Smart cities, analysis of a strategic plan.

Abstract (English) Cities nowadays face complex challenges to meet objectives regarding socio-economic development and quality of life. The concept of "smart city" is a response to these challenges. Although common practices are being developed all over the world, different priorities are defined and different architectures are followed. In this master thesis I focuses on the applied architecture of Riverside's case study, through a progression model that underline the main steps that moves the city from a situation of crisis, to be appointed "Intelligent Community" of the 2012 by Intelligent Community Forum. I discuss the problem of integration among the physical, institutional and digital dimension of smart cities and the "bridges" that connect these three spatialities. Riverside's progression model takes as a reference a comprehensive framework made unifying the keys component of the three most quoted framework in this field: a technology-oriented vision (strongly promoted by IBM [Dirks et al. 2009]), an approach-oriented one [Schaffers et al. 2011] that is sponsored by many initiatives within the European Commission, and a purely service-oriented one [Giffinger et al. 2007][Toppeta, 2010].

Smart cities: azioni di sostenibilita nelle nostre città

Il concetto di Smart City ha iniziato a svilupparsi negli ultimi anni, acquisendo un'importanza sempre maggiore anche in seguito ai cambiamenti sociali e tecnologici dell'ultimo periodo. La tesi si concentra sull'analisi della situazione italiana per quanto riguarda questo tema, cercando di capire quali sfide dovranno affrontare le città italiane per fronteggiare i cambiamenti in atto; si è quindi cercato di rispondere a questa domanda sviluppando tre delle principali aree tematiche che contribuiscono a definire il concetto di Smart City: Smart Mobility, Smart Waste Management e Smart Water Management; ne vengono quindi analizzate le maggiori criticità e i vantaggi, sia economici che ambientali, che si potrebbero ottenere attraverso una gestione più efficiente di questi settori.

Talking through walls: a history of the murals in Northern Ireland

This dissertation examines how some fundamental events of the history of Ireland emerge through the art of the mural. It is divided into three chapters. The first chapter opens with a brief presentation of the mural as a form of art with a semiotic and sociological function, with a particular focus on the socio-political importance it has had and still has today in Ireland, where murals are a significant means of expressing ideals, protest and commemoration. A part of this chapter also provides data about the number of murals and their location, with a particular focus on the two cities of Belfast and Derry. This first chapter ends with the presentation of an initiative put forth by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, called "Building Peace through the Arts: Re-Imaging Communities", and questions its implementation on the Irish soil. The second chapter provides a history of the murals in Northern Ireland, from the Unionist's early depictions of King Billy in occasion of the 12 July annual celebrations to the Republican response. This will be supported by an explanation of the two events that triggered the start of the mural painting for both factions: the Battle of the Boyne for the Loyalists and the 1981 hunger strike for the Republicans. In the third and last chapter of this dissertation, a key of the main themes, symbols, acronyms and dominant colours which can be found in Loyalist and Republican murals is provided. Furthermore, one mural for each faction is looked at more closely, with an analysis of the symbols which are present in it.

Premio "Capitale verde europea". Studio di una politica dell'Unione europea in tema di sostenibilità ambientale con approfondimento terminologico sul minieolico.

This dissertation is divided into four chapters and combines the study of the European Green Capital Award with a terminology research on small wind turbines, a technical subject in the macro-area of sustainable cities. Chapter I aims at giving an overview of the development of environmental policies and treaties both at the international and European level. Then, after highlighting the crucial role of cities for the global environment, the chapter outlines the urban dimension of the EU environmental policies and defines the vision of a sustainable city promoted by the European Union. Chapter II contains an in-depth analysis of the European Green Capital Award and illustrates its aims, the entire designation process, its communication campaign and its evolution. Chapter III focuses on applicant, finalist and winning cities in order to study the aspect of participation in the competition. It also contains a detailed analysis of two European Green Capitals, i.e. Nantes and Bristol, who respectively won the title in 2013 and 2015. Based on a variety of sources, this chapter examines the successful aspects of their bids and communication campaigns during their year as Green Capitals. Chapter IV presents the terminology research in the field of small wind turbines and the resulting bilingual glossary in English and Italian. The research was carried out using two terminology tools: TranslatorBank and InterpretBank. The former is composed by two software programmes, CorpusCreator and MiniConcordancer DB, which were used to semi-automatically create specialized corpora from the Web and then extract terminology and occurrences of terms from the collected texts. The latter is a software which has been specifically designed for interpreters in order to help them optimize their professional workflow, from gathering information and creating glossaries on a specific subject to the actual interpreting task at a conference. InterpretBank’s tool TermMode was used to create a glossary with term equivalents and additional information such as definitions and the contexts of use.