Chiara Garau

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Verified

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• Professor
• Professor (Associate) at University of Cagliari

Dear Colleague, In the framework of the 25th International Conference on Computational Science and its Applications (ICCSA 2025, more information at http://www.iccsa.org/), to be held in Istanbul (Türkiye) and remotely online, on 30 June-3 July 2025, we are organizing the sixth edition of the scientific Workshop on Advanced and Computational Method...

This study investigates the innovative use of street puppet theatre performances on the façades of commercial buildings to stimulate social gatherings in smart cities. This research investigates the impact of a unique musical puppet show held throughout the 2024 holiday season in the well-known shopping mall El Corte Inglés in Madrid, Spain. This s...

Despite the significant role of alleyways in urban spatial configuration and accessibility as critical structures of urban infrastructure, there remains a noticeable gap in understanding their specific role in urban transportation policies. The main aim of the present study is to investigate the role of configurational accessibility of alleyways in...

Although the smart city concept is widely adopted globally, there is a growing need to assess the advancement of spatial entities. International Institute for Management Development (IMD) Smart City Index has been providing an annual rating of the smartest cities worldwide since 2019. However, because of the changed methodology for 2023, the compar...

This article aims to analyse the main variables responsible for the downgrade in the ranking of Bilbao in Spain as the top smart city, according to the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) index. The factors that will undergo rigorous study are those that contribute to either improvement or exacerbation between 2019 and 2023. Th...

The article aims to analyse the approach used to evaluate Urban Heat Island (UHI) to determine the most suitable parameters based on the urban features of every city. The authors want to investigate the current state of knowledge on the role of Urban Heat Island (UHI) and its associated characteristics in the field of Urban Planning and Smart Citie...

From the first parklet established in 2005 in San Francisco by Rebar, an art-design-activist organisation, to the latest urban experimentations launched during the Covid-19 pandemic, street experiments are an established trend in the tactical urbanism. During these experimentations, city streets become key spaces not only for testing alternative fo...

Nowadays, cities are undergoing uncontrolled development, the main factor of environmental unsustainability, and are increasingly suffering the repercussions of environmental alterations. Policies based on smart urbanism, a concept strongly linked to sustainable development, have been trying for years to respond to these problems, significantly inf...

Public urban spaces are vital settings for fostering social interaction among people. However, understanding how spatial layouts can promote positive social behaviors remains a critical and debated challenge for urban designers and planners aiming to create socially sustainable environments. Space syntax, a well-established theory and research meth...

ICCSA 2024, more information at http://www.iccsa.org/), to be held in Hanoi (Vietnam) and remotely online, on 1-4 July 2024, we are organizing the fifth edition of the scientific Workshop on Advanced and Computational Methods for Earth Science applications (WACM4ES 2024). The workshop aims to collect papers and discussions on many (often trans-disc...

People’s actions and behaviours contribute to the diversity and personality of a space, transforming it into a vibrant and thriving living environment. The main goal of this research is to present a GIS-based framework for assessing places. The framework is constructed based on the idea of conceptual spaces, integrating spatial and semantic concept...

In developing countries, the interaction between rapid urban expansion and population growth brings forth a host of challenges, particularly concerning essential services like healthcare. While interest in site suitability analysis for identifying optimal hospital locations to ensure equitable and secure healthcare access is on the rise, the absenc...

In 2011, the United Nations General Assembly made the initial move towards regulating the concept of happiness as the primary factor for promoting sustainable development and achieving the Millennium Development Goals. In fact, the UN General Assembly recognised the need to establish a new approach based on an inclusive, equitable, and balanced urb...

This study provides an innovative collaborative spatial decision support system (SDSS) that aims to ensure an equitable spatial distribution of healthcare services. Evaluating the equality of access to health services across different geographical areas is important, as it requires the analysis of various criteria such as the proximity of health ce...

In response to urbanisation pressures and climate change, urban regeneration policies aiming at developing dynamic solutions for happy, inclusive, smart, and sustainable cities should include equitable access to basic services. This paper proposes a metric for measuring the level of spatial (in)justice in urban settings, beyond the city centre. The...

