Mitigation technologies for counteracting the UHI effects and for improving outdoor thermal comfort in mediterranean urban open spaces: a study of vegetation and cool materials effects on pedestrian comfort in Rome

The present study investigates the influence of building materials, traditional as well as innovative, and vegetated urban surfaces on the urban microclimate and on pedestrian outdoor thermal comfort in a typical Mediterranean city: Rome. It focuses the attention on selected mitigation technologies aiming to increase the albedo of cities: high reflective materials called cool colored materials, and the use of vegetative surfaces: green roofs, green walls and trees, with the main purpose to test, verify and quantify the overall microclimate mitigation and thermal performance of the aforementioned strategies, The study proposes and analyses, through CFD calculations (ENVImet v.4.0), five renovations scenarios: applying cool materials and vegetation on roofs, walls and pavements of the selected square. In order to support planning authorities and researches by going beyond the traditional way of urban heat island studies, the present study aims to highlight the multiple effects of cool colored materials on human comfort and to investigates which could be the best combination materials in terms of mitigation of ambient temperatures and pedestrian thermal stress. Therefore, air temperature as well as the physiologically equivalent temperature (PET) were applied to take into account the effect of the variations of urban materials on human comfort, the studies focuses the attention and draw its conclusions through the comparison of the Envimet thermal maps and the values of the different scenarios in terms of deltas variations. The results show the negative effect of cool colored materials on human thermal comfort when applied isolated to surfaces in direct contact with pedestrians, such as pavements and urban façades, nevertheless it underlines the benefit associated with a mixed combination of cool materials and trees, setting the path for further research in this direction

Assessment and mitigation strategies to counteract overheating in urban historical areas in Rome

As urban overheating is increasing, there is a strong public interest towards mitigation strategies to enhance comfortable urban spaces, for their role in supporting urban metabolism and social life. The study presents an assessment of the existing thermal comfort and usage of San Silvestro Square in Rome during the summer, and performs the simulation of cooling strategies scenarios, to understand their mitigation potential for renovation projects. The first stage concerns a field analysis of the thermal and radiative environment on the 1st and 2nd of August 2014, including meteorological measurements and unobtrusive observations, to understand how people experience and respond to extreme microclimate conditions. In the second stage, the research proposes scenario simulations on the same day to examine the influence of cool colored materials, trees and vegetative surfaces on thermal comfort. The thermal comfort assessment was based on Physiologically Equivalent Temperature (PET), whereas microclimatic simulations were conducted with CFD calculations (ENVImet v.4.3.1). The first stage shows a strong relationship between lower PET values and attendance rate, depending on daily shading patterns. The second stage shows a relevant improvement of thermal comfort, with PET values of 12 °C comparing to the no-intervention scenario, associated with a combination of cool materials and trees

Aggregating partial, local evaluations to achieve global ranking

We analyze some voting models mimicking online evaluation systems intended to reduce the information overload. The minimum number of operations needed for a system to be effective is analytically estimated. When herding effects are present, linear preferential attachment marks a transition between trustful and biased reputations.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in Physica

Decoding Information from noisy, redundant, and intentionally-distorted sources

Advances in information technology reduce barriers to information propagation, but at the same time they also induce the information overload problem. For the making of various decisions, mere digestion of the relevant information has become a daunting task due to the massive amount of information available. This information, such as that generated by evaluation systems developed by various web sites, is in general useful but may be noisy and may also contain biased entries. In this study, we establish a framework to systematically tackle the challenging problem of information decoding in the presence of massive and redundant data. When applied to a voting system, our method simultaneously ranks the raters and the ratees using only the evaluation data, consisting of an array of scores each of which represents the rating of a ratee by a rater. Not only is our appraoch effective in decoding information, it is also shown to be robust against various hypothetical types of noise as well as intentional abuses.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in Physica

A DATA ARCHIVES OF HISTORICAL CARTOGRAPHY * Dipartimento

Il presente contributo, dopo aver messo in evidenza l’importanza della cartografia storica per il suo valore documentario e culturale, ravvisa la necessità di una adeguata tutela dei documenti cartografici originali, ma ne auspica la loro conoscenza e diffusione attraverso forme di riproduzione che ne consentano una piena fruibilità da parte dei cultori e degli specialisti interessati. In particolare viene sottolineata la necessità che, considerato lo sviluppo e la diffusione oggi raggiunta dalle tecnologie informatiche, sia consentita la consultazione in via telematica del patrimonio cartografico di cui sono ricche le raccolte pubbliche e private, facendo salvi sia i diritti di proprietà sia i diritti di consultazione dei singoli documenti da parte degli utenti.This paper, after having put in evidence the interest of the historical cartography, as scientific and cultural documentation, considers to be necessary a suitable conservation of the original cartographical representations, but at the same time it hopes for their knowledge and diffusion by appropriate reproductions in order to facilitate their consultation by specialists and connoisseurs. In particular, because of the actual development and diffusion of the computer assisted technologies, the paper underlines the opportunity of permitting, by the use of telematic means, the consultation of the considerable cartographic heritage keeped in public and private collections, with the due observance of the owners and the users rights

