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The world’s existing buildings are aged, in a state of deterioration and in need of interventions. When selecting the type of possible intervention to be applied, the choice falls between two alternatives: simple unsustainable ordinary maintenance versus ecological retrofitting i.e., an increase in the quality of the indoor environment and building energy saving using local bio-natural materials and products. The present research seeks to respond to the requests of recent comprehensive reviews which ask for the retrofitting of the world’s huge existing building stocks and portfolios by proposing an approach and testing it in a specific case study (at the unit, building and urban block level) which can then be carried out and repeated in the future on a larger urban scale. The real-world experimentation in the provided case study achieved the important outcome and goal of a Green Building strategy and post-carbon city framework i.e., the significant enhancement of the thermal performance of the buildings as a result of a few targeted key external works and the consequent saving of energy in those already existing (but not preserved and not included in the state national register or record of monuments) Liberty-style constructions. All the above show that these important existing buildings can be ecologically retrofitted at an affordable cost, although initially slightly more expensive than the cost of ordinary unsustainable maintenance. However, this difference is offset by the favorable pay-back period, which is fast, acceptable and of short duration. The tried and tested approach, the positive proposed case study and the experimental database-GIS joint platform (the details of which can be found in an additional supplementary research which is currently being carried out) are the bases on which a future decision support system will be proposed. This support system can be carried out as a tailor- made solution for the ecological retrofitting of the enormous existing building stocks and portfolios which must be considered on a larger scale i.e., at ward, quartier, city, regional and country level.

Geographically Weighted Regression is a statistical technique for real estate market analysis, particularly adequate in order to identify homogeneous areas and to define the marginal contribution that the geographical location gives to the market value of the properties. In this paper a GWR has been applied, in order to verify the robustness of the real estate sample, this for the subsequent individuation of progressive real estate sub-samples in able to detect and to identify possible potential market premium in real estate exchange and rent markets for green buildings [21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28]. The model has been built on a large real estate dataset, related to the trades of residential real estate units in the city of Reggio Calabria (Calabria region, Southern Italy).

Today, world carbon energy consumption has increased dramatically. The survival of the Earth is endangered by pollution, produced by excessive oil and carbon over use. The sector that consumes this 40% of total energy is construction which needs innovative models for integrated ecological- energy - economic forecast. The research set up an integrated model for the overall assessment of a building having alternative characteristics: sustainable, vs. unsustainable or Common or Business As Usual BAS. The research takes into consideration the energy consumption for the thermal management and climate metabolism of the buildings and the consequent impacts in terms of CO2 emissions. The results obtained validate the adoption of ecological cork panels for passivation and insulation in sustainable building vs. common. The research scientifically and accurately quantifying two alternative (sustainable vs. BAS) prototype buildings, comparatively testing three Energy Performance Simulation Programs (Energy Plus; Termus; Blumatica Energy) ascertaining the coherence and convergence of all their output and results.

In this paper a hedonic price function built through a semiparametric additive model is tried out for the real estate market analysis of the central area of Reggio Calabria. The semiparametric model uses Penalized Spline functions and aims to achieve an improvement in the prediction of the market prices of housing properties in the central area of Reggio Calabria. More in particular, the final objective of the research is to detect and to identify possible potential market premium in real estate exchange and rent markets for green buildings. This is the first preliminary phase for the unavoidable verification of the robustness of the real estate sample, or for the subsequent individuation of progressive real estate sub-samples.

Over the last few decades, there has been widespread awareness that global warming is linked to the introduction of CO2 into the atmosphere from the use of fossil fuels. Urban areas play a very important role in CO2 emissions. Cork, a natural and renewable material (which in itself is the result of a storage of C) can effectively contribute to improving the quality and the insulation of buildings, reducing energy waste, preserving environment, saving landscape [20, 21], the design of the post-carbon city [12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 25]. The increase in the area occupied by the cork oak forests would increase the storage of carbon in a permanent way, as the use of cork does not compromise the forest resource and does not involve the introduction into the atmosphere of CO2: indeed its use in thermal insulation of buildings reduces CO2 emissions for domestic heating and cooling. Cork oak forests take on a multi-functionality that includes economic, environmental and landscape values. Their protection requires the adoption of a territorial governance that takes into account the commitment to lower down climate change.

