SPA 2019

Sustainability Performance Assessment: models, approaches and applications toward interdisciplinary and integrated solutions.

Organized workshop @ ICCSA 2019 - International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications

July 1 - 4, 2019 in Saint Petersburg, Russia in collaboration with the Saint Petersburg University, Russia..

The aim of this workshop is to bring together scientists working in basic and applied science (scientific computation and applications in all areas of sciences, engineering, technology, industry, economics, life sciences and social sciences), but also qualified practitioners, to present, compare and discuss advances in research, applications and achieved results and to design future perspectives for “applied sustainability”.

This workshop stimulates high-quality papers for presentation describing original interdisciplinary research results or case studies concerning “Sustainability Performance Assessment” according to the declared topics and research fields.

All accepted papers will be published in the Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) Series. Accepted papers will be scheduled for oral presentation. Submission implies the willingness of at least one of the authors to register, to attend the conference and to present the paper.

The conference language will be English.

Sustainability; applied sustainability; Ecosystem Services; Sustainable development; Sustainable and Inclusive planning;

• Sustainable management of natural resources (including: water management, land use and land cover changes, resource efficiency, biodiversity and ecosystem services)
• Sustainable energy (including: energy efficiency, renewable energy sources, smart energy systems, smart buildings, smart grids, energy planning)
• Sustainability and assessment tools (including: environmental impact assessment, strategic environmental assessment, life cycle assessment, corporate social responsibility)
• Sustainability and social challenges (including social inclusion, territorial cooperation, planning for resilient communities, participatory planning processes, urban environment)
• Sustainability and climate change (including strategies for mitigation and adaptation, planning for resilience)
• Sustainability and risks (including disaster risk management, disaster risk reductions, urban and regional resilience, risk assessment)
• Sustainability in urban and regional planning (applied models and principles in sample case study including local practices reports, international thematic experiences, innovations in regional and national legislations)
• Computational Sustainability (optimization societal, economic, and environmental resources, applied data mining, machine learning and spatial geo-computation)

Building upon the Millennium Development Goals, in the 2030 agenda for Sustainable development the United Nations established 17 Sustainable Development Goals. These are expected to become a key reference point for the development of mainstream global policies in the coming years, and to spur a greater focus on sustainability not only in theoretical perspectives but also, and mainly, in practical applications in every field of human action.

An increasing global effort on “renewed sustainable development” with influences and constraints at multiple scales (from global to national, regional and local) can already be observed. We understand “renewed sustainable development” as the development of a former concept, widely explored in multiple scientific domains (from planning and management to decision science, from environmental science to economics and econometrics, from social science to operative research) that involves increasing awareness of the long-term environmental and social consequences of everyday human activities. Hence this renovation concerns the recognition of the need to assess sustainability by taking into account the balance that needs to be struck between the use of resources and their reconstitution in a proper time frame.

Such new starting point follows excellent failures, among which prominent is that of the Kyoto protocol, which showed how a global agreement on challenging objectives can be undermined if human communities play the sole role of “les agìs” in such process. We refer to the general case of top down approach promoted without any effective inclusive actions for people and local communities: people “suffer” the decision without opportunities to participate actively in the policy making process.

Renovation entails innovation: through the Sustainable Development Goals, the United Nations launched a permanent call for innovation where sustainability is understood as a cross-sectoral value that needs to be operationalized and measured, in order for it to underpin effective actions in every resource-consuming sector, therefore challenging long-standing knowledge, processes, and behaviors.

Innovation, in turns, implies complexity: both research and technical applications need to steer towards interdisciplinarity; moreover, rigorous assessment methods are needed in order to allow for comparisons and rankings, and in this respect researchers and practitioners do not start from scratch, as they can draw useful lessons from available outstanding projects and best practice applications.

