Salvatore F. Pileggi - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Salvatore F. Pileggi
EDULEARN proceedings, Jul 1, 2021
System analysis and design is a critical aspect of Information Systems, as the different courses ... more System analysis and design is a critical aspect of Information Systems, as the different courses in the field clearly demonstrate. Unified Modelling Language (UML), which comprises several structural and behavioural diagrams to formally specify the target system design, has been extensively adopted for a long time, and it is still very popular. Each diagram has a different purpose as it targets a different aspect or perspective of a given system, as well as diagrams may be used at different stages of the design process, which is not necessarily linear or prescriptive. However, the different diagrams are related and, in most cases, may be considered to be part of a seamless process. At an educational level, it is extremely important to approach system engineering in a systematic way in order to assure an effective process, which is correct and consistent. As students are not normally experienced professionals, it is important to create a learning environment that enhances the quality of experience and related learning outcomes. In this context, the alignment of concepts among the different diagrams may play a critical role as it can minimise inconsistencies in the design. In this paper, we discuss the alignment of concepts looking at a subset of UML (Use Case and Sequence diagrams) within the educational context. We analyse a simple scenario with an emphasis on interactions to highlight the relevance of the alignment of concepts from heterogeneous diagrams. Additionally, we provide future work and recommendations to explicit the seamless generation of information and its tracing from Use Case to Sequence diagrams.
This paper proposes a concise literature review aimed at identifying the current body of knowledg... more This paper proposes a concise literature review aimed at identifying the current body of knowledge on the adoption of Social Networks in Crisis Management. The major input is a structured research question based on the initial reading around the topic. Before the recent pan-demic, most literature has focused on local crises, with a relatively low number of exceptions. Additionally, self-organizing system are spontaneous established between people who are af-fected by a crisis. Among the identified challenges, there is the need to integrate official commu-nication by emergency agencies with citizen-generated contents in a contest of credibility and trustworthiness. In certain cases, it has been reported a lack of specific competence, knowledge, and expertise, as well as a lack of sufficient policies and guidelines in the use of Social Networks. Those challenges need to be framed by considering the classic difficulties to provide timely and accurate information, to deal with fake news...
Sustainability
Although knowledge management relying on data from social networks has become an integral part of... more Although knowledge management relying on data from social networks has become an integral part of common practices, there needs to be a well-defined body of knowledge that explicitly addresses the process and the value generated. Sustainable knowledge management practices, which promote responsible and ethical knowledge sharing between different stakeholders, can also be facilitated through social media. This can foster a culture of continuous learning and innovation while considering the social implications of knowledge sharing. The main goal of this study is to critically and holistically discuss the impact of social media analysis in the knowledge management process holistically and maximize its value in a given context. More concretely, we conducted a systematic literature review (2012–2022) based on the PRISMA guidelines. We first approached the ideal phases of the knowledge management process and then discussed key issues and challenges from an application perspective. Overall...
Encyclopedia
This review proposes a concise literature review aimed at identifying the current body of knowled... more This review proposes a concise literature review aimed at identifying the current body of knowledge on the adoption of Social Networks in crisis management. The major input is a structured research question based on the initial reading about the topic. Before the recent pandemic, most literature focused on local crises, with relatively few exceptions. Additionally, self-organising systems are spontaneously established between people who are affected by a crisis. The fundamental assumption underlying this study is the huge potential of Social Networks in the field of crisis management. That is supported, directly or indirectly, by a number of previous studies, which emphasise how effective adoption leads to better decision-making for crisis managers and local communities. Among the identified challenges is the need to integrate official communication by emergency agencies with citizen-generated content in a contest for credibility and trustworthiness. In certain cases, it has been re...
Sustainability
Smart Technology is a quickly and constantly evolving concept; it has different applications that... more Smart Technology is a quickly and constantly evolving concept; it has different applications that cover a wide range of areas, such as healthcare, education, business, agriculture, and manufacturing. An effective application of these technologies increases productivity and performance within complex systems. On one side, trends show a lack of appeal for rural environments as people prefer to move to cities, looking for better opportunities and lifestyles. On the other side, recent studies and reports show that the attractiveness of rural areas as places with opportunities is increasing. Sustainable solutions are needed to enhance development in the rural context, and technological innovation is expected to lead and support the stability for people and organizations in rural regions. While Smart City is progressively becoming a reality and a successful model for integrating Smart Technology into different aspects of everyday life, its effective application in a rural context accordin...