The "Path to the Digital Decade" features the digital transformation goals that the member states of the European Union must reach by 2030. It also highlights the need to align the digital strategy with the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by use of relevant indicators for assessing progress in each single SDG. The Digital Economy and Societ...

The National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) allocates significant resources to sustainable mobility with ambitious objectives, mostly aimed at developing more sustainable urban mobility solutions. Decarbonisation actions, shared and active mobility forms are also strongly intertwined with major challenges that contemporary cities are facing: e...

The ongoing debate on the adaptation of urban environments in the context of climate alterations and the COVID-19 pandemic underlines the need for an organization of urban spaces and structures that promote active mobility, socialisation, sports, and recreational activities. This emerging need intersects with the broader issue of the built environm...

Coastal zones are vulnerable climatic ecosystems. This is due to anthropogenic factors such as population growing and increase in settlement density, as well as geographical and natural pressures, including coastal danger, sea level rise, and biodiversity loss. Managing these problems and their interdependencies requires a bottom-up approach which...

Improve walkability, and therefore the capacity to provide safe and accessible walking opportunities, has emerged as a crucial topic especially for post-pandemic cities, seeking to create inclusive and liveable urban spaces. In this direction, a user-centred planning approach prioritises the creation of pleasant and accessible walking environments,...

The prevalence of a series of megatrends and challenges such as climate change, overtourism and health crisis, have demonstrated even more the necessity to shift from the current mass and overcrowded, spatially concentrated tourism models to less crowded, more spatially dispersed, and secure environments. This tendency pushed island destinations to...

Ensuring safe, functional, and integrated urban environments requires the identification and organisation of qualitative and quantitative analyses to assess the quality of urban spaces, the perceived well-being and by safety the city users, and the interactions between traffic components (e.g., pedestrians and vehicles). Many techniques based on qu...

This paper examines the multiple interactions between pedestrian mobility systems and land use planning within the framework of Agenda 2030’s sustainability goals involving the integration of mobility networks with urban planning development (i.e., targets 11.2 and 11.3). The study focuses on suburban university campuses and science parks as signif...

The development of a morphological analysis of the built environment emerges as a central issue for comprehending the structural properties of the urban layout and its generative processes and for establishing a knowledge framework for guiding planning decisions. The proposed study presents an analysis that combines space syntax and geo-spatial ana...

The smart city paradigm has evolved from a perspective focused on technological infrastructures to an approach in which the effects of the technological apparatus improve the quality of life of people, urban resilience, urban sustainability, and health, by introducing the concept of smart and sustainable city 3.0. In this chapter, the authors evalu...

Starting from the Late Republican and First Imperial ages, the Roman Mediterranean has seen the development and transformation of urbanised areas due to the newly gained stability conferred by the so called Pax Augusta. This phenomenon has significant consequences in transforming pre-existing urban structures and establishing a large number of newl...

In recent years, the governance of smart tourism has been radically changed from a strictly technological approach to one that highlights the issues of place. This has led to the definition of territorial ecosystems, not necessarily linked to administrative boundaries, but which can be linked to the urban bioregion. The latter in fact allows for a...

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the critical aspects of islands context transportation accessibility by suggesting a more innovative, safer, and more sustainable framework for public transport service (PTS) and place-based organisation, as well as by integrating the latest tendencies in mobility. Specifically, this research focuses on mul...

This paper focuses on how a city’s configurational patterns impact the city-wide and neighbourhood spatial, economic, and cognitive context through the case study of Vienna. The authors investigate Vienna by applying the space syntax method to get a better grasp of the city-wide and local to-movement, through-movement potentials, and intelligibilit...

The new mobility paradigm, the spread of new city models and the recent pandemic have highlighted the variability and complexity of people’s mobility. There is a widespread need for dynamic urban planning strategies to adapt to circumstances and mitigate the risk of dangerous events such as natural disasters and pandemics. The last decade has been...

