Investigating strategies and indicators for sustainable campus: Comparison and synergies between University of Bologna and Delft University of Technology

Sustainable development is one of the biggest challenges of the twenty fist-century. Various university has begun the debate about the content of this concept and the ways in which to integrate it into their policy, organization and activities. Universities have a special responsibility to take over a leading position by demonstrating best practices that sustain and educate a sustainable society. For that reason universities have the opportunity to create the culture of sustainability for today’s student, and to set their expectations for how the world should be. This thesis aim at analyzing how Delft University of Technology and University of Bologna face the challenge of becoming a sustainable campus. In this context, both universities have been studied and analyzed following the International Sustainable Campus Network (ISCN) methodology that provides a common framework to formalize commitments and goals at campus level. In particular this work has been aimed to highlight which key performance indicators are essential to reach sustainability as a consequence the following aspects has been taken into consideration: energy use, water use, solid waste and recycling, carbon emission. Subsequently, in order to provide a better understanding of the current state of sustainability on University of Bologna and Delft University of Technology, and potential strategies to achieve the stated objective, a SWOT Analysis has been undertaken. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats have been shown to understand how the two universities can implement a synergy to improve each other. In the direction of framing a “Sustainable SWOT” has been considered the model proposed by People and Planet, so it has been necessary to evaluate important matters as for instance policy, investment, management, education and engagement. Regarding this, it has been fundamental to involve the main sustainability coordinators of the two universities, this has been achieved through a brainstorming session. Partnerships are key to the achievement of sustainability. The creation of a bridge between two universities aims to join forces and to create a new generation of talent. As a result, people can become able to support universities in the exchange of information, ideas, and best practices for achieving sustainable campus operations and integrating sustainability in research and teaching. For this purpose the project "SUCCESS" has been presented, the project aims to create an interactive European campus network that can be considered a strategic key player for sustainable campus innovation in Europe. Specifically, the main key performance indicators have been analyzed and the importance they have for the two universities and their strategic impact have been highlighted. For this reason, a survey was conducted with people who play crucial roles for sustainability within the two universities and they were asked to evaluate the KPIs of the project. This assessment has been relevant because has represented the foundation to develop a strategy to create a true collaboration.

State of the art and future perspectives on security metrics and their applications

In modern society, security issues of IT Systems are intertwined with interdisciplinary aspects, from social life to sustainability, and threats endanger many aspects of every- one’s daily life. To address the problem, it’s important that the systems that we use guarantee a certain degree of security, but to achieve this, it is necessary to be able to give a measure to the amount of security. Measuring security is not an easy task, but many initiatives, including European regulations, want to make this possible. One method of measuring security is based on the use of security metrics: those are a way of assessing, from various aspects, vulnera- bilities, methods of defense, risks and impacts of successful attacks then also efficacy of reactions, giving precise results using mathematical and statistical techniques. I have done literature research to provide an overview on the meaning, the effects, the problems, the applications and the overall current situation over security metrics, with particular emphasis in giving practical examples. This thesis starts with a summary of the state of the art in the field of security met- rics and application examples to outline the gaps in current literature, the difficulties found in the change of application context, to then advance research questions aimed at fostering the discussion towards the definition of a more complete and applicable view of the subject. Finally, it stresses the lack of security metrics that consider interdisciplinary aspects, giving some potential starting point to develop security metrics that cover all as- pects involved, taking the field to a new level of formal soundness and practical usability.