If we take it that ‘assessing sustainability’ means ‘assessing long term impacts’ on environmental and/or human resources, then to deliver products or supply chain models with required necessary features in a resource-scarce world is a mandatory innovation. If we consider social sustainability, then the inclusiveness degree of social dynamics and policies represents an up-to-date indicator to be defined especially in the current EU development policy-making. If we look at sustainability assessment in human activities (such as agriculture, industry, land use, urban development, including infrastructure), then environmental risks, energy issues, climate change represent challenging arenas for both academic investigations and operative applications as regards decision making, production, market and governance.

This list could become much longer if we enlarged the scope of subject areas or implementation domains. That’s the case if will focus on the hot spots: natural resources (including water, soil and biodiversity), food production, energy production and consumption, land take, technological innovations, social inclusion, as well as on their combinations.

The Workshop will pay particular attention to methodologies, research reports, case study assessment concerning the various combinations of these and other areas in a multi- and interdisciplinary way.

General research questions to be answered:

-    How to enhance effectiveness in policy making, planning, development programs etc? Looking at actions or procedures based on (or stemming from) Sustainable Development Goals or widely applying sustainability principles.

-    Assessing sustainability through place-based approach: innovation in methods and practices.

-    Do assessment matrices help? Comparing different quantitative and qualitative approaches in sustainability evaluation.

-    How to learn from failures and to discuss success examples: the critical appraisal of ongoing concrete practices

-    Applied advanced computational models for sustainability assessment in social, environmental and economic processes.

Important dates

April 12, 2019: Deadline for paper submission to the SPA Workshop.

April 20, 2019: Notification of acceptance

May 15, 2019: Early-bird registration ends.

May 15, 2018: Submission deadline for the final version of the papers.

July 1-4, 2019: ICCSA 2019 Conference.

Francesco Scorza, University of Basilicata, Italy (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Valentin Grecu, Lucian Blaga University, Romania (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Jolanta Dvarioniene, Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania  (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Sabrina Lai, University of Cagliari, Italy (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Lucian-Ionel Cioca, “Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu, Romania

Laura Colucci-Gray, University of Aberdeen, UK

Calin-Ionel Denes, “Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu, Romania

Grigoris Kafkalas, Tecnical University of Thessaloniky, Greece

Giuseppe Las Casas, University of Basilicata, Italy

Dionysis Latinopoulos, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

Giampiero Lombardini, University of Genoa, Italy

Federico Martellozzo, La Sapienza University, Italy

Beniamino Murgante, University of Basilicata, Italy

Silviu Nate, “Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu, Romania

Magdalini Pitsiava, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

Piergiuseppe Pontrandolfi, University of Basilicata, Italy

Georgia Pozoukidou, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

Elena Cristina Rada, University of Trento, Italy

Marco Ragazzi, University of Trento, Italy

Xavier Salazar-Valenzuela, Central University of Ecuador, Galapagos Head, Barrio Miraflores entre Petrel y San Cristóbal, Puerto Ayora, Santa Cruz Island, Galapagos, Ecuador

Vincenzo Torretta, Insubria University, Varese, Italy

Chiara Garau, University of Cagliari, Italy

Federico Amato, University of Basilicata, Italy

The proceedings of the SPA 2019 Workshop will appear in the Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series. To submit a paper, please connect to the Submission site from the link available at the ICCSA 2019 (www.iccsa.org). Only papers submitted through the electronic system and strictly adhering to the relevant format will be considered for reviewing and publication.

The paper must deal with original and unpublished work.

All submissions will be reviewed by at least two experts in the relevant field.

The submitted paper must be camera-ready, between 6 pages (short-paper) or 10 - 16 pages (long-paper) and formatted according to the LNCS rules. Please consult the formatting information and templates in Author's Instructions page.

Please pay attention, when submitting your contribution to select the right entry: “Sustainability Performance Assessment: models, approaches and applications toward interdisciplinary and integrated solutions (SPA 2016)” in the list to join the workshop.

Registration in 2019 International Conference on Computational Science and its Applications (ICCSA 2019) is compulsory for at least one of the authors of the accepted papers.