The combination of concerns about the Covid-19 pandemic and structural problems relating to social injustice, climate change, and public health requires a radical reorganisation of transport structures, urban services, and the built fabric of metropolitan regions. This need is central to the pandemic era’s public debate: more significantly, it is r...

Vitality and Urbanity emerge as key goals of strategies for urban sustainable development as necessary prerequisites for varied and prosperous cities. Vitality and urbanity are characteristics that emerge from the diversity of urban public spaces activities and have an impact on a people's sense of place. The proposed research examines the built en...

Growing spatial and social injustice, vulnerability to environmental hazards, and the Covid-19 pandemic have underlined the need of a radical re-conceptualization and transformation of Public Open Spaces (POSs). Within this perspective, the usability of the public space emerges as a fundamental condition that influences the individuals’ well-being...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate in a preliminary way the monumental heritage in Sardinia (Italy), formed in the different historical eras (the early-medieval, the medieval and the Catalan-Castilian periods), in order to understand how today the cultural landscape formed by these eras, is a potential attraction for residents and tourists...

The COVID-19 has significantly led to changes in the mobility needs and in user travel behavior, due to the measures adopted to reduce the spread of the virus. While on the one hand this has resulted in a reduction in the number of trips, on the other this has entailed an increase in the use of the private car, considered as the safest form of tran...

With the adoption of the United Nations’ Agenda 2030, some member states of the European Union have voluntarily assessed their state regarding the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by use of the United Nations’ monitoring system for administrative bodies. However, this system does not consider specific challenges in achieving SDGs that are fa...

The environmental issues and, in recent years, the Covid-19 pandemic determined an increasing consensus around the need for urban policies aimed at re-shaping the urban realm. The issue of equality and the related conditions of accessibility and usability emerge as critical requirements in the re-shaping of the urban landscape and mobility. As a co...

Vitality and Urbanity, as conditions for economic vibrancy and social diversity, are central objectives of policies for urban sustainable development. Vitality and urbanity are herein defined as distinctive urban qualities emerging from the combination of diverse practices, integrated into urban form and influencing the sense of place. The proposed...

Recent events related to the COVID-19 pandemic event highlighted some criticalities of transport systems, especially the public sector. The respect for social distancing and a widespread fear of contagion have reduced travel on public transport. In addition, the new trend to reduce daily long-range mobility needs due to the increase in teleworking...

As underlined by the European Commission in Green Infrastructure (GI) - Enhancing Europe’s Natural Capital (2013), in Europe, solutions based on green infrastructures are particularly used in urban areas to reduce pollution and health problems related to population growth, and to the settlement concentration of activities and residences. With this...

The COVID-19 pandemic required the implementation of restrictions in the transport sector, changing the movement habits of users and, at the same time, highlighting the importance of creating a flexible transport system aimed at guaranteeing an uninterrupted supply of goods and people in any event. In the last decade, the pace at which sustainable...

In recent years, the applicative approach to smart governance in urban planning field has increasingly involved the decision-making processes of public administrations and has helped to solve economic, social and environmental challenges of cities. This approach has in fact allowed administrations to understand how changes are taking place in the t...

Lebanon is currently facing an unprecedented mix of social, economic, and political crises, which exacerbate many public health and environmental health problems. Among these, solid waste management (SWM) is considered one of the biggest challenges that Lebanon has been facing for the past two decades. In the absence of national guidelines and mini...

Processes of urbanization, market liberalization and exploitation of heritage can engender the fragmentation and deterioration of historical urban landscapes. Cultural paths are a central aspect of policies of cultural heritage valorisation. Hence, this study proposes the Cultural Paths Assessment Tool (PAST) as a methodological framework for indiv...

This paper intends to enhance the tourist offer in a dynamic meaning in which, referring to the paradigm of resilience and smartness, aims at the so-called multicultural tourism, suggesting for Sardinia the proposal for an integrated offer of typologically different goods. This offer is also adaptable to different needs without losing sight of all...

