1,721,030 research outputs found
La misura delle smart cities e gli obiettivi della strategia EU 2020: una riflessione critica
Full text linkIl dibattito sul concetto di smart city è stato ampliato in questi ultimi anni. Per identificare i fattori della smart city, alcuni studiosi sottolineano il ruolo di alcuni elementi, tra cui lo sviluppo economico, il contesto favorevole alle imprese, la sostenibilità ambientale, l’innovazione sociale, il processo di informazione e conoscenza e infine il capitale umano e sociale. Da questo punto di vista, il concetto di smart city è relazionato sia all’efficienza urbana che al benessere dei cittadini sotto l’ombrello comune dell’uso di tecnologie appropriate. Anche le imprese e le istituzioni hanno contribuito a questo dibattito. Queste ultime hanno unito il concetto di smartness con la capacità di utilizzare le ICT (tecnologie dell’informazione e della comunicazione) quale strumento per rafforzare la crescita economica. In particolare, la strategia europea 2020 focalizzata su una crescita sostenibile, inclusiva e intelligente considera le città come motori per lo sviluppo e le città intelligenti come un modello normativo per la città contemporanea. Pertanto, come misurare la smartness sta diventando sempre più fondamentale. Partendo dall’analisi degli indicatori di smartness sviluppati negli ultimi anni, l’obiettivo del lavoro è verificare quanto questi indici siano in grado di supportare la strategia Europa 2020 nel raggiungere i propri obiettivi, e nel diventare così uno strumento politico efficace.The debate about the smart city concept has been widened during these last years. In literature, to define this concept differ- ent ways have been proposed where enthusiastic positions have been counterposed by critical and negative views. To identify the smart city factors, some scholars highlight the role of some issues among others economic development, business-friendly context, environmental sustainability, social innovation, information and knowledge process, and finally human and social capital. In this light, the smart city concept is related to both urban efficiency and citizens’ wellbeing under the common umbrella of the use of appropriate technologies. Even firms and institutions have contributed to this debate. The latter have joined smartness with the ability of using ICT (Information and Communication Technology) as instrument to strengthen economic growth. Particularly, European Strategy 2020 focusing on a sustainable, inclusive and smart growth considers cities as engines for the development and smart cities as a normative model for the contemporary city. Therefore, how to measure smartness is becoming more and more crucial. Starting from the analysis of the smartness indicators developed in these last years, the aim of the paper is to verify how much these indexes are able to support the Europe 2020 strategy in reaching its own targets, becoming so an effective policy tool.Le débat sur le concept de ville intelligente s’est élargi ces dernières années. Pour identifier les facteurs de la ville intelligente, des spécialistes ont souligné le rôle de certains éléments tels que le développement économique, un contexte favorable aux entreprises, la durabilité environnementale, l’innovation sociale, le système d’information et de connaissance ainsi que le capital humain et social. Dans cette optique, le concept de ville inteligente est lié à la fois à l’efficacité de la gestion urbaine et au bien-être des citoyens, sous l’égide commune de l’utilisation de technologies appropriées. Les entreprises et les institutions ont également contribué à ce débat. Celles-ci ont associé, au concept d’intelligence, l’usage des TIC (technologies d’information et de la communication) comme un moyen d’améliorer la croissance économique. En particulier, la stratégie européenne 2020, axée sur une croissance durable, inclusive et intelligente, considère, d’une part, les villes comme des moteurs de développement et, d’autre part, la ville intelligente comme un modèle normatif de la ville contemporaine. Par conséquent, les indicateurs de performance de la ville intelligente deviennent de plus en plus importants. A partir de l’analyse des indicateurs développés ces dernières années, le but de ce travail est celui de vérifier dans quelle mesure ces indicateurs peuvent appuyer la stratégie Europe 2020 à fin d’atteindre ses objectifs et, ainsi, devenir un outil politique efficace
Dai bright green buildings alle bright cities
No full textLa crescente urbanizzazione e soprattutto la crescente richiesta di maggiore efficienza nel consumo energetico e nella gestione delle risorse naturali rende sempre più attuale affrontare in modo innovativo e sostenibile la costruzione degli edifici. In questa prospettiva, sono emerse alcune linee di ricerca che si riconducono ai concetti di smart, intelligent, e green/sustainable buildings. Partendo da questa analisi, l’articolo si propone di evidenziare come sia possibile sintetizzare gli aspetti di quali-
tà ambientale e di controllo integrato di un edificio nel concetto di bright green buildings e come, sia quindi necessario delineare un quadro di riferimento concettuale più ampio. Questo viene identificato nella Bright City, intesa come cornice metodologica per orientare le opera- zioni di trasformazione urbana nonché come sintesi degli attuali riferimenti paradigmatici: sostenibilità, smartness e resilienza
What are the factors driving the adoption and intensity of sustainable irrigation technologies in Italy?
