often conflicting objectives. To help address these complexities in a structured way, this paper illustrates an integrated assessment framework to tackle social sustainability, in order to support the decision-making process towards sustainable architecture. This integrated decision support framework was applied to a case study concerning a new cultural centre at the Politecnico di Torino in Italy. The aim of this paper is to propose a decision support methodological framework for the analysis, graphical visualization and evaluation of social sustainability of architectural projects. It combines three methods first, Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) analysis, to get a guided understanding of the project and detect the best design strategies; second, the Stakeholder Analysis (SA), to develop a strategic view of the actors involved; third, the Social Return of the Investment (SROI) as a methodological tool for social impact assessment. This framework, presented through the discussion of some project solutions, helps us analyse the architectural material effect of social sustainability and answer the question: Are we investing properly and creating spaces sufficiently functional to build better conditions for our community and our city

How to revitalise a historic district: A stakeholders-oriented assessment framework of adaptive reuse

This research proposes an application of a MultiCriteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) in the adaptive reuse framework, which is able to structure the complex decision process required for the effective reuse of an historic district. Nowadays, many cities are facing an economic, financial, social and urban decline. This is particularly true when thinking about historic districts, which are usually characterized by high unique cultural values but, at the same time, show difficult characteristics in terms of comfort and security. Accordingly, the planning rules to be applied to the historic districts need to be re-written overcoming the traditional logics. The proposed adaptive reuse framework deals with the application of the Macbeth method. To properly test, develop and illustrate the framework we conducted an experimental validation through a case study: the urban regeneration of an historical district in Biella (Italy) starting from the adaptive reuse of an historic buildin

Architectural project appraisal: An active learning process [Valutazione del progetto architettonico: un processo di apprendimento attivo]

Reflecting on how economic evaluation is taught in architecture courses opens up a discussion between those who structure problems with design and those who structure problems with different approaches (specifically estimation approaches) and where this design and these methods can intersect and hybridise. The paper presents some reflections, and a methodological proposal, related to the way of teaching economic evaluation in architecture courses. The aim of this paper is to propose an integrated assessment operative framework applied according to the active learning strategy, aimed at supporting students in dealing with design decision-making processes in a structured way and providing them with a problem representation scheme. Specifically, with respect to the assessment of building transformation scenarios, the framework con-siders: i) the analysis of the real estate market, in order to estimate the most probable market value of the con-sidered spaces; ii) the analysis of demand through sur-veys and their reporting through descriptive statistics indicators, in order to investigate the context and the in-terests of future users, with a view to innovative and sat- isfactory solutions; iii) Storytelling (ST) and/or the Strategic Choice Approach (SCA) as support for the construc-tion of design solutions; iv) finally, the Discounted Cashflows Analysis (DCFA), to verify the economic feasibility of the chosen scenario . The proposed methodological framework can be de-fined as a hybrid of active and traditional learning: the techniques are applied by the students in an active way, collaborating in working groups in a co-operative way; however, in order to make the application possible, it is unavoidable to prepare frontal lessons that provide the necessary theoretical concepts. According to this scheme the student has the opportunity to learn and develop, on the one hand, the estimation skills necessary to assess and estimate the feasibility of a project, and on the other hand, s/he has the possibility to ac-quire specific skills to structure the design process in order to relate spatial, economic, environmental and technical issues. This integrated framework is illustrated through the application to a case study concerning the transformation of a building located in the city of Turin, Italy

How covid-19 influences the 2030 Agenda: Do the practices of achieving the sustainable development goal 11 need rethinking and adjustment?/ Come il Covid-19 influenza l’Agenda 2030: le pratiche di raggiungimento dello SDG11 devono essere ripensate e aggiornate?

Our cities represent the crucial nodes of intervention to improve living conditions and promote sustainability. Therefore, the current pandemic, combined with the climate emergency, translates into an urban emergency. In light of the devastating effects of Covid-19 and the rethinking of the concept of sustainability, the goal of developing inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable cities and human settlements pursued by the Sustainable Development Goal 11 may now require revision in terms of the indicators used for its monitoring. Indicators are crucial since they help to make sustainable development visible and transparent, enable comparison, build and harmonize databases and provide information relevant to decision-making processes and urban and territorial policies by facilitating communication across arenas. The aim of this paper is to provide a picture of the indicators currently used to monitor SDG11, to present a series of critical reviews of them in light of the Covid-19 emergency, and to suggest the introduction of some new indicators, thus opening a scientific debate on the topic

Schur complement inequalities for covariance matrices and monogamy of quantum correlations

We derive fundamental constraints for the Schur complement of positive matrices, which provide an operator strengthening to recently established information inequalities for quantum covariance matrices, including strong subadditivity. This allows us to prove general results on the monogamy of entanglement and steering quantifiers in continuous variable systems with an arbitrary number of modes per party. A powerful hierarchical relation for correlation measures based on the log-determinant of covariance matrices is further established for all Gaussian states, which has no counterpart among quantities based on the conventional von Neumann entropy

Conceivable security risks and authentication techniques for smart devices

With the rapidly escalating use of smart devices and fraudulent transaction of users’ data from their devices, efficient and reliable techniques for authentication of the smart devices have become an obligatory issue. This paper reviews the security risks for mobile devices and studies several authentication techniques available for smart devices. The results from field studies enable a comparative evaluation of user-preferred authentication mechanisms and their opinions about reliability, biometric authentication and visual authentication techniques

First Results from the TOTEM Experiment

The first physics results from the TOTEM experiment are here reported, concerning the measurements of the total, differential elastic, elastic and inelastic pp cross-section at the LHC energy of $\sqrt{s}$ = 7 TeV, obtained using the luminosity measurement from CMS. A preliminary measurement of the forward charged particle $\eta$ distribution is also shown.Comment: Conference Proceeding. MPI@LHC 2010: 2nd International Workshop on Multiple Partonic Interactions at the LHC. Glasgow (UK), 29th of November to the 3rd of December 201

Elastic Scattering and Total Cross-Section in p+p reactions measured by the LHC Experiment TOTEM at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

Proton-proton elastic scattering has been measured by the TOTEM experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider at $\sqrt{s} = 7$ TeV in special runs with the Roman Pot detectors placed as close to the outgoing beam as seven times the transverse beam size. The differential cross-section measurements are reported in the |t|-range of 0.36 to 2.5 GeV^2. Extending the range of data to low t values from 0.02 to 0.33 GeV^2,and utilizing the luminosity measurements of CMS, the total proton-proton cross section at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV is measured to be (98.3 +- 0.2(stat) +- 2.8(syst)) mb.Comment: Proceedings of the XLI International Symposium on Multiparticle Dynamics. Accepted for publication in Prog. Theor. Phy

LHC Optics Measurement with Proton Tracks Detected by the Roman Pots of the TOTEM Experiment

Precise knowledge of the beam optics at the LHC is crucial to fulfil the physics goals of the TOTEM experiment, where the kinematics of the scattered protons is reconstructed with the near-beam telescopes -- so-called Roman Pots (RP). Before being detected, the protons' trajectories are influenced by the magnetic fields of the accelerator lattice. Thus precise understanding of the proton transport is of key importance for the experiment. A novel method of optics evaluation is proposed which exploits kinematical distributions of elastically scattered protons observed in the RPs. Theoretical predictions, as well as Monte Carlo studies, show that the residual uncertainty of this optics estimation method is smaller than 0.25 percent.Comment: 20 pages, 11 figures, 5 figures, to be submitted to New J. Phy