Sustainability
Socio-economic inequality may be addressed at a different scale. Its impact at a micro and macro ... more Socio-economic inequality may be addressed at a different scale. Its impact at a micro and macro level on very many social issues is well-known, as well as its effects on global development being extensively reported in literature, where inequality is often seen as a clear barrier on the path to a sustainable development. That becomes extremely critical in light of major global challenges, such as climate change. The quantification of inequality in the different contexts, its interpretation, as well as its impact on society at a different level are object of major interest and discussion within the scientific community. Inspired by the famous African proverb “if you want to go fast go alone; If you want to go far go together”, we propose an indicator—Walking Together Indicator (WTI), based on a simple model to foster transparency and broad communication. It relies on the statistical standard deviation to facilitate the measurement of inequality looking at single metrics (e.g., GDP) ...
Expert Systems with Applications
Abstract Design Thinking is a human-centered approach extensively used across different domains t... more Abstract Design Thinking is a human-centered approach extensively used across different domains that aims at problem solving, value creation for stakeholders and innovation by fostering creativity. The most characterising and critical step along the Design Thinking process is the empathy phase, in which stakeholder analysis is performed by looking at a given scenario from the perspective of different stakeholders. Such a methodology enables a systematic information gathering and organization that results in a deep understanding of actual problems, needs and expectations from the target stakeholders. The uniqueness of problems and the need for situation-specific data makes knowledge re-use not always practical, even within the most consolidated and experienced environments. In this paper we propose an ontological support to empathy mapping that aims to (i) establish an interoperable fine-grained data layer among the different data collected throughout the empathy mapping process, (ii) enable multi-scenario analysis underpinned by formal specifications and (iii) further empower the process through semantic enrichment and integration of insight from multiple sources and contexts. We believe this is the first step to design and properly integrate effective computational and AI-based functionalities along the creative design thinking process, as well as to enable in practice richer and more sophisticated approaches (e.g. through social networks).
Decision making as a result of system dynamics analysis requires, in practice, a straightforward ... more Decision making as a result of system dynamics analysis requires, in practice, a straightforward and systematic modelling capability as well as a high-level of customisation and flexibility to adapt to situations and environments that may vary very much from each other. While in general terms a completely generic approach could be not as effective as ad-hoc solutions, the proper application of modern technology may facilitate agile strategies as a result of a smart combination of qualitative and quantitative aspects. In order to address such a complexity, we propose a knowledge-based approach that integrates the systematic computation of heterogeneous criteria with open semantics. The holistic understanding of the framework is described by a reference architecture and the proof-of-concept prototype developed can support high-level system analysis, as well as it suitable within a number of applications contexts - i.e. as a research/educational tool, communication framework, gamificat...
Quality & Quantity
Technology has recently gained relevance within collaborative learning environments to provide ro... more Technology has recently gained relevance within collaborative learning environments to provide robustness, agility and flexibility. Several recent studies have investigated the role of technology, as well as researchers have defined different metrics to assess learning outcomes and experience along the collaborative knowledge development process. More recently, technology has played a key role to face the new challenges related to COVID-19, which forced to move on remote or hybrid learning. This research focuses on the quality of learning experience in terms of academic performance and perceived satisfaction. From a methodological point of view, a conceptual framework has been proposed and a quantitative study has been conducted among undergraduate and postgraduate students that are undertaking programs related to System Design in Saudi Arabia universities. 152 responses have been collected through an online survey and analysed using SPSS and SmartPLS. Results show a positive impact...