The early registration you should check at: http://www.iccsa.org

Note that the registration for the workshop is actually the registration for the whole ICCSA'2019 conference.

Finally, note that the workshop chairs are only responsible for all the academic aspects of the papers (including the submission, reviewing and final selection, among others). For questions about registration, lodging, visa, flights, or any other question, please contact ICCSA'2019 organizers.

Smart Basilicata - or 4.5

Infrastruttura di dati spaziali (SDI) per la gestione delle informazioni per la valorizzazione turistica con tools per la implementazione di strumenti di “Volunteering data production” e integrazione con social network per una maggiore partecipazione dei cittadini e del turista;

Area di studio: Val D'Agri

La valutazione dell'attrattività turistica del territorio rappresenta un processo complesso in cui interagiscono variabili e descrittori territoriali (tipiche di SIT) con livelli di percezione e aspettative individuali legati alle forme d'uso e fruizione del territorio.

La mappa in figura rappresenta la sintesi di un processo valutativo del territorio della Val D'Agri legato alle dotazioni di beni storico-architettonici, ambientali e identitari, alla presenza turistica, a variabili "sentiment" da social network e open data.

L'attrattività turistica rappresenta una componente dei servizi ecosistemici del territorio.

L'elaborazione proposta confronta la dotazione delle risorse che contribuiscono a definire l'attrattività turistica territoriale (beni storico-monumentali, risorse ambientali e paesistiche, risorse identitarie) con un particolare layer social che per ogni singola cella della griglia di valutazione conta il numero di foto georiferite Instagram su una base temporale definita. 

Scorza, F., Pilogallo, A., & Las Casas, G. (2018). Investigating Tourism Attractiveness in Inland Areas: Ecosystem Services, Open Data and Smart Specializations. In F. Calabrò, L. Della Spina, & C. Bevilacqua (Eds.), New Metropolitan Perspectives (pp. 30–38). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Las Casas, G., Lombardo, S., Murgante, B., Pontrandolfi, P., & Scorza, F. (2014). Open Data for Territorial Specialization Assessment Territorial Specialization in Attracting Local Development Funds: an Assessment. Procedure Based on Open Data and Open Tools. Tema. Journal of Land Use, Mobility and Environment.

Scorza, F., Las Casas, G. B., & Murgante, B. (2016). SPATIALIZING OPEN DATA FOR THE ASSESSMENT AND THE IMPROVEMENT OF TERRITORIAL AND SOCIAL COHESION. ISPRS Annals of Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing & Spatial Information Sciences, 3(4).

Las Casas, G. , & Scorza, F. (2015). Discrete Spatial Assessment of Multi-parameter Phenomena in Low Density Region: The Val D’Agri Case. In O. Gervasi, B. Murgante, S. Misra, L. M. Gavrilova, C. A. M. A. Rocha, C. Torre, … O. B. Apduhan (Eds.), Computational Science and Its Applications -- ICCSA 2015: 15th International Conference, Banff, AB, Canada, June 22-25, 2015, Proceedings, Part III (pp. 813–824). Cham: Springer International Publishing. http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21470-2_59

Las Casas, G., & Scorza, F. (2016). Sustainable Planning: A Methodological Toolkit. In O. Gervasi, B. Murgante, S. Misra, C. A. M. A. Rocha, C. Torre, D. Taniar, … S. Wang (Eds.), Computational Science and Its Applications -- ICCSA 2016: 16th International Conference, Beijing, China, July 4-7, 2016, Proceedings, Part I (pp. 627–635). Cham: Springer International Publishing. http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42085-1_53

Progetto SMART BASILICATA

UNIBAS

Sustainability Performance Assessment: models, approaches and applications toward interdisciplinary and integrated solutions.

Organized workshop @ ICCSA 2018 - International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications;  July 2 - 5, 2018 in Melbourne, Australia in collaboration with the Monash University, Australia.

