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Ship route prediction (SRP) is a quite complicated task, which enables the determination of the next position of a ship after a given period of time, given its current position. This paper aims to describe a study, which compares five families of multiclass classification algorithms to perform SRP.

Tested algorithm families include: Naive Bayes (NB), nearest neighbors, decision trees, linear algorithms and extension from binary. A common structure for all the algorithm families was implemented and adapted to the specific case, according to the test to be done. The tests were done on one month of real data extracted from automatic identification system messages, collected around the island of Malta.

Experiments show that K-nearest neighbors and decision trees algorithms outperform all the other algorithms. Experiments also demonstrate that linear algorithms and NB have a very poor performance.

This study is limited to the area surrounding Malta. Thus, findings cannot be generalized to every context. However, the methodology presented is general and can help other researchers in this area to choose appropriate methods for their problems.

The results of this study can be exploited by applications for maritime surveillance to build decision support systems to monitor and predict ship routes in a given area. For example, to protect the marine environment, the use of SRP techniques could be used to protect areas at risk such as marine protected areas, from illegal fishing.

The paper proposes a solid methodology to perform tests on SRP, based on a series of important machine learning algorithms for the prediction.

This paper aims to describe Tourpedia, a website about tourism, built on open data provided by official government agencies. Tourpedia provides data under a public license.

Tourpedia is built upon a modular architecture, which allows a developer to add a new source of data easily. This is achieved through a simple mapping language, namely, Tourpedia mapping language, which maps the original open data set model to the Tourpedia data model.

Tourpedia contains more than 70.000 accommodations, downloaded from open data provided by Italian, French and Spanish regions.

Tourpedia presents some limitations. First, extracted data are not homogeneous and often they are incomplete or wrong. Second, Tourpedia contains only accommodations. Finally, at the moment Tourpedia covers only some Italian, French and Spanish regions.

The most important implication of Tourpedia concerns the construction of a single access point for all Italian, French and Spanish open data about accommodations. In addition, a simple mechanism for the integration of new sources of open data is defined.

The current version of Tourpedia opens also the road to three new possible social scenarios. First, Tourpedia could be transformed into an open source of updated information about tourism. Second, Tourpedia could be empowered to support tours, which include some tourist attractions and/or events and suggest the nearest accommodations. Finally, Tourpedia may help tourists to discover unknown places.

Tourpedia constitutes an access point for data sets providers, application developers and tourists because it provides a unique website.

本论文介绍了Tourpedia, 一种以政府提供的开放数据为基础建立的旅游网站。Tourpedia通过公共执照来提供数据。

Tourpedia采用模块型结构建设而成, 方便开放商增加新数据源。这种设计通过简单映射语言, 即Tourpedia Mapping Language（TML）, 使得原开放数据模型映射到Tourpedia Data Model（TDM）。

Tourpedia包含70,000多家住宿服务, 可从意大利、法国、和西班牙国家区域提供的开放数据中下载。

Tourpedia有一些限制。首先, 其数据并非均质而且很多情况下不完整或者错误。第二, Tourpedia只包含住宿业数据。最后, 目前Tourpedia只包含一些意大利、法国、和西班牙国家区域的数据。

Tourpedia最重要的实践启示就是其通过单一信息渠道以涵盖所有意大利、法国、和西班牙国家区域关于住宿业的开放数据。此外, 新源开放数据的整合机制简单。

当前Tourpedia版本展开了三种社会场景的可能。首先, Tourpedia可以被改造成更新版的旅游信息开放数据源。第二, Tourpedia可以被用来支撑旅游活动, 包括提供一些游客景点和/或活动和就近住宿信息等。最后, Tourpedia可以帮助游客探索未知旅游目的地。

Tourpedia是一个独特的网站, 作为数据源, 为数据提供者、应用程序开发者、和游客提供便利。

The purpose of this paper is to analyze if the composition and activity of the appointment and remuneration committee have a significant effect in the remunerations of the members of the board of directors.

To achieve the paper's objective the authors proposed four hypotheses in order to analyze the repercussions of independent, institutional and executive directors in the Appointment and Retribution Committee (ARC) and its activity in the directors’ remunerations.

The results put into evidence that the composition (independent, institutional and executive members) of the ARC is not associated with the variation of the directors remuneration mean, while the activity of the ARC influences positively this remuneration mean, contrary to what was expected.

The ARC in Spain is not effective in fixating the directors’ remunerations.