A mental model is simplified representation of an individual's thought process about how somethin... more A mental model is simplified representation of an individual's thought process about how something works. Mental models can play an important role in understanding thinking patterns of an individual or a group. Practitioners from fields as diverse as behavioural science, psychology, economics, education and sustainability could gain much insight from tools that enable them to understand mental models expressed by a group within a given problem. There are many online and offline forums/tools available for involving users in discussions but none of them are using/considering mental models and most of them do not extract insights from ongoing discussions, do not learn from them and do not enrich the discussions by such findings. The goal of this research is to develop a moderated tool that captures group's mental models from an online web forum and translates these into semi-quantitative computer models in order to make discussions more efficient and meaningful. This tool is capable of capturing opinions of users, in form of concepts, topics, and sentiments attached to those opinions, including the relationships between them by using various natural language processing techniques. These elements are used as building blocks to construct dynamic semiquantitative models such as word clouds, cognitive maps, causal loop diagrams, etc. The framework allows the moderator (researcher, government agency, or non-profit organization) to extract and analyse cognitive maps that provide relevant and actionable insights about a group's mental model. These can be then fed back into the discussion, informing participants and helping to produce new and creative solutions to complex and controversial societal issues. This tool is particularly useful in Participatory Modelling providing a unified platform for engaging researchers, stakeholders and decision-makers in participatory process for better decision-making, with no restrictions neither for size of the group nor for the timing and location of their meetings.
HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci-entific ... more HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci-entific research documents, whether they are pub-lished or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et a ̀ la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.
Sustainability, 2019
Is the World becoming a better or a worse place to live? In this paper, we propose a tool that ca... more Is the World becoming a better or a worse place to live? In this paper, we propose a tool that can help to answer the question by combining a number of global indicators belonging to multiple categories. The proliferation of statistical data about various aspects of the World performance may suggest that it should be “easy” to evaluate the overall success of human enterprise on this planet. Moreover, it also points out the intrinsic importance in the selection of indicators. However, people have different values, biases, and preferences about the importance of various indicators, making it almost impossible to find an objective answer to this question. To address the variety and the heterogeneity of available indicators and world views, we present the analysis of global World performance as a multi-criteria decision problem, making sure that the assessment method remains as transparent as possible. By dynamically selecting a set of indicators of interest, defining the weights that w...
Quality & Quantity, 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic has suddenly and deeply changed our lives in a way comparable with the most... more The COVID-19 pandemic has suddenly and deeply changed our lives in a way comparable with the most traumatic events in history, such as a World war. With millions of people infected around the World and already thousands of deaths, there is still a great uncertainty on the actual evolution of the crisis, as well as on the possible post-crisis scenarios, which depend on a number of key variables and factors (e.g. a treatment, a vaccine or some kind of immunity). Despite the optimism enforced by the positive results recently achieved to produce a vaccine, uncertainty is probably still somehow the predominant feeling. From a more philosophical perspective, the COVID-19 drama is also a kind of stress-test for our global system and, probably, an opportunity to reconsider some aspects underpinning it, as well as its sustainability. In this article we focus on the pre-crisis situation by combining a number of selected global indicators that are likely to represent measures of different aspects of life. How was the World actually performing? We have defined 6 macro-categories and inferred their relevance from different sources. Results show that economicoriented priorities correspond to positive performances, while all other distributions point to a negative performance. Additionally, balanced and economy-focused distributions of weights propose an optimistic interpretation of performance regardless of the absolute score.
The Centre on Persuasive Systems for Wise Adaptive Living (PERSWADE) aims at developing and apply... more The Centre on Persuasive Systems for Wise Adaptive Living (PERSWADE) aims at developing and applying persuasive technologies and system science for social innovation that can help humanity to move toward sustainable, wise, adaptive living. The PERSWADE collaborative knowledge base needs to be designed with the intent to bring together, enrich and logically relate heterogeneous content, such as datasets, scientific literature and any kind of multimedia and social content, to support a participatory approach and help to translate science into action. PERSWADE-CORE, the foundation ontology described in this paper, plays a critical role in this by providing the backbone semantic infrastructure to enable collaboration through efficient data and knowledge integration, sharing and reuse. It also serves the purpose of clarifying and explaining the goals, functions and operations of the Centre. Because of its purpose, PERSWADE-CORE has been designed to be easy-to-use and easy-to-adapt by all...
