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In Sardinia (Italy), the highest frequency of extreme events is recorded in the Central-East area (3-4 events per year). The presence of high and steep mountains near the sea on the central and south-eastern coast, causes an East- West precipitation gradient in autumn especially, due to hot and moist currents coming from Africa. Soil structure and utilization make this area highly vulnerable to flash flooding and landslides. The specific purpose of this work is to provide a description of the heavy rainfall phenomenon on a statistical basis. The analysis mainly focuses on i) the existence of trends in heavy rainfall and ii) the characterization of the distribution of extreme events. First, to study possible trends in extreme events a few indices have been analyzed by the linear regression test. The analysis has been carried out at annual and seasonal scales. Then, extreme values analysis has been carried out by fitting a Generalized Pareto Distribution (GPD) to the data. As far as trends are concerned, different results are obtained at the two temporal scales: significant trends are obtained at the seasonal scale which are masked at the annual scale. By combining trend analysis and GPD analysis, the vulnerability of the study area to the occurrence of heavy rainfall has been characterized. Therefore, this work might support the improvement of land use planning and the application of suitable prevention systems. Future work will consider the extension of the analysis to all Sardinia and the application of statistical methods taking into account the spatial correlation of extreme events.

Biomass gasification for energy or hydrogen production is a field in continuous evolution, due to the fact that biomass is a renewable and CO2 neutral source. The ability to produce biomass-derived vehicle fuel on a large scale will help to reduce greenhouse gas and pollution, increase the security of European energy supplies, and enhance the use of renewable energy. The Va¨rnamo Biomass Gassification Centre in Sweden is a unique plant and an important site for the development of innovative technologies for biomass transformation. At the moment, the Va¨rnamo plant is the heart of the CHRISGAS European project, that aims to convert the produced gas for further upgrading to liquid fuels as dimethyl ether (DME), methanol or Fischer-Tropsch (F-T) derived diesel. The present work is an attempt to highlight the conditions for the reforming unit and the problems related to working with streams having high contents of sulphur and alkali metals.

Optical spectrum splitting systems that divide light between independent solar cells of different band gaps have received increasing attention in recent years as an alternative to expensive multijunction cells for high-efficiency PV. Most research, however, has focused on dichroic filters and other photonic structures that are expensive to manufacture. This has the effect of transferring the cost of the system from the PV cells to the optics. As a low-cost spectrum splitting approach we designed a prismatic lens that simultaneously splits and concentrates light and can be fabricated by injection molding. We present experimental results of a two-cell demonstration system, and calculations for low-cost configurations of commercial solar cells, enabled by the removal of lattice-matching requirements.

The biogas represents one of the most widespread renewable fuel, because it's obtained from different biomasses and, therefore, produced from a variety of organic raw materials involved in various sectors: ranging from zoo-technical to agro-industrial. Moreover the biogas is considered a carbon dioxide-neutral bio-fuel. This study focused on syngas production by tri-reforming of biogas over Ni/Ceria based catalysts (nickel content: 1.76wt% - 28.57wt%) prepared by a combustion synthesis. The structure of catalysts and the effects of the operative conditions (temperature, O2/CH4, H2O/CH4) on catalysts performances were investigated. The catalysts chemical-physical characterizations reveals that strong interaction between support and well dispersed nickel exists and that some part of nickel incorporates into the CeO2 support. The characterizations and the catalytic results suggest that the nickel loading, the coexistence of different nickel phases, the properties of the CeO2 support, as well as, the operative condition play very important roles in the catalytic activity of Ni/CeO2 catalysts strongly affecting the performances.

Exploiting wind resource is a good alternative in spite of using traditional not renewable and polluting energy sources. However, besides landscape restrictions and administrative practice complexity, it is generally hard to locate a site eligible for aeolic exploitation as well as to assess its related wind resource. As a matter of fact, an expensive wind measuring campaign should be carried out for that, through at least one year long period, at the height aeolic plants typically work (60 to 80 m), or to vertically extrapolate data collected by a 10-m anemometer. The present paper is the sequel of one previously carried out, which proved the use of meteorological model wind estimations to provide aeolic efficiency performances being comparable with those based on experimental data. In particular, the WRF-NMM prognostic meteorological model has been used to calculate wind estimations, which actually are part of a meteorological archive which was developed at LaMMA laboratory starting from numerical elaborations provided by the weather forecasting service. A sample application was performed through the installation of an aeolic plant in the industrial harbour of Livorno, Italy. After the wind resource pattern has been analysed by using typical distributions and statistical indicators, a site energy efficiency assessment has been carried out by comparing three different kind of wind turbines basing on rated power: the sizes of 1300, 2000 and 3000 KW have been taken into account. In particular, the comparison has been made between NORDEX N60, ENERCON E82 and ECOTÈCNIA 100 wind turbines.