DEADLINE EXTENDED: April 16, 2018

Themes:

Sustainability; applied sustainability; Ecosystem Services; Sustainable development; Sustainable and Inclusive planning;  

Topics

• Sustainable management of natural resources (including: water management, land use and land cover changes, resource efficiency, biodiversity and ecosystem services)
• Sustainable energy (including: energy efficiency, renewable energy sources, smart energy systems, smart buildings, smart grids, energy planning)
• Sustainability and assessment tools (including: environmental impact assessment, strategic environmental assessment, life cycle assessment, corporate social responsibility)
• Sustainability and social challenges (including social inclusion, territorial cooperation, planning for resilient communities, participatory planning processes, urban environment)
• Sustainability and climate change (including strategies for mitigation and adaptation, planning for resilience)
• Sustainability and risks (including disaster risk management, disaster risk reductions, urban and regional resilience, risk assessment)
• Sustainability in urban and regional planning (applied models and principles in sample case study including local practices reports, international thematic experiences, innovations in regional and national legislations)
• Computational Sustainability (optimization societal, economic, and environmental resources, applied data mining, machine learning and spatial geo-computation) 

Position

Building upon the Millennium Development Goals, in the 2030 agenda for Sustainable development the United Nations established 17 Sustainable Development Goals. These are expected to become a key reference point for the development of mainstream global policies in the coming years, and to spur a greater focus on sustainability not only in theoretical perspectives but also, and mainly, in practical applications in every field of human action.

An increasing global effort on “renewed sustainable development” with influences and constraints at multiple scales (from global to national, regional and local) can already be observed. We understand “renewed sustainable development” as the development of a former concept, widely explored in multiple scientific domains (from planning and management to decision science, from environmental science to economics and econometrics, from social science to operative research) that involves increasing awareness of the long-term environmental and social consequences of everyday human activities. Hence this renovation concerns the recognition of the need to assess sustainability by taking into account the balance that needs to be struck between the use of resources and their reconstitution in a proper time frame.

Such new starting point follows excellent failures, among which prominent is that of the Kyoto protocol, which showed how a global agreement on challenging objectives can be undermined if human communities play the sole role of “les agìs” in such process. We refer to the general case of top down approach promoted without any effective inclusive actions for people and local communities: people “suffer” the decision without opportunities to participate actively in the policy making process.  

Renovation entails innovation: through the Sustainable Development Goals, the United Nations launched a permanent call for innovation where sustainability is understood as a cross-sectoral value that needs to be operationalized and measured, in order for it to underpin effective actions in every resource-consuming sector, therefore challenging lond-standing knowledge, processes, and behaviors.

Innovation, in turns, implies complexity: both research and technical applications need to steer towards interdisciplinarity; moreover, rigorous assessment methods are needed in order to allow for comparisons and rankings, and in this respect researchers and practitioners do not start from scratch, as they can draw useful lessons from available outstanding projects and best practice applications.

If we take it that ‘assessing sustainability’ means ‘assessing long term impacts’ on environmental and/or human resources, then to deliver products or supply chain models with required necessary features in a resource-scarce world is a mandatory innovation. If we consider social sustainability, then the inclusiveness degree of social dynamics and policies represents an up-to-date indicator to be defined especially in the current EU development policy-making. If we look at sustainability assessment in human activities (such as agriculture, industry, land use, urban development, including infrastructure), then environmental risks, energy issues, climate change represent challenging arenas for both academic investigations and operative applications as regards decision making, production, market and governance. 

This list could become much longer if we enlarged the scope of subject areas or implementation domains. That’s the case if will focus on the hot spots: natural resources (including water, soil and biodiversity), food production, energy production and consumption, land take, technological innovations, social inclusion, as well as on their combinations.

The Workshop will pay particular attention to methodologies, research reports, case study assessment concerning the various combinations of these and other areas in a multi- and interdisciplinary way.

