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This paper proposes the use of martial arts as a means to combat aggressiveness and, at the same time, to provide a concrete and preventive answer to the problem of violence against women.

The paper suggests the teaching of martial arts in school for both sexes, with a double positive effect: the reduction of the tendency to violence for boys and an increase in the defensive potential for girls. In both cases, looking to the long term, these synergistic effects could contribute to a reduction in violence against women.

The paper describes the Italian experience in teaching karate and judo at school. The Italian federation of judo, karate, fight and martial arts (FIJLKAM) was one of the first sports federations to have obtained the approval of a project for teaching its disciplines in schools. Thus, a lot of clubs of martial arts have been entering primary and secondary schools and they are teaching martial arts to children between 5 and 14 years old. During the school year 2008/2009 there were: 400 sports clubs implementing the project; 500 schools involved; 60.000 students participating.

In the paper two important points are proposed in order to achieve the goal: the obligatory inclusion of martial arts in school education programs by the government; and a scientific monitoring of the effects of these programs on the improvement of pupils' school performances and on the reduction of violence among boys.

In many cases some parents and school administrators still think that including martial arts in school programs may lead to incidents and instigating violence. But, the Italian experience shows that after the implementation of right projects in the schools, both parents and school administrators radically change their opinions on martial arts. Most cases have shown that after the first year just the parents who were initially dubious about the project ask the school for the reactivation of similar projects for the following years.

The paper identified a long‐term strategy to combat the problem of violence against women.

In recent years, centrality measures have been extensively used to analyze real-world complex networks. Water distribution networks (WDNs), as a good example of complex networks, exhibit properties not shared by other networks. This raises concerns about the effectiveness of applying the classical centrality measures to these networks. The purpose of this paper is to generate a new centrality measure in order to stick more closely to WDNs features.

This work refines the traditional betweenness centrality by adding a hydraulic-based weighting factor in order to improve its fit with the WDNs features. Rather than an exclusive focus on the network topology, as does the betweenness centrality, the new centrality measure reflects the importance of each node by taking into account its topological location, its demand value and the demand distribution of other nodes in the network.

Comparative analysis proves that the new centrality measure yields information that cannot be captured by closeness, betweenness and eigenvector centrality and is more accurate at ranking the importance of the nodes in WDNs.

The following practical implications emerge from the centrality analysis proposed in this work. First, the maintenance strategy driven by the new centrality analysis enables practitioners to prioritize the components in the network based on the priority ranking attributed to each node. This allows for least cost decisions to be made for implementing the preventive maintenance strategies. Second, the output of the centrality analysis proposed herein assists water utilities in identifying the effects of components failure on the network performance, which in turn can support the design and deployment of an effective risk management strategy.

The new centrality measure, proposed herein, is distinct from the conventional centrality measures. In contrast to the classical centrality metrics in which the importance of components is assessed based on a pure topological viewpoint, the proposed centrality measure integrates both topological and hydraulic attributes of WDNs and therefore is more accurate at ranking the importance of the nodes.

As a response to the growing operational and disruptive threats to water distribution networks (WDNs), researchers have developed a vast array of methods for the reliability analysis of WDNs. In order to follow this growing number of methods, this paper reviews and documents in one place the historical developments in the reliability analysis of WDN.

A systematic literature review (SLR) is carried out to summarize the state-of-the-art research on reliability analysis of WDNs. In conducting this systemic literature review, the authors adopted an iterative approach to define appropriate keywords, analyze and synthesize data and finalizing the classification results.

First, the hydraulic approach to reliability analysis is currently pervasive, and relatively little academic research has addressed the topological reliability analysis of WDNs. Second, in order to provide a comprehensive picture of the network reliability, a different approach that integrates topological and hydraulic attributes seems a more effective method. Third, the conventional reliability analysis methods are only effective for demonstrating a snapshot of these networks at a given point in time. The availability of methods that enable researchers to evaluate the reliability in response to changes in its variables is still a major challenge.

The present paper facilitates future research in the reliability analysis of WDNs by providing a source of references for researchers and water utilities. Further, this article makes a contribution to the literature by offering a roadmap for future reliability analysis of WDNs by reviewing the evolution of the current reliability analysis methods throughout history.