This report describes the results of the demonstration activities carried out for the Automotive Manufacturing use case both in Body Welding and Powertrain areas. For each pilot the environment is introduced, then in different subprojects specific developments carried out are presented. Each section includes a description of the most relevant achievements obtained.

iForest is an Open Access, peer-reviewed online journal published by the Italian Society of Silviculture and Forest Ecology (SISEF). The journal encompasses a broad range of research aspects concerning forest science: forest ecology, biodiversity/genetics and ecophysiology, silviculture, forest inventory and planning, forest protection and monitoring, forest harvesting, landscape ecology, forest history, wood technology. iForest is freely and universally accessible online. It has been selected for coverage in the following ISI Thomson Reuters products (Impact Factor expected in the 2012 JCR): Journal Citation Reports - Science Edition (JCR) Science Citation Index - Expanded Current Contents / Agriculture, Biology & Environmental Sciences iForest is indexed by Elsevier Products (Scopus(TM), Embase(TM), etc), in the directory of Open Access Journal (DOAJ(TM)), and is a member of the Crossref consortium(TM).

the Group on Earth observation (GEo) has the mandate to implement the Global Earth observation system of systems (GEoss). GEoss is intended to serve users in nine societal benefit areas (sbas) of Earth observation, particularly in support of decision and policy making. the success of GEO depends strongly on the contributions and support from a wide range of Science and Technology (S&T) communities. the EGiDa main goal has been to support broader implementation and sustainability of the GEOSS S&T roadmap and the mission of the GEOSSfacilitating a coherent and interoperable networking of national and international initiatives and European projects. EGiDa has prepared a sustainable process promoting coordination of activities carried out by: the GEO S&T Committee; S&T national and European initiatives; and other S&T Communities. EGiDa has delivered evaluation processes, tests and assessment indexes, expertise databases, a "GEO Label" concept, surveys, and other instruments and service functions that facilitate the link of relevant European and global s&t communities to GEoss and ensure it is built using state-of-the-art s&t. through co-ordination with the relevant tasks of the institutional Development implementation board (former tasks of the GEoss s&tCommittee), these deliverables will contribute strongly to the GEo s&t roadmap implementation. for European countries, EGiDa delivered the "EGIDA Methodology": a sustainable mechanism based on the GEo s&t approach at national and regional level, to coordinate national multi-disciplinary "system of systems". this builds on existing national initiatives and European projects, and facilitates the European s&t Community contributions to and interactions with GEoss. the EGiDa methodology can improve development and management of s&t infrastructures, supporting mobilization of the resources needed to contribute effectively to GEoss. EGiDainvolved developing countries by transferring the EGIDA S&T methodology to them and implementing five specific use cases: a pan-European thematic usecase (air Quality and health), two regional use-cases (air Quality and Environmental status in the mediterranean region) and a small country use-case (slovenia); during the project, it was decided to conceive and add a new use case to revamp the s&t initiatives for GEo spain. EGiDa has embedded within a wide Network of Stakeholders selected to represent the various actors (science teams and institutions, s&t programmes, GEo components) and the scientific fields relevant to the nine GEoss sbas. this network, called EGiDa stakeholder network, has evolved in the GEOSS Science and Technology Stakeholder Network, an important instrument for GEoss to implement a user-driven process. this was an important success of the project. the EGiDa achievements are useful instruments contributing to close the geographical gaps particularly in developing countries. the project identified s&t communities currently not sufficiently linked to GEo and GEoss and promoted their involvement. it provides a significant set of use-case for the EGiDamethodology transfer process, focusing on partnership, infrastructures, products and services.