General research questions to be answered:

- How to enhance effectiveness in policy making, planning, development programs etc? Looking at actions or procedures based on (or stemming from) Sustainable Development Goals or widely applying sustainability principles.

- Assessing sustainability through place-based approach: innovation in methods and practices.

- Do assessment matrices help? Comparing different quantitative and qualitative approaches in sustainability evaluation.

- How to learn from failures and to discuss success examples: the critical appraisal of ongoing concrete practices

- Applied advanced computational models for sustainability assessment in social, environmental and economic processes.

Best Papers / Workshop follow-up

Selected papers will be proposed for publication in special issues in accordance with their specific topics. Workshop organizers will invite for extended versions submission after the conference.

Relevant journals for post-conference publishing:

Sustainability - Open Access Journal (MDPI)

International Journal of E-Planning Research (IJEPR) - IGI Global

other relevant journal worldwide in thematic special issue.

Workshop Organizers:

Francesco Scorza, University of Basilicata, Italy (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Valentin Grecu, Lucian Blaga University, Romania (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Jolanta Dvarioniene, Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania  (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Sabrina Lai, University of Cagliari, Italy (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Program Committee:

Lucian-Ionel Cioca, “Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu, Romania

Laura Colucci-Gray, University of Aberdeen, UK

Calin-Ionel Denes, “Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu, Romania

Grigoris Kafkalas, Tecnical University of Thessaloniky, Greece

Giuseppe Las Casas, University of Basilicata, Italy

Dionysis Latinopoulos, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

Giampiero Lombardini, University of Genoa, Italy

Federico Martellozzo, La Sapienza University, Italy

Beniamino Murgante, University of Basilicata, Italy

Silviu Nate, “Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu, Romania

Magdalini Pitsiava, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece 

Piergiuseppe Pontrandolfi, University of Basilicata, Italy

Georgia Pozoukidou, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

Elena Cristina Rada, University of Trento, Italy

Marco Ragazzi, University of Trento, Italy

Xavier Salazar-Valenzuela, Central University of Ecuador, Galapagos Head, Barrio Miraflores entre Petrel y San Cristóbal, Puerto Ayora, Santa Cruz Island, Galapagos, Ecuador

Vincenzo Torretta, Insubria University, Varese, Italy

Chiara Garau, University of Cagliari, Italy

Federico Amato, University of Basilicata, Italy

Paper Submission Guidelines:

The proceedings of the SPA 2018 Workshop will appear in the Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series. To submit a paper, please connect to the Submission site from the link available at the ICCSA 2018 (www.iccsa.org). Only papers submitted through the electronic system and strictly adhering to the relevant format will be considered for reviewing and publication.

The paper must deal with original and unpublished work. 

All submissions will be reviewed by at least two experts in the relevant field.

The submitted paper must be camera-ready, between 6 pages (short-paper) or 10 - 16 pages (long-paper) and formatted according to the LNCS rules. Please consult the formatting information and templates in Author's Instructions page.

Please pay attention, when submitting your contribution to select the right entry: “Sustainability Performance Assessment: models, approaches and applications toward interdisciplinary and integrated solutions (SPA 2016)” in the list to join the workshop.

Important dates

March 20  April 16, 2018: Deadline for paper submission to the SPA Workshop.

April 27, 2018: Notification of acceptance.

May 6, 2018: Early-bird registration ends.

May 6, 2018: Submission deadline for the final version of the papers.

July 2-5, 2018: ICCSA 2018 Conference.

Registration

Registration in 2018 International Conference on Computational Science and its Applications (ICCSA 2018) is compulsory for at least one of the authors of the accepted papers.

The early registration you should check at: http://www.iccsa.org

Note that the registration for the workshop is actually the registration for the whole ICCSA'2018 conference.

Finally, note that the workshop chairs are only responsible for all the academic aspects of the papers (including the submission, reviewing and final selection, among others). For questions about registration, lodging, visa, flights, or any other question, please contact ICCSA'2018 organizers.