Entrepreneurship and territorial behavior: how to exercise competitiveness in sustainability in Europe

The paper focuses on territorial impacts of the European policy with regards to the enterprise systems in the last decade and how the effects of this policy could have irreparable modified the enterprise network relationships (so-cio-functional and interrelated/cohesive) in regions. This suspicion has suggested European choices include the territorial dimension in the development directions by the intra and inter-regional co-operation. The searching new forms of balanced growth for enterprise is the future objective; it could be followed by assuming a territorial polycentric cohesive organization. Important European documents, like Europe 2020 Strategy and Territorial Agenda (2011), stress this orientation. A critical review of Economic Geography literature with regards to main localisation theories of enterprise opens this contribution, in order to accompany the reader in understanding of new strategic parameters able to measure `the regional productive capability' of enterprises in the framework of European recent directions. By using innovative methodologies, the performance of enterprise systems and networks looking at these parameters, highlights European specific territorialised typologies of behaviour. Finally, some policy recommendations are suggested in this direction in order to improve the regional productivity, as well as the employment in relation with to specific economic-social-environmental parameters of cohesion and competitiveness in sustainability, looking at the regional productive capability of Small/Medium Firms (SMFs) in Europe with regards to main pillars of the 2014-2020 Strategy

Territorial Approach to Energy Development Policies: Italian Regions in Transition

Approccio territoriale nelle politiche di sviluppo energetico: le regioni italiane in transizione. Lo sviluppo energetico è stato definito come il tentativo di fornire fonti di energia primaria e secondaria sufficienti a soddisfare le esigenze della società: esso comporta sia il pieno sviluppo delle tecnologie energetiche già disponibili sia la ricerca, lo sviluppo e il potenziamento di nuove tecnologie. La transizione energetica, in questo contesto, implica il coinvolgimento e il cambiamento complesso e non lineare (retroattivo) di tutte le dimensioni reciprocamente interdipendenti coinvolte in tale sviluppo: istituzionale, finanziaria, territoriale e tecnologica più la governance e il comportamento dei consumatori. Questo processo darà origine a nuovi cluster tecnologici, nuove organizzazioni socio-economiche, nuovi comportamenti e preferenze: la società adotterà nel complesso un nuovo paradigma socio-tecnico. Sia le aree rilevanti per lo sviluppo energetico che il policy making nel contesto europeo sono differenziati in termini regionali. Infatti, le decisioni politiche dell’Unione che vengono adottate e tradotte in scelte strategiche nazionali vengono «trasposte» e adattate alle diverse realtà regionali per produrre propri specifici modelli di sviluppo energetico. In questo quadro, il contributo analizza la situazione delle regioni italiane rispetto al loro ruolo nello sviluppo energetico attraverso l’analisi di 5 aree – lo sviluppo delle fonti rinnovabili, il risparmio e l’efficienza energetica, la riduzione delle emissioni inquinanti, la promozione di attività di ricerca applicata, l’innovazione e il trasferimento tecnologico per sistemi efficienti dal punto di vista energetico – mostrando il loro posizionamento rispetto alle politiche di sviluppo energetico in termini di sviluppo delle fonti di energia rinnovabile (FER) e di potenziale di specializzazione regionale.Energy development has been defined as an attempt to provide sufficient primary and secondary energy sources to meet society’s needs: it involves the full development of already available energy technologies and research, and the development and enhancement of new technologies. Energy transition, in this context, implies the involvement and complex and nonlinear (retroactive) change of all mutually interdependent dimensions involved in such development: institutional, financial, territorial and technological, plus governance and consumer behaviour. This process will give rise to new technological clusters, new socio-economic organizations and new behaviours and preferences: society will adopt an altogether new sociotechnical paradigm. The areas relevant to energy development and policy-making in the European context are differentiated in regional terms. In fact, Union policy decisions that are adopted and translated into national strategic choices are «transposed» and adapted to different regional realities in order to produce specific energy development patterns. In this framework, this paper analyses the situation of the regions of Italy with respect to their role in energy development through the analysis of five areas – developing renewable sources, promoting energy saving and efficiency, reducing pollutant emissions, promoting applied research activities, and transferring innovation and technology for energy-efficient systems – all showing their positioning with respect to energy development policies in terms of Renewable Energy Systems (RES) development and regional specialization potential.L’approche territoriale dans les politiques de développement énergétique : les régions italiennes en transition Le développement énergétique a été défini comme une tentative de fournir suffisamment de sources d’énergie primaire et secondaire pour répondre aux besoins de la société : il implique à la fois le développement complet des technologies énergétiques déjà disponibles et la recherche, le développement et l’amélioration de nouvelles technologies. La transition énergétique, dans ce contexte, implique la mobilisation et le changement complexe et non linéaire (rétroactif) de toutes les dimensions mutuellement interdépendantes qui concourent à ce développement : institutionnelles, financières, territoriales et technologiques, plus la gouvernance et le comportement des consommateurs. Ce processus donnera naissance à de nouveaux clusters technologiques, de nouvelles organisations socio-économiques, de nouveaux comportements et préférences : la société adoptera globalement un nouveau paradigme socio-technique. Les deux domaines pertinents pour le développement énergétique et l’élaboration des politiques dans le contexte européen sont différenciés en termes régionaux. En effet, les décisions politiques de l’Union qui sont adoptées et traduites en choix stratégiques nationaux sont « transposées » et adaptées aux différentes réalités régionales pour produire leurs propres modèles spécifiques de développement énergétique. Dans ce cadre, la contribution analyse la situation des régions italiennes en ce qui concerne leur rôle dans le développement énergétique à travers l’analyse de 5 domaines – le développement des sources d’énergie renouvelables, les économies d’énergie et l’efficacité énergétique, la réduction des émissions polluantes, la promotion des activités de recherche appliquée, l’innovation et le transfert de technologie pour les systèmes efficaces en énergie – montrant leur position par rapport aux politiques de développement énergétique en termes de développement des systèmes d’énergie renouvelable (SER) et de potentiel de spécialisation régionale

