Potentials and Limits of Bayesian Networks to Deal with Uncertainty in the Assessment of Climate Change Adaptation Policies

Bayesian networks (BNs) have been increasingly applied to support management and decision-making processes under conditions of environmental variability and uncertainty, providing logical and holistic reasoning in complex systems since they succinctly and effectively translate causal assertions between variables into patterns of probabilistic dependence. Through a theoretical assessment of the features and the statistical rationale of BNs, and a review of specific applications to ecological modelling, natural resource management, and climate change policy issues, the present paper analyses the effectiveness of the BN model as a synthesis framework, which would allow the user to manage the uncertainty characterising the definition and implementation of climate change adaptation policies. The review will let emerge the potentials of the model to characterise, incorporate and communicate the uncertainty, with the aim to provide an efficient support to an informed and transparent decision making process. The possible drawbacks arising from the implementation of BNs are also analysed, providing potential solutions to overcome them.Adaptation to Climate Change, Bayesian Network, Uncertainty

Documenti d'arte impegnata: "Tra rivolta e rivoluzione: immagine e progetto", Bologna, 1972-1973

Questo contributo analizza la mostra "Tra rivolta e rivoluzione: immagine e progetto", organizzata dall’Ente Bolognese Manifestazioni Artistiche e tenutasi in diverse sedi nella città emiliana tra il novembre 1972 e il gennaio 1973. Ideata come primo momento di riflessione sugli esiti della passata stagione contestativa (1968-1972), la mostra attraversava diverse discipline (arte, cinema, teatro, musica, architettura e urbanistica) tentando di fare il punto sui rapporti tra pratica culturale e impegno politico. A questo proposito, si avvaleva dell’esposizione di materiali prodotti dai movimenti come di opere artistiche, film, spettacoli e progetti di urbanistica, cercando di affrontare il recente passato ed esaminare le possibili proposte culturali nel clima di tensione dei primi anni Settanta in Italia. In particolare, si discute qui la sezione "Arte/Iconografia politica" a cura del critico Franco Solmi e dell’artista Concetto Pozzati, dove un eterogeneo gruppo di documenti e opere d’arte era esposto secondo criteri di “contenuto” politico, al di là delle rispettive poetiche o tecniche espressive. Sono messe quindi in luce le contraddizioni sorte nell’utilizzare la mostra come dispositivo di documentazione “parziale” (al tempo selettiva e militante) rivolta al grande pubblico e di “autocritica” indirizzata ai professionisti del settore. Questo atteggiamento è inoltre considerato all’interno delle ambizioni, ideologiche, di “interdisciplinarietà” e “decentramento” delle attività culturali, caratteristiche del dibattito istituzionale in quegli anni

Governance and Environmental Policy Integration in Europe: What Can We learn from the EU Emission Trading Scheme?

The European Union Emission Trading System (EU ETS) is a landmark environmental policy, representing the world’s first large-scale greenhouse gas (GHG) trading program. The coexistence of state actors and top-down processes with stakeholders participation and flexible abatement strategies make the EU ETS a powerful instrument of cross sectoral integration of environmental concerns, which benefits from a high level of interaction among the actors involved and a significant degree of information exchange. However, the same peculiarities of the system make it difficult to identify a correspondence with a single mode of governance. The EU ETS shows characteristics of the decision making processes and institutions engaged, the tools and instruments used as well as the actors involved, which change according to the different levels of governance, and belong both to the old and to the new modes of governance. The emission trading scheme represents a clear example of Multi-Level governance, where the different modes of governance interact among them and affect each other.Environmental Policy Integration, Climate Change, Emission Trading, EU Policy

The Future Prospect of PV and CSP Solar Technologies: An Expert Elicitation Survey

In this paper we present and discuss the results of an expert elicitation survey on solar technologies. Sixteen leading European experts from the academic world, the private sector and international institutions took part in this expert elicitation survey on Photovoltaic (PV) and Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) technologies. The survey collected probabilistic information on (1) how Research, Development and Demonstration (RD&D) investments will impact the future costs of solar technologies and (2) the potential for solar technology deployment both in OECD and non-OECD countries. Understanding the technological progress and the potential of solar PV and CPS technologies is crucial to draft appropriate energy policies. The results presented in this paper are thus relevant for the policy making process and can be used as better input data in integrated assessment and energy models.Expert Elicitation, Research, Development and Demonstration, Solar Technologies

The Cat Is On the Mat. Or Is It a Dog? Dynamic Competition in Perceptual Decision Making

Recent neurobiological findings suggest that the brain solves simple perceptual decision-making tasks by means of a dynamic competition in which evidence is accumulated in favor of the alternatives. However, it is unclear if and how the same process applies in more complex, real-world tasks, such as the categorization of ambiguous visual scenes and what elements are considered as evidence in this case. Furthermore, dynamic decision models typically consider evidence accumulation as a passive process disregarding the role of active perception strategies. In this paper, we adopt the principles of dynamic competition and active vision for the realization of a biologically- motivated computational model, which we test in a visual catego- rization task. Moreover, our system uses predictive power of the features as the main dimension for both evidence accumulation and the guidance of active vision. Comparison of human and synthetic data in a common experimental setup suggests that the proposed model captures essential aspects of how the brain solves perceptual ambiguities in time. Our results point to the importance of the proposed principles of dynamic competi- tion, parallel specification, and selection of multiple alternatives through prediction, as well as active guidance of perceptual strategies for perceptual decision-making and the resolution of perceptual ambiguities. These principles could apply to both the simple perceptual decision problems studied in neuroscience and the more complex ones addressed by vision research.Peer reviewe

Super Quantum Mechanics in the Integral Form Formalism

We reformulate Super Quantum Mechanics in the context of integral forms. This framework allows to interpolate between different actions for the same theory, connected by different choices of Picture Changing Operators (PCO). In this way we retrieve component and superspace actions, and prove their equivalence. The PCO are closed integral forms, and can be interpreted as super Poincar\'e duals of bosonic submanifolds embedded into a supermanifold.. We use them to construct Lagrangians that are top integral forms, and therefore can be integrated on the whole supermanifold. The $D=1, ~N=1$ and the $D=1,~ N=2$ cases are studied, in a flat and in a curved supermanifold. In this formalism we also consider coupling with gauge fields, Hilbert space of quantum states and observables.Comment: 41 pages, no figures. Use birkjour.cls. Minor misprints, moved appendix A and B in the main text. Version to be published in Annales H. Poincar\'