Agli albori delle ricerche sul carsismoe la speleologia in Italia

Lo studio scientifico delle cavità naturali, al pari delle osservazioni sui fenomeni carsici, comincia a svilupparsi in Italia in tempi relativamente recenti, vale a dire nel corso del XIX secolo, anche se non mancarono in precedenza esempi di serie ricerche, stimolate da finalità idrologiche e condotte da eminenti studiosi. L’interesse per le cavità naturali fu anche motivato da interessi paleontologici, specialmente nei riguardi delle “grotte o caverne ossifere”. L’inserimento di tali ricerche nell’ambito delle scienze naturali si colloca solo nella seconda metà dell’800, in concomitanza con il graduale organizzarsi di società scientifiche e con il periodico svolgimento di specifiche riunioni congressuali. Rispetto ad altri paesi europei, come la Francia e l’Inghilterra, il nostro Paese, anche a causa della sua frammentazione politica conclusasi 150 anni or sono, si mosse con un certo ritardo che, però, negli ultimi quattro decenni del XIX secolo venne rapidamente colmato. Nel presente contributo vengono esaminate le vicende che caratterizzarono il dibattito scientifico nella seconda metà dell’800 e nel primo cinquantennio dell’unità nazionale, ambedue accompagnati dalla fondazione delle principali società scientifiche di ambito geografico-naturalistico nonché di associazioni alpinistiche ed escursionistiche. In particolare si ricordano le iniziative prese in occasione delle numerose manifestazioni congressuali, ma anche nell’ambito della crescente editoria scientifica, che gradualmente porteranno ad una sistematizzazione delle tematiche speleologiche e carsologiche.The development of the scientific study of the natural caves, as far as of the observations about the karst phenomena tends to be evident in Italy only in recent times, that is during the XIX century, even if on the previous ones were many examples of serious researches stimulated by hydrological purposes and made by noteworthy scientists. The interest towards the natural caves was also based on paleontological interests, mainly with reference to the “ossiferous caves”. The insertion of such researches into the area of natural sciences is placed only in the second half of the XIX century, in coincidence with the gradual organization of scientific societies and with the periodic increasing of specific congress meetings. In comparison with other European countries, as the France or England, our Country, also because of its political fragmentation, arrived only 150 years ago to the national unity, moved itself with a certain delay nevertheless rapidly filled during the last four decades of the XIX century. In this paper the Author takes account of the events that were characteristic of the scientific debate in the second half of the XIX century and in the first fifty years of the national unity, together with the foundation of the main geographical and naturalistic societies and of alpine and excursional clubs. Particularly the Author examines the initiatives taken in occasion of the numerous meetings, but also joined to the scientific press, with a gradual settling of the speleological and carsological themes

Climate Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Roofs and Pavements. A Case Study at Sapienza University Campus

The progressively emerging concept of urban resilience to climate change highlights the importance of mitigation and adaptation measures, and the need to integrate urban climatology in the design process, in order to better understand the multiple effects of combined green and cool technologies for the transition to climate responsive and thermally comfortable urban open spaces. This study focuses the attention on selected mitigation and adaptation technologies; two renovation scenarios were designed and modeled according to the minimal intervention criterion. The study pays attention to the effect on surface temperature and physiological equivalent temperature (PET) of vegetation and high albedo materials characterizing the horizontal boundaries of the site. The Sapienza University campus, a historical site in Rome, is taken as a case study. These results highlight the importance of treed open spaces and the combination of permeable green pavements associated with cool roofs as the most effective strategy for the mitigation of summer heatwaves and the improvement of outdoor thermal comfort

Matching games with partial information

We analyze different ways of pairing agents in a bipartite matching problem, with regard to its scaling properties and to the distribution of individual ``satisfactions''. Then we explore the role of partial information and bounded rationality in a generalized {\it Marriage Problem}, comparing the benefits obtained by self-searching and by a matchmaker. Finally we propose a modified matching game intended to mimic the way consumers' information makes firms to enhance the quality of their products in a competitive market.Comment: 19 pages, 8 fig

The Interactive Minority Game: a Web based investigation of human market interactions

The unprecedented access offered by the World Wide Web brings with it the potential to gather huge amounts of data on human activities. Here we exploit this by using a toy model of financial markets, the Minority Game (MG), to investigate human speculative trading behaviour and information capacity. Hundreds of individuals have played a total of tens of thousands of game turns against computer-controlled agents in the Web-based Interactive Minority Game. The analytical understanding of the MG permits fine-tuning of the market situations encountered, allowing for investigation of human behaviour in a variety of controlled environments. In particular, our results indicate a transition in players' decision-making, as the markets become more difficult, between deductive behaviour making use of short-term trends in the market, and highly repetitive behaviour that ignores entirely the market history, yet outperforms random decision-making.Experimental economics and financial markets; Decision theory and game theory; Information theory