Proceedings of the International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Ontology Development, 2011
Cognitive Networks working on large scale are object of an increasing interest by both the scient... more Cognitive Networks working on large scale are object of an increasing interest by both the scientific and the commercial point of view in the context of several environments and domains. The natural convergence point for these heterogeneous disciplines is the need of a strong advanced technologic support that enables the generation of distributed observations on large scale as well as the intelligent process of obtained information. An approach based on the Semantic Sensor Web could be the key issue for enabling semantic ecosystems among heterogeneous Cognitive Networks.
Mobile Collaborative Learning (MCL) has recently caught the attention of the research community b... more Mobile Collaborative Learning (MCL) has recently caught the attention of the research community because of its potential impact on improving learners' effectiveness and performance. Nevertheless, to be really effective, the potential of MCL-based solutions is still largely unexplored, as well as further research is needed to develop improved learning environments. This literature review aims to discuss the possible impact of MCL, looking at a number of typical parameters, such as user satisfaction, perceived ease-of-use, perceived usefulness, impact on the affective and cognitive domain, and perceived enjoyment. The literature review has pointed out that, by adopting the MCL approach, learners improve their motivation, as well as their cognitive skills. It points out a positive impact also at an affective level. Additionally, we found that MCL currently targets education at any level, including university and school level. Last but not least, it seems to positively affect also learning outcomes, namely learners' performance. On the negative side, the study found a lack of research attention on possible difficulties, constraints, and barriers. Finally, learning environments are expected to become more and more sophisticated in the next future (e.g. by using augmented reality), and mobile technology is expected to play an even more relevant role.
Computational Science – ICCS 2020, 2020
This paper discusses the uncertainty in the automation of knowledge building from heterogeneous r... more This paper discusses the uncertainty in the automation of knowledge building from heterogeneous raw datasets. Ontologies play a critical role in such a process by providing a well consolidated support to link and semantically integrate datasets via interoperability, as well as semantic enrichment and annotations. By adopting Semantic Web technology, the resulting ecosystem is fully machine consumable. However, while the manual alignment of concepts from different vocabularies is reasonable at a small scale, fully automatic mechanisms are required once the target system scales up, leading to a significant uncertainty.
Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 2021
EDULEARN proceedings, Jul 1, 2021
System analysis and design is a critical aspect of Information Systems, as the different courses ... more System analysis and design is a critical aspect of Information Systems, as the different courses in the field clearly demonstrate. Unified Modelling Language (UML), which comprises several structural and behavioural diagrams to formally specify the target system design, has been extensively adopted for a long time, and it is still very popular. Each diagram has a different purpose as it targets a different aspect or perspective of a given system, as well as diagrams may be used at different stages of the design process, which is not necessarily linear or prescriptive. However, the different diagrams are related and, in most cases, may be considered to be part of a seamless process. At an educational level, it is extremely important to approach system engineering in a systematic way in order to assure an effective process, which is correct and consistent. As students are not normally experienced professionals, it is important to create a learning environment that enhances the quality of experience and related learning outcomes. In this context, the alignment of concepts among the different diagrams may play a critical role as it can minimise inconsistencies in the design. In this paper, we discuss the alignment of concepts looking at a subset of UML (Use Case and Sequence diagrams) within the educational context. We analyse a simple scenario with an emphasis on interactions to highlight the relevance of the alignment of concepts from heterogeneous diagrams. Additionally, we provide future work and recommendations to explicit the seamless generation of information and its tracing from Use Case to Sequence diagrams.
This paper proposes a concise literature review aimed at identifying the current body of knowledg... more This paper proposes a concise literature review aimed at identifying the current body of knowledge on the adoption of Social Networks in Crisis Management. The major input is a structured research question based on the initial reading around the topic. Before the recent pan-demic, most literature has focused on local crises, with a relatively low number of exceptions. Additionally, self-organizing system are spontaneous established between people who are af-fected by a crisis. Among the identified challenges, there is the need to integrate official commu-nication by emergency agencies with citizen-generated contents in a contest of credibility and trustworthiness. In certain cases, it has been reported a lack of specific competence, knowledge, and expertise, as well as a lack of sufficient policies and guidelines in the use of Social Networks. Those challenges need to be framed by considering the classic difficulties to provide timely and accurate information, to deal with fake news...
