Doing Philanthropy at the Time of the Sustainable Development Goals: The Case of Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo

This article outlines how strategic philanthropy can align its mission with the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development by describing the experience of the most important foundation of banking origin in Italy. Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo marked a milestone in 2020 in aligning with the Agenda, applying the Sustainable Development Goals as a rigorous, internationally shared methodological framework and restructuring its operations to focus on three programmatic efforts — Planet, People, and Culture — aligned with those goals. To complete our examination of this transformation, we conducted a benchmark analysis involving nine case studies of foundations in Europe and the United States to identify the level of engagement and convergence of each with the 2030 Agenda framework. This article begins with an introduction to the topic of sustainability in the philanthropic sector, which is followed by a case study of the Compagnia di San Paolo’s path to adoption of the framework. It then measures the impact of its activities through quantitative indicators, highlighting the foundation’s transformation, and concludes with a comparison between Compagnia di San Paolo’s approaches and some international best practices to provide a better understanding of our long-term positioning in the international context

Spectral Separation Coefficients for digital GNSS receivers

Publication in the conference proceedings of EUSIPCO, Florence, Italy, 200

Comparison between Galileo CBOC Candidates and BOC(1,1) in Terms of Detection Performance

Many scientific activities within the navigation field have been focused on the analysis of innovative modulations for both GPS L1C and Galileo E1 OS, after the 2004 agreement between United States and European Commission on the development of GPS and Galileo. The joint effort by scientists of both parties has been focused on the multiplexed binary offset carrier (MBOC) which is defined on the basis of its spectrum, and in this sense different time waveforms can be selected as possible modulation candidates. The goal of this paper is to present the detection performance of the composite BOC implementation of an MBOC signal in terms of detection and false alarm probabilities. A comparison among the CBOC and BOC(1,1) modulations is also presented to show how the CBOC solution, designed to have excellent tracking performance and multipath rejection capabilities, does not limit the acquisition process

Preparare un tempo migliore

È opinione comune che la diffusione della pandemia da Covid-19 abbia operato da acceleratore di fenomeni latenti, destrutturati e scarsamente distribuiti. Abbiamo assistito in poche settimane ad un evento di portata globale, con una capacità di innescare e propagare processi evolutivi innovativi di cui potremo comprendere la reale portata solo tra alcuni (forse molti) anni. Interpretato in questa prospettiva, abbiamo assistito non solo a quello che in letteratura viene definito come “cigno nero”1 , bensì a un cigno nero di carattere esponenziale per la dimensione dell’impatto prodotto sul nostro sistema di riferimento (sanitario, economico, tecnologico, educativo, politico e personale). L’aneddotica delle settimane di lockdown è infatti ricca di episodi e nuove abitudini che hanno segnato una trasformazione repentina del nostro vivere: grazie (o per effetto) del coronavirus abbiamo sperimentato, tra le altre cose, la produttività dello smart working (siamo passati dai 570 mila lavoratori italiani che facevano ricorso al lavoro agile prima della chiusura2 a oltre 2 milioni3 ), abbiamo scoperto che è possibile ordinare la spesa dallo smartphone e ricevere la consegna direttamente a casa secondo nostra preferenza, visitato musei e ammirato opere d’arte dal divano in salotto, appurato che il processo di dematerializzazione ci consente di ricevere la ricetta medica digitale via e-mail, sms o comunicazione telefonica senza bisogno di recarsi fisicamente dal medico. Se è vero che da ogni crisi origina una opportunità, è giunto il momento di avviare una riflessione profonda sulle traiettorie del futuro del nostro pianeta e della nostra società, forti della nuova consapevolezza acquisita. Per affrontare la seconda fase dell’emergenza, quella della convivenza con il virus, e di progettazione di una nuova normalità, è infatti necessario un cambio di passo che metta al centro competenze e saperi e che adotti l’innovazione come leva strategica per lo sviluppo territoriale e globale