El objetivo de este artículo es analizar si la configuración y actividad de las comisiones de nombramientos y remuneraciones (CNR) tienen un efecto significativo en las remuneraciones de los miembros del consejo de administración.

Para alcanzar el objetivo del artículo hemos planteado cuatro hipótesis con la finalidad de analizar la repercusión de los consejeros independientes, dominicales y ejecutivos de las CNR y la actividad de las mismas en las remuneraciones de los consejeros.

Los resultados ponen de manifiesto que la composición (miembros independientes, dominicales y ejecutivos) de las CNR no se asocian con la variación de las remuneraciones medias de los consejeros, mientras que la actividad de las CNR influye de manera positiva, contrario a lo pronosticado, en las variaciones de las retribuciones medias de los consejeros.

Las CNR en España no son efectivas en la fijación de las retribuciones de los consejeros.

The aim of this paper is to develop a systematic literature review (SLR) aiming to identify reverse logistics (RL) concepts and practices applied to the end-of-life (EOL) and end-of-use (EOU) of pharmaceuticals and to identify and synthesize, through bibliometric indicators, research opportunities on RL, considering the analysis of publications in the periodical Supply Chain Management: An International Journal (SCMij).

The SLR followed two steps, namely, search for articles on the subject and content analysis of selected material and bibliometric analysis of publications using VOSviewer®.

The SLR allowed the compilation of evidences regarding pharmaceutical RL in the groups: environmental risk, the RL evolution and regulatory and stakeholder’s educational perspective. Despite the timid specific literature on pharmaceutical RL, it was also possible to point out research gaps and opportunities. Pharmaceutical RL seems to be influenced by studies from traditional RL including mathematical modeling, managerial strategies and technologies but prescind of a systemic solution. Besides reducing environmental impact, the motivation to implement pharmaceutical RL resides in its potential for revenue. Considering integrated logistics as a trend and an emerging issue, RL for the pharmaceutical industry needs to be addressed more thorough and broadly.

The limited number of papers returned in this SLR of pharmaceutical RL impaired the bibliometric analysis of them, leading to the inclusion of papers on general RL.

This study provides an overview of the evolution of RL in the pharmaceutical industry, it also clarifies concepts and EOL/EOU practices, particularly directed to the pharmaceutical industry RL.

The spatial development of urban areas affects the characteristics of landscape as well as people’s aesthetic perception of it. Specifically, sprawl results in an urban morphology which is diametrically opposed to the compact city model and which assumes several kinds of patterns: for example “striped”, “ribbon” or “leapfrogged” urban development. Assessing urban morphology in spatial terms is crucial to urban policy, while landscape metrics are the key to a comprehensive understanding of different urban development patterns. The purpose of this paper to design and test an urban morphology indicator (UMI) for the Lombardy Regional Landscape Plan.

The paper describes an UMI that can be used to identify the heterogeneity of built-up patterns according to urban porosity, fragmentation and patch shape. This UMI is a result of Esri ArcGIS 10.3 “grouping analysis” which works by applying a spatial statistical metric for clustering geometries in a given geographical area.

Morphological analysis was used in regional urban development policies with a view to minimising impact on surrounding ecosystems and preserving the natural environment and landscape. It defines 28 different urban morphology patterns in the region, which are divided into systems, polarities and urbanised units.

The proposed methodology differs from those traditionally used in qualitative/descriptive landscape planning and supports the identification of morphological features with quantitative statistical and spatial data, allowing a fine-scale assessment of complex metrics.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a methodology to deal with conformance checking through the implementation of computer-interpretable-clinical guidelines (CIGs), and present an application of the methodology to real-world data and a clinical pathway for radiotherapy-related oncological treatment.

This methodology is implemented by a software able to use the hospital electronic health record data to assess the adherence of the actual executed clinical processes to a clinical pathway, monitoring at the same time management-related efficiency and performance parameters, and ideally, suggesting ways to improve them.

Three use cases are presented, in which the results of conformance checking are used to compare different branches of the executed guidelines with respect to the adherence to ideal process, temporal distribution of state-to-state transitions, and overall treatment efficacy, in order to extract data-driven evidence that could be of interest for the hospital management.

This approach has the result of applying management-oriented data mining technique on sequential data, typical of process mining, to the result of a conformity check between the preliminary knowledge defined by clinicians and the real-world data, typical of CIGs.