Sustainability
Although knowledge management relying on data from social networks has become an integral part of... more Although knowledge management relying on data from social networks has become an integral part of common practices, there needs to be a well-defined body of knowledge that explicitly addresses the process and the value generated. Sustainable knowledge management practices, which promote responsible and ethical knowledge sharing between different stakeholders, can also be facilitated through social media. This can foster a culture of continuous learning and innovation while considering the social implications of knowledge sharing. The main goal of this study is to critically and holistically discuss the impact of social media analysis in the knowledge management process holistically and maximize its value in a given context. More concretely, we conducted a systematic literature review (2012–2022) based on the PRISMA guidelines. We first approached the ideal phases of the knowledge management process and then discussed key issues and challenges from an application perspective. Overall...
Encyclopedia
This review proposes a concise literature review aimed at identifying the current body of knowled... more This review proposes a concise literature review aimed at identifying the current body of knowledge on the adoption of Social Networks in crisis management. The major input is a structured research question based on the initial reading about the topic. Before the recent pandemic, most literature focused on local crises, with relatively few exceptions. Additionally, self-organising systems are spontaneously established between people who are affected by a crisis. The fundamental assumption underlying this study is the huge potential of Social Networks in the field of crisis management. That is supported, directly or indirectly, by a number of previous studies, which emphasise how effective adoption leads to better decision-making for crisis managers and local communities. Among the identified challenges is the need to integrate official communication by emergency agencies with citizen-generated content in a contest for credibility and trustworthiness. In certain cases, it has been re...
Sustainability
Smart Technology is a quickly and constantly evolving concept; it has different applications that... more Smart Technology is a quickly and constantly evolving concept; it has different applications that cover a wide range of areas, such as healthcare, education, business, agriculture, and manufacturing. An effective application of these technologies increases productivity and performance within complex systems. On one side, trends show a lack of appeal for rural environments as people prefer to move to cities, looking for better opportunities and lifestyles. On the other side, recent studies and reports show that the attractiveness of rural areas as places with opportunities is increasing. Sustainable solutions are needed to enhance development in the rural context, and technological innovation is expected to lead and support the stability for people and organizations in rural regions. While Smart City is progressively becoming a reality and a successful model for integrating Smart Technology into different aspects of everyday life, its effective application in a rural context accordin...
Sustainability
Socio-economic inequality may be addressed at a different scale. Its impact at a micro and macro ... more Socio-economic inequality may be addressed at a different scale. Its impact at a micro and macro level on very many social issues is well-known, as well as its effects on global development being extensively reported in literature, where inequality is often seen as a clear barrier on the path to a sustainable development. That becomes extremely critical in light of major global challenges, such as climate change. The quantification of inequality in the different contexts, its interpretation, as well as its impact on society at a different level are object of major interest and discussion within the scientific community. Inspired by the famous African proverb “if you want to go fast go alone; If you want to go far go together”, we propose an indicator—Walking Together Indicator (WTI), based on a simple model to foster transparency and broad communication. It relies on the statistical standard deviation to facilitate the measurement of inequality looking at single metrics (e.g., GDP) ...
Expert Systems with Applications
Abstract Design Thinking is a human-centered approach extensively used across different domains t... more Abstract Design Thinking is a human-centered approach extensively used across different domains that aims at problem solving, value creation for stakeholders and innovation by fostering creativity. The most characterising and critical step along the Design Thinking process is the empathy phase, in which stakeholder analysis is performed by looking at a given scenario from the perspective of different stakeholders. Such a methodology enables a systematic information gathering and organization that results in a deep understanding of actual problems, needs and expectations from the target stakeholders. The uniqueness of problems and the need for situation-specific data makes knowledge re-use not always practical, even within the most consolidated and experienced environments. In this paper we propose an ontological support to empathy mapping that aims to (i) establish an interoperable fine-grained data layer among the different data collected throughout the empathy mapping process, (ii) enable multi-scenario analysis underpinned by formal specifications and (iii) further empower the process through semantic enrichment and integration of insight from multiple sources and contexts. We believe this is the first step to design and properly integrate effective computational and AI-based functionalities along the creative design thinking process, as well as to enable in practice richer and more sophisticated approaches (e.g. through social networks).
