Books in the PoliMI SpringerBriefs series

This open access book represents one of the key milestones of DESIGNSCAPES, an H2020 CSA (Coordination and Support Action) research project funded by the European Commission under the Call "User-driven innovation: value creation through design-enabled innovation".

This book illustrates a new quantitative risk analysis model for road tunnels that is capable of evaluating the role of infrastructure measures, equipment and management procedures as prescribed by EU Directive 2004/54/EC.

Industrial partners involved in Manutelligence provide a clear overview of the project's outcomes, and demonstrate how its technological solutions can be used to improve the design of product-service systems and the management of product-service life cycles.

This book approaches Location Based Mobile Games from a design perspective, investigating the peculiar traits that make them compelling contemporary practices and challenging fields of investigation.

This book presents a design-driven investigation into smart materials developed by chemists, physicists, materials and chemical engineers, and applied by designers to consumer products, buildings, interfaces, or textiles.

The book provides an overview of the Active House (AH) vision, intended as a building design method "beyond" the passive approach for buildings of the future that will be more and more connected, smart and innovative.

This multidisciplinary book brings together medical, management, and architectural disciplines in order to formulate new approaches to the programming, planning, and design of healthcare facilities that will improve the quality of healthcare systems in rapidly developing countries, respecting local culture.

This book explores break-through approaches to tackling and mitigating the well-known problems of compiler optimization using design space exploration and machine learning techniques.

This book presents an original methodology for analyzing urban retail systems, addressing the strong retail meltdown (increase in closed corner-shops and dead malls) that is severely affecting cities and suburban areas in Europe and the USA.

This book explains the potential value of using mobile phone data to monitor urban practices and identify rhythms of use in today's cities.

Based on these experiences it extensively discusses evaluation, with a particular focus on service evaluation, and explains its importance in supporting service design and fostering innovation throughout the service design process.

This book explores the value of the musical concept of "agogics" - the modification of regular rhythm to enhance expressive potential - in understanding urban spatial configurations within the current technological context and in developing urban maps that exploit sonic signals to create an open learning framework.

This book aims to cast light on all aspects of tunnel fires, based on experimental activities and theoretical and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analyses.

This book describes a novel system for the simultaneous visual and tactile rendering of product shapes which allows designers to simultaneously touch and see new product shapes during the conceptual phase of product development.

This book examines the various ways in which co-production can contribute to the creation, design, and delivery of public services, namely by engaging the expertise of users and their networks, by promoting public services that are better targeted and more responsive to users, by cutting costs against the background of austerity in public finance, by creating a synergy between government and civil society that will impact positively on social capital, and by addressing the challenges resulting from growing democratic and citizenship deficits. Particular attention is paid to local government and the health and social care sector. After definition of the concept of co-production, the critical issues which arise when public services are co-produced are discussed. Various experiences of co-production are presented and analyzed with a view to highlighting why, how, and with what effect public service co-production may be implemented. Individual chapters focus on the impact of co-productionin making cities smarter and the use of ICT in supporting co-production of public services. The book will be of relevance to a wide readership, from students to academics and professionals interested or engaged in public service management.

This book reports onthe results of an extended survey conducted across Europe within the frameworkof the APPRAISAL FP7 projectto determine the extent to which an integrated assessment approach toair quality is being adopted, on the one hand, by regional and local authorities to develop airquality plans and, on the other, by researchers. Followinga detailed analysis of the role and structure of the components of anintegrated assessment study, the results of the survey are considered from avariety of perspectives. Aboveall, the book discusses the new light the survey sheds on emissionabatement policies and measures planned at regional and local scales, and on their synergies/trade-offs with measures implementedat the national scale. Detailed consideration is given to the currently available modelingmethodologies foridentifying emissionsources, assessing theeffectiveness of emission reduction measures, and evaluating the impacts of emissionabatement measures on human health. Current strengths and weaknesses revealedby the survey are explored, and the application of an integrated assessment tool in two case studies (in Brussels and Porto) is discussed. The book will appeal to all those interested in the use of integratedassessment in connection withthe sources, effects and control of air pollution. 

The aim is to supply the reader with a clear understanding of an important emerging area of research and practice in product design, referred to as dynamic products, which is opening up new possibilities for the integration of product design with digital and smart technologies and offering an alternative to the use of digital interfaces.

Three conceptual models that offer different perspectives on public and civic participation in complex urban planning processes are presented and reviewed: the consensual model, which conceives of planning as a collective decision-making practice geared toward consensus building and conflict resolution;

This book discusses the issues relevant to the evaluation of the thermal energy balance of buildings in southern Europe and equips readers to carry out optimal building energy-performance assessments taking into account the peculiarities of the climatic context.

This book describes the Exergy-based Input - Output (ExIO) framework, a comprehensive methodology for assessing the primary fossil fuels requirements for the production of goods and services within a given economy from a lifecycle perspective.

This book first presents different approaches to modeling of the cold spray process with the aim of extending current understanding of its fundamental principles and then describes emerging applications of cold spray.

This book describes the latest efforts to develop aluminumnanocomposites with enhanced damping and mechanical properties and goodworkability.

This book describes a collaborative Design Pilot Project held in Brazil (called MODU.Lares) involving micro and small enterprises and other actors in the furniture sector.

This books is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book summarizes work being undertaken within the collaborative MODAClouds research project, which aims to facilitate interoperability between heterogeneous Cloud platforms and remove the constraints of deployment, portability, and reversibility for end users of Cloud services.

This book explains how lightweight materials and structures can be deployed in buildings to meet high environmental and aesthetic standards and emphasizes how the concept of lightness in building technology and design dovetails with the desire to enhance landscape.

This book offers a state-of-the-art overview of controlled drug delivery systems, covering the most important innovative applications.

This book explores the factors that affect the efficiency and effectiveness of electronic government (e-Government) by analyzing two employment- service systems in Italy and Catalonia: the Borsa Lavoro Lombardia Portal (Lombardy Employment Services Portal) and the Servei d'Ocupacio de Catalunya (Catalan Employment Services Portal).

This book presents the state of the art in advanced customization within the sector of architectural design and construction, explaining important new technologies that are boosting design, product and process innovation and identifying the challenges to be confronted as we move toward a mass customization construction industry.

This book documents the outcomes of a study designed to explore ways of increasing resilience in a complex city system against disasters by focusing on the transportation system in London.

This book analyzes the risk management process in relation to building design and operation and on this basis proposes a method and a set of tools that will improve the planning and evaluation of design solutions in order to control risks in the operation and management phase.