Full text linkThis paper aims to analyse the determinants of Italian farmers’ adoption of sustainable irrigation technologies such as micro-irrigation (drip and sprinklers) and sub-irrigation technologies. To improve farmers’ water management, climate variability adaptive behaviour should be incentivized. Italy, like other Mediterranean countries, has suffered the most for an increase in frequency and intensity of droughts, higher temperatures and fewer precipitations. Applying innovative irrigation systems, water scarcity and water stress may be overcome. Water conservation and saving technologies may help in supporting water-saving behaviour, increasing water conservation in the natural environment and reducing water stress to cultivations. However, accurate analyses of the determinants of adoption and intensity of these techniques are still scarce. This study fills this gap by using a micro-level approach which combines yearly Agricultural Accounting Information Network (RICA) datasets with climatic variables from the ERA-Interim dataset. Based on an unbalanced panel dataset for the period 2012-2016, the decision of a farmer whether to adopt an irrigation saving technology or not is estimated applying a logit and a probit model, while the intensity of adoption is estimated through a Tobit model. Our main findings confirm that crop typology, education, geography and climate are all relevant factors influencing the sustainable irrigation technology adoption choice as well as the adoption intensity given that most farmers adopt water-saving technologies only partially
How Does the Public Spending Affect Technical Efficiency? Some Evidence from 15 European Countries
Full text linkThe relationship between government size and economic growth has been widely debated. Departing from this
issue, we provide an empirical analysis of the impact of government size on technical efficiency. The aim of this
paper is to estimate by using a True Random Effect model the impact of public sector’s size and of public
expenditure components on 15 European countries’ technical efficiency from 1996 to 2011. Using the total public
expenditure as a proxy for the government size we estimate simultaneously national optimal production function
and technical efficiency model by controlling for income distribution and institutional quality. Our main findings
show that the effect of public sector’s size on efficiency is positive while the type of public expenditures may have
both positive and negative impact. In more details, results suggest that social protection, cultural, and health
expenditures have a positive effect on technical efficiency, while others have a negative impact. More
controversial is the impact of education expenditure, even if a positive effect on efficiency prevails when
controlling for heteroscedasticity
Institutional Entrepreneurship, Trust, and Regulatory Capture in the Digital Economy
No full textIn regard to the problem of the new markets’ opening and their regulation, some scholars have introduced the concept of “institutional entrepreneur” in economic literature. This new definition of entrepreneur is important to highlight, albeit in informal and descriptive terms, the existence of functional relation- ships between activities typical of private market competition and those more specifically, of the public sector. Even if this new economic character can provide an interesting key to understanding what can really happen in the narrow zone that separates the public and private markets, it does not consider some conceptual components that are not minor for the purposes of complete characterization. For example, those of reciprocity, trust and capture that put the actions of the entrepreneur in a continuum defined by more or less virtuous (or legal) behaviors. From this point of view this chapter examines these aspects within the digital economic framework
RESILIENCE, SMARTNESS AND SUSTAINABILITY. TOWARDS A NEW PARADIGM?
No full textThe urbanization and the vulnerability of a city make challenging the ability of remaining along a sustainable development path. From a sustainability point of view, the smartness concept has been enlarged up to incorporate the definition of sustainable development with the so-called smart and sustainable cities. Another aspect is gaining importance in this debate: the growing challenges posed by climate change and by environmental issue at large. This issue has forced governments and in particular cities, which represent the main place for the prevention and the implementation of initiatives against negative environmental events, to develop flexible and resilient actions, initiatives and plans. In the near future, the majority of the population will be establishing in cities or urban context, so that the active actions will be based on the need to adopt solutions that address the principle of resilience. Since policies, plans and projects should succeed in considering together these three principles – sustainability, smartness and resilience – the aim of this paper consists in analyzing the common features of these concepts which may be at the basis of an integrated approach. Adapting the definition already accepted for buildings in terms of bright buildings, the relevance of brightness issue consists in developing a new paradigm of reference for a city
The Stability of the Adjusted and Unadjusted Environmental Kuznets Curve
Full text linkIn our paper, we test the stability of the unadjusted and adjusted Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC). Our results provide evidence in favour of the significance of the adjusted EKC hypothesis in which the impact of per capita GDP on the intensity of CO2 emissions is evaluated conditionally to the effects of the energy-supply infrastructure and of additional socio-demographic variables. In this framework, the GDP-CO2 relationship appears robust to the inclusion of additional regressors and to changes in the estimation period and intervalSustainable development, Kuznets curve, CO2 emissions
Bright Cities and City Information Modeling
No full textThe increasing urbanization and above all the increasing demand for more efficiency in energy consumption
and in the management of natural resources makes ever more urgent to tackle the construction of buildings
and the planning of cities in an innovative and sustainable way. In this perspective, some research lines have
emerged referring to the concepts of smart, intelligent, and green/sustainable buildings. Starting from this
analysis, the article aims to highlight how it is possible to synthesize both the environmental quality aspects
and the integrated control of a building in the concept of bright green buildings, and how thus a wider
conceptual reference framework is necessary: identified in the Bright City based on the implementation of a
City Information Modeling (CIM). This methodological framework allows managing the urban
transformation operations in an integrated way and represents a synthesis of the current paradigmatic
references: sustainability, smartness and resilience
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
- …