Decision making as a result of system dynamics analysis requires, in practice, a straightforward ... more Decision making as a result of system dynamics analysis requires, in practice, a straightforward and systematic modelling capability as well as a high-level of customisation and flexibility to adapt to situations and environments that may vary very much from each other. While in general terms a completely generic approach could be not as effective as ad-hoc solutions, the proper application of modern technology may facilitate agile strategies as a result of a smart combination of qualitative and quantitative aspects. In order to address such a complexity, we propose a knowledge-based approach that integrates the systematic computation of heterogeneous criteria with open semantics. The holistic understanding of the framework is described by a reference architecture and the proof-of-concept prototype developed can support high-level system analysis, as well as it suitable within a number of applications contexts - i.e. as a research/educational tool, communication framework, gamificat...
Quality & Quantity
Technology has recently gained relevance within collaborative learning environments to provide ro... more Technology has recently gained relevance within collaborative learning environments to provide robustness, agility and flexibility. Several recent studies have investigated the role of technology, as well as researchers have defined different metrics to assess learning outcomes and experience along the collaborative knowledge development process. More recently, technology has played a key role to face the new challenges related to COVID-19, which forced to move on remote or hybrid learning. This research focuses on the quality of learning experience in terms of academic performance and perceived satisfaction. From a methodological point of view, a conceptual framework has been proposed and a quantitative study has been conducted among undergraduate and postgraduate students that are undertaking programs related to System Design in Saudi Arabia universities. 152 responses have been collected through an online survey and analysed using SPSS and SmartPLS. Results show a positive impact...
A mental model is simplified representation of an individual's thought process about how somethin... more A mental model is simplified representation of an individual's thought process about how something works. Mental models can play an important role in understanding thinking patterns of an individual or a group. Practitioners from fields as diverse as behavioural science, psychology, economics, education and sustainability could gain much insight from tools that enable them to understand mental models expressed by a group within a given problem. There are many online and offline forums/tools available for involving users in discussions but none of them are using/considering mental models and most of them do not extract insights from ongoing discussions, do not learn from them and do not enrich the discussions by such findings. The goal of this research is to develop a moderated tool that captures group's mental models from an online web forum and translates these into semi-quantitative computer models in order to make discussions more efficient and meaningful. This tool is capable of capturing opinions of users, in form of concepts, topics, and sentiments attached to those opinions, including the relationships between them by using various natural language processing techniques. These elements are used as building blocks to construct dynamic semiquantitative models such as word clouds, cognitive maps, causal loop diagrams, etc. The framework allows the moderator (researcher, government agency, or non-profit organization) to extract and analyse cognitive maps that provide relevant and actionable insights about a group's mental model. These can be then fed back into the discussion, informing participants and helping to produce new and creative solutions to complex and controversial societal issues. This tool is particularly useful in Participatory Modelling providing a unified platform for engaging researchers, stakeholders and decision-makers in participatory process for better decision-making, with no restrictions neither for size of the group nor for the timing and location of their meetings.
HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci-entific ... more HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci-entific research documents, whether they are pub-lished or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et a ̀ la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.
Sustainability, 2019
Is the World becoming a better or a worse place to live? In this paper, we propose a tool that ca... more Is the World becoming a better or a worse place to live? In this paper, we propose a tool that can help to answer the question by combining a number of global indicators belonging to multiple categories. The proliferation of statistical data about various aspects of the World performance may suggest that it should be “easy” to evaluate the overall success of human enterprise on this planet. Moreover, it also points out the intrinsic importance in the selection of indicators. However, people have different values, biases, and preferences about the importance of various indicators, making it almost impossible to find an objective answer to this question. To address the variety and the heterogeneity of available indicators and world views, we present the analysis of global World performance as a multi-criteria decision problem, making sure that the assessment method remains as transparent as possible. By dynamically selecting a set of indicators of interest, defining the weights that w...