The paper is aimed at assessing the safety of the Giotto's Bell Tower, with special attention to its foundation system, i.e. the foundation works and soil. The tower, well known all over the world, has a squared plan, with sides of 14.45 m each, and a total height equal to 84.7 m. The structural response of the tower is assessed with reference to the gravitational load and to the expected seismic action, quantified according to the seismic hazard of the site and the foundation soil.

A simplified analysis has been performed to check the safety level of the tower to seismic actions. Special attention has been paid to quantify the horizontal actions representing the seismic loads. Such quantification, indeed, has been made both through the elastic spectrum of the tower and by performing a site response analysis on the foundation soil, represented as a one-dimensional stratification of soil layers, described on the basis of experimental investigations. After defining the loading actions, a simplified assessment of the foundation safety has been made by considering the action over foundation, the geotechnical data and the safety factor.

The findings of the paper concern the assessment of the safety of the tower's foundation system. A lot of experimental data on the foundation soil, provided by various geological investigations, have been provided and used for the assessment. Moreover, the mechanical properties of the materials used for the structure have been collected and shown in the paper.

The paper collects a lot of technical information regarding the Giotto's Bell Tower, both regarding its foundation soil and the constituting materials. On the basis of the collected information, a structural analysis has been made to assess the seismic safety of the tower, and the results of such assessment are provided and discussed.

The main aim of this paper is to examine labour productivity trends in Italy over the period 1981‐2004.

To this end, relying on recent developments in the analysis of non‐stationary dependent panels, the paper develops a new method for estimating total factor productivity (TFP) trends.

The conclusions confirm the view that the recent decline in Italian labour productivity growth is mostly due to a widespread fall in TFP growth.

The main assumption underlying the proposed TFP estimation method is that technology growth is driven by a single trend common to all units included in the panel (industries, regions or countries).

The paper provides two distinct contributions: empirically, it provides robust evidence that TFP slow‐down is the main cause of recent negative trends in labour productivity in Italy. Methodologically, the paper proposes an approach to estimating TFP that enjoys several advantages: only basic data for input and output flows are needed, the non‐stationary nature of the data is explicitly taken into account, and confidence intervals for TFP growth can be computed. This method can thus be easily applied to many routinely available datasets, to either corroborate existing growth accounting estimates or to obtain previously unavailable estimates.

This paper aims to address the issue of long-term stability of services and systems depending on service-oriented architecture that has become a popular architecture in systems development and is often implemented using Web services. However, the dependency, especially on externally provided services, can impact the reliability of a system. This is often caused by the loose coupling also implying a less stringent policy for change management and notifications. Therefore, the authors characterise the types of changes that can happen in remote services and propose the concept of resilient web services (RWSs) as an example on how to upgrade existing services to better support the long-term stability of services and systems.

Having analysed several use cases where systems broke because of external dependencies not correctly maintained, the authors derived requirements for RWSs.

By means of a prototype implementation and evaluation of this solution in a case study, the feasibility of the approach was verified. Several scenarios of changes in WSs were simulated, correctly identified and responded to.

The authors propose a set of extensions to existing standards such as Web Services Description Language to improve the long-term availability of services in SOAs. A prototype implementation was developed for service monitoring and RWSs.

An extensive knowledge of soil characteristics and an awareness of the type and amount of pollutants present are essential to evaluate the utilization potential of soil resources for various land uses. On the other hand, for management and decision‐making purpose, there is a need to develop concise indices in order to adequately express the overall quality of soil resources. The aim of this study was to introduce a flexible soil quality index system, mainly based on fertility and the presence of pollutants.

A tree‐structured approach was adopted, leading to a concise final index from various intermediate sub‐indices. More specifically, a number of physical‐chemical‐biological parameters lead to an agronomic quality index (AQI). Another group of parameters referring to polluting substances of various origins are combined to give a multifunctional quality index (MQI). AQI and MQI are then coupled into an overall general quality index. The proposed model was implemented by using a set of data concerning various specific sites throughout Italy.

The proposed methodology proved useful in providing valuable and quick information about the overall soil quality performance and its main sources, and in helping to balance the contrasting needs of obtaining concise quantitative information, on the one hand, and of minimizing the inevitable loss of information inherent in every process of synthesis, on the other hand.

This paper presents an innovative quality index structure for the environmental and multifunctional management of soil, whose main value is related to its flexibility (e.g. different number and kind of parameters, various levels of aggregation) which makes it applicable to various contexts.