A formal methodology to design and deploy dependable wireless sensor networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are being increasingly adopted in critical applications, where verifying the correct operation of sensor nodes is a major concern. Undesired events may undermine the mission of the WSNs. Hence their effects need to be properly assessed before deployment to obtain a good level of expected performance and during the operation in order to avoid dangerous unexpected results. In this paper we propose amethodology that aims at assessing and improving the dependability level of WSNs by means of an event-based formal verification technique. The methodology includes a process to guide designers towards the realization of dependable WSN and a tool ("ADVISES") to simplify its adoption. The tool is applicable to homogeneous WSNs with static routing topologies. It allows to generate automatically formal specifications used to check correctness properties and evaluate dependability metrics at design time and at runtime for WSNs where an acceptable percentage of faults can be defined. During the runtime we can check the behavior of the WSN accordingly to the results obtained at design time and we can detect sudden and unexpected failures, in order to trigger recovery procedures. The effectiveness of the methodology is shown in the context of two case studies, as proof-of-concept, aiming to illustrate how the tool is helpful to drive design choices and to check the correctness properties of the WSN at runtime. Although the method scales up to very large WSNs, the applicability of the methodology maybe compromised by the state space explosion of the reasoning model, which must be faced partitioning large topologies into sub-topologies

Static verification of wireless sensor networks with formal methods

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are widely recognized as a solution to build monitoring systems, even in critical environments. WSNs, however, are subjected to faults due to several causes (i.e. rain, EMF radiations, vibrations, etc..) and tools and methodologies for the design of dependable WSN-based systems are needed. Formal methods partially meet such needs by assessing the degree of correctness of design models and identifying potential system bottlenecks. The aim of this paper is to define a methodology for the static verification of WSN based systems using a formal language (Event Calculus). In particular we show how the formal specification can be used to verify the design of a WSN in terms of its dependability properties. To this aim, we define a set of correctness specifications that apply to a generic WSN, coupled with specific structural specifications describing the target network topology to evaluate. Finally, after having presented an automatic tool, designed to support the designer, we adopt this methodology to a case study

The heuristic strategies for assessing wireless sensor network: an event-based formal approach

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are increasingly being adopted in critical applications. In these networks undesired events may undermine the reliability level; thus their effects need to be properly assessed from the early stages of the development process onwards to minimize the chances of unexpected problems during use. In this paper we propose two heuristic strategies: what-if analysis and robustness checking. They allow to drive designers towards optimal WSN deployment solutions, from the point of view of the connection and data delivery resiliency, exploiting a formal approach based on the event calculus formal language. The heuristics are backed up by a support tool aimed to simplify their adoption by system designers. The tool allows to specify the target WSN in a user-friendly way and it is able to elaborate the two heuristic strategies by means of the event calculus specifications automatically generated. The WSN reliability is assessed computing a set of specific metrics. The effectiveness of the strategies is shown in the context of three case studies

Design-time formal verification for smart environments: an exploratory perspective

Smart environments (SmE) are richly integrated with multiple heterogeneous devices; they perform the operations in intelligent manner by considering the context and actions/behaviors of the users. Their major objective is to enable the environment to provide ease and comfort to the users. The reliance on these systems demands consistent behavior. The versatility of devices, user behavior and intricacy of communication complicate the modeling and verification of SmE's reliable behavior. Of the many available modeling and verification techniques, formal methods appear to be the most promising. Due to a large variety of implementation scenarios and support for conditional behavior/processing, the concept of SmE is applicable to diverse areas which calls for focused research. As a result, a number of modeling and verification techniques have been made available for designers. This paper explores and puts into perspective the modeling and verification techniques based on an extended literature survey. These techniques mainly focus on some specific aspects, with a few overlapping scenarios (such as user interaction, devices interaction and control, context awareness, etc.), which were of the interest to the researchers based on their specialized competencies. The techniques are categorized on the basis of various factors and formalisms considered for the modeling and verification and later analyzed. The results show that no surveyed technique maintains a holistic perspective; each technique is used for the modeling and verification of specific SmE aspects. The results further help the designers select appropriate modeling and verification techniques under given requirements and stress for more R&D effort into SmE modeling and verification researc