Generally, with reference to the geographical variability of real estate values, the observed variables may have non-linear relationships with the response variable. For this reason it’s possible to combine kriging techniques with additive models to obtain the geoadditive models. In this paper a geoadditive model based on penalized spline functions has been applied, in order to obtain improvements respect to usual Kriging techniques and to provide a spatial distribution of real estate unitary values for a central area of the city of Reggio Calabria (Italy). This is the first preliminary phase for the verification of the robustness of the real estate sample, or for the subsequent individuation of progressive real estate sub-samples, for to detect and to identify possible potential market premium in real estate exchange and rent markets for green buildings.

The Encyclical Letter (Laudato si’, 2) teaches that Earth cries out because of the harm Humanity has inflicted on her by its irresponsible use and abuse of the Earth goods, such as soil, and it calls people to global ecological conversion in key sectors such as soil to replace consumption as the basis for urban development via new buildings and the consequential pollution of areas and landscape. This research is devoted to answer the encyclical call by conceiving, designing and testing cases of Historic Center treasuring, an alternative to new buildings, additional development and further urban sprawl. This research tries to enhance the process of urban sustainability by the mean of a new methodology for Historic Center that includes total knowledge, analysis, valuation, treasuring and valorization. Attributions: Malerba A. authored § Abstract, 2; Massimo D. E. authored § 3, 4; Musolino M. authored § 1, 5.

The Earth (Mother and Sister, according to Encyclical Letter) cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the Earth’s goods (Laudato si’, 2) and calls all people to global ecological conversion in key sectors, such as excessive energy consumption in urban areas and buildings and the consequent additional pollution. This research is devoted to answer the encyclical’s call by conceiving, designing and experimenting experiences of related to the Green City and Green Building. It deals with energy consumption in urban and construction management and CO2 emissions. Through the establishment of a specific methodology and experimentation on unprecedented city and district scales, the study compares energy consumption and CO2 reduction of different scenarios of interventions based on the main pillars of Green Conservation and Ecological Retrofitting. A Valuation Framework, enabled by Web-GIS tools, supports the present research, to integrate: unprecedentedly detailed 3D city-modelling; alternative scenarios (Sustainable vs. Business-as-Usual BAS) for whole-city energy management; cost estimates for investments in alternative urban scenarios; valuation of energy management in an alternative scenarios; overtime economic and financial analysis, comparing various scenarios. case study: a real-world design and social experimentations have been activated in Reggio Calabria (Italy) and Boston (USA). Two case studies constitute two case studies. The first one is going to be implemented in the real world as an experiment entitled in an urban neighborhood whose features include: 6,400 residents; 490,000 m2 of total area; 125 urban blocks; 840 buildings; 2,500,000 m3 of constructions; 800,000 m2 of apartments; around 6,600 apartment units.

SUMMARYComplementary filtering is a frequency based method used to design data processing algorithms exploiting signals with complementary spectra. The technique is mostly used in sensor fusion architectures, but it may also be effective in the design of state estimators. In spite of its potential in several areas of robotics, the complementary filtering paradigm is poorly used as compared to alternative time domain methods. The first part of the paper aims at reviewing the basics of complementary filtering in sensor data processing and linear systems state estimation. The second part of the paper describes how to exploit the main ideas of complementary filtering to design a depth controller for an actuator redundant autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). Unlike with alternative state space methods commonly used to address the design of control solutions for actuator redundant systems, the proposed approach allows to fully exploit the knowledge of frequency characteristics of actuators. Simulation results are reported to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed solution.