Quality & Quantity, 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic has suddenly and deeply changed our lives in a way comparable with the most... more The COVID-19 pandemic has suddenly and deeply changed our lives in a way comparable with the most traumatic events in history, such as a World war. With millions of people infected around the World and already thousands of deaths, there is still a great uncertainty on the actual evolution of the crisis, as well as on the possible post-crisis scenarios, which depend on a number of key variables and factors (e.g. a treatment, a vaccine or some kind of immunity). Despite the optimism enforced by the positive results recently achieved to produce a vaccine, uncertainty is probably still somehow the predominant feeling. From a more philosophical perspective, the COVID-19 drama is also a kind of stress-test for our global system and, probably, an opportunity to reconsider some aspects underpinning it, as well as its sustainability. In this article we focus on the pre-crisis situation by combining a number of selected global indicators that are likely to represent measures of different aspects of life. How was the World actually performing? We have defined 6 macro-categories and inferred their relevance from different sources. Results show that economicoriented priorities correspond to positive performances, while all other distributions point to a negative performance. Additionally, balanced and economy-focused distributions of weights propose an optimistic interpretation of performance regardless of the absolute score.
The Centre on Persuasive Systems for Wise Adaptive Living (PERSWADE) aims at developing and apply... more The Centre on Persuasive Systems for Wise Adaptive Living (PERSWADE) aims at developing and applying persuasive technologies and system science for social innovation that can help humanity to move toward sustainable, wise, adaptive living. The PERSWADE collaborative knowledge base needs to be designed with the intent to bring together, enrich and logically relate heterogeneous content, such as datasets, scientific literature and any kind of multimedia and social content, to support a participatory approach and help to translate science into action. PERSWADE-CORE, the foundation ontology described in this paper, plays a critical role in this by providing the backbone semantic infrastructure to enable collaboration through efficient data and knowledge integration, sharing and reuse. It also serves the purpose of clarifying and explaining the goals, functions and operations of the Centre. Because of its purpose, PERSWADE-CORE has been designed to be easy-to-use and easy-to-adapt by all...
Proceedings of the International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Ontology Development, 2011
Cognitive Networks working on large scale are object of an increasing interest by both the scient... more Cognitive Networks working on large scale are object of an increasing interest by both the scientific and the commercial point of view in the context of several environments and domains. The natural convergence point for these heterogeneous disciplines is the need of a strong advanced technologic support that enables the generation of distributed observations on large scale as well as the intelligent process of obtained information. An approach based on the Semantic Sensor Web could be the key issue for enabling semantic ecosystems among heterogeneous Cognitive Networks.
Mobile Collaborative Learning (MCL) has recently caught the attention of the research community b... more Mobile Collaborative Learning (MCL) has recently caught the attention of the research community because of its potential impact on improving learners' effectiveness and performance. Nevertheless, to be really effective, the potential of MCL-based solutions is still largely unexplored, as well as further research is needed to develop improved learning environments. This literature review aims to discuss the possible impact of MCL, looking at a number of typical parameters, such as user satisfaction, perceived ease-of-use, perceived usefulness, impact on the affective and cognitive domain, and perceived enjoyment. The literature review has pointed out that, by adopting the MCL approach, learners improve their motivation, as well as their cognitive skills. It points out a positive impact also at an affective level. Additionally, we found that MCL currently targets education at any level, including university and school level. Last but not least, it seems to positively affect also learning outcomes, namely learners' performance. On the negative side, the study found a lack of research attention on possible difficulties, constraints, and barriers. Finally, learning environments are expected to become more and more sophisticated in the next future (e.g. by using augmented reality), and mobile technology is expected to play an even more relevant role.
Computational Science – ICCS 2020, 2020
This paper discusses the uncertainty in the automation of knowledge building from heterogeneous r... more This paper discusses the uncertainty in the automation of knowledge building from heterogeneous raw datasets. Ontologies play a critical role in such a process by providing a well consolidated support to link and semantically integrate datasets via interoperability, as well as semantic enrichment and annotations. By adopting Semantic Web technology, the resulting ecosystem is fully machine consumable. However, while the manual alignment of concepts from different vocabularies is reasonable at a small scale, fully automatic mechanisms are required once the target system scales up, leading to a significant uncertainty.
Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 2021