HAP within Galileo LE Architecture

The possibility to provide users with a large number of navigation-related services has been a driving force to increase the Global Navigation Satellite Systems accuracy, availability, reliability, integrity requirements and a stimulus for their integration with the world of personal communications. With this aim, several support systems both terrestrial and satellite based have been designed and partially implemented. In this paper we present the latest results of a research activity first presented in [1] and [2], which is focused on the design of a novel GNSS augmentation system based on the use of stratospheric platforms (i.e, High Altitude Platform (HAP)) [4]. After a brief introduction on the Stratolite concept, we show how the HAP can be integrated with Galileo Local Element (GLE) and then we propose a case study where the Stratolite is employed as support infrastructure for EGNOS (a sort of EGNOS Local Element

A study of multipath effects on Galileo signals

The characterization of the error budget related to GNSS can be performed over each component that affects the SIS measurement (pseudorange). Politecnico di Torino Fabio Dovis - Paolo Mulassano NAVSAS Group Considering the Galileo case, there are several error sources due to the receiver design; among them, the major one is the deleterious superimposition of the same SIS received at the antenna via multiple path: the multipath. Such an error is the most important contribution if indoor navigation/positioning is considered, and in addition it is also present in differential-GNSS applications where the reference station is located in a different environment with respect to users. This work presents an overview of possible multipath mitigation techniques applied to Galileo SI

Hybrid positioning in cellular networks

Software based cellular location systems for accurately determining the location of a wireless cellular device is becoming one of the key differentiator in an increasinglycrowded personal communication market. In this paper we show how, providing the users of terminals able to deal jointly with GNSS signals and cellular positioning signals it possible to improve the geometrical Dilution Of Precision related to the navigation solution. A theoretical framework is defined in order to deal with the hybrid localization system, and simulation results are presente

Object detection on the sea surface, based on texture analysis

This paper deals with the problem of OOI detection on the sea surface, based on the definition of proper texture parameters. As the sea texture exhibits a variable nature, the classical algorithms, tailored to work in presence of a specific textured background, can not be applied. However they can be seen as possible components of a hierarchical algorithm, taking into account the variability of the sea texture. In this paper an algorithm (called OBI-FINDER), with these characteristics, is described, and some results are show

Comparative Studies on BOC Signal Performance in Multipath Environment

It is well known that in indoor environment performance of GNSS-based positioning are strongly limited by several factors. Acquisition of weak signals is critical, visibility of a sufficient number of satellite is not granted, and the SIS received at the antenna propagates via multiple paths. Indoor signal acquisition can be aided by external elements providing augmentation signals through dedicated links or by means of communication channels (e.g. Assisted GPS) but the fine pseudorange estimation cannot be improved by external aids. Even differential corrections are not effective since a user few meters far away by a reference station can experience very different multipath conditions. The navigation receiver must embed multipath rejection strategies in order to improve the signal tracking and identify and minimize or correct the multipath effects on the final position estimatio

Galileo AltBOC signal multiresolution acquisition strategy

Herein, some critical aspects related to the acquisition of the future Galileo signals are discussed. In particular, the Alternative Binary Offset Carrier (AItBOC) modulation that will be used by the Galileo satellites to broadcast navigation signals on the E5 band is considered, addressing acquisition issues only partially analyzed in previous works. The implementation of an acquisition section for the AltBOC signals is not straightforward, since several different receiver architectures can be used and remarkable differences are required with respect to the conventional signal processing used in GPS receivers. The main problems that must be handled (risk of false lock,resolution of the search space, and computational burden) are outlined in the following. An innovative technique, called multiresolution acquisition and tailored to the AltBOC signals, is then proposed as an effective solution to previous problems. As demonstrated by means of simulations, this novel strategy can be successfully used in coherent dual-band AltBOC receiver architectures with a feasible implementation complexity and it leads to remarkable advantages in terms of acquisition tim