Nowadays, cities are increasingly required to be smart, sustainable, resilient and adaptive and, particularly following the COVID-19 pandemic, an integrated approach to transport planning needs to be adopted. In fact, European policies have adopted a series of limitations in the transport sector that led the scientific community to put into questio...

Bill Hillier’s space syntax method and theory enables us to describe the spatial properties of a sustainable city. Empirical testing of the space syntax method over time has confirmed the capacity and innovativeness of analyzing spatial relationships with the purpose of understanding and explaining the socio-spatial organization of built environmen...

In the version of this paper 27 was originally published the name of Marcela Velásquez Fernádez has been corrected to Marrcela Velásquez Fernández. In the version of this paper 44 was originally published the name of Łukasz Tomczyk – at appears with a “v” at the end of this family name. This has now been corrected.

The ten-volume set LNCS 12949 – 12958 constitutes the proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications, ICCSA 2021, which was held in Cagliari, Italy, during September 13 – 16, 2021. The event was organized in a hybrid mode due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The 466 full and 18 short papers presented in thes...

The ten-volume set LNCS 12949 – 12958 constitutes the proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications, ICCSA 2021, which was held in Cagliari, Italy, during September 13 – 16, 2021. The event was organized in a hybrid mode due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The 466 full and 18 short papers presented in thes...

The ten-volume set LNCS 12949 – 12958 constitutes the proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications, ICCSA 2021, which was held in Cagliari, Italy, during September 13 – 16, 2021. The event was organized in a hybrid mode due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The 466 full and 18 short papers presented in thes...

The ten-volume set LNCS 12949 – 12958 constitutes the proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications, ICCSA 2021, which was held in Cagliari, Italy, during September 13 – 16, 2021. The event was organized in a hybrid mode due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The 466 full and 18 short papers presented in the...

The ten-volume set LNCS 12949 – 12958 constitutes the proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications, ICCSA 2021, which was held in Cagliari, Italy, during September 13 – 16, 2021. The event was organized in a hybrid mode due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The 466 full and 18 short papers presented in thes...

The ten-volume set LNCS 12949 – 12958 constitutes the proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications, ICCSA 2021, which was held in Cagliari, Italy, during September 13 – 16, 2021. The event was organized in a hybrid mode due to the Covid-19 pandemic.The 466 full and 18 short papers presented in these...

The ten-volume set LNCS 12949 – 12958 constitutes the proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications, ICCSA 2021, which was held in Cagliari, Italy, during September 13 – 16, 2021. The event was organized in a hybrid mode due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The 466 full and 18 short papers presented in thes...

The ten-volume set LNCS 12949 – 12958 constitutes the proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications, ICCSA 2021, which was held in Cagliari, Italy, during September 13 – 16, 2021. The event was organized in a hybrid mode due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The 466 full and 18 short papers presented in thes...

The ten-volume set LNCS 12949 – 12958 constitutes the proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications, ICCSA 2021, which was held in Cagliari, Italy, during September 13 – 16, 2021. The event was organized in a hybrid mode due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The 466 full and 18 short papers presented in thes...

The ten-volume set LNCS 12949 – 12958 constitutes the proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications, ICCSA 2021, which was held in Cagliari, Italy, during September 13 – 16, 2021. The event was organized in a hybrid mode due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The 466 full and 18 short papers presented in thes...

Chapter “Automated Housing Price Valuation and Spatial Data” was previously published non-open access. It has now been changed to open access under a CC BY 4.0 license and the copyright holder updated to ‘The Author(s)’. Chapter “Solving Differential Equations Using Feedforward Neural Networks” was previously published open access. It now has been...

In recent years, the concept of cohesion goes beyond the economic and social concern, focusing also on alleviating territorial imbalances and rendering sectorial policies of countries belonging to the European Union (EU) coherent and unified. Territorial imbalances are particularly evident in island regions which, constrained by their geographical...

Urbanization identifies the contemporary city as the crucible of human condition. This tendency elicits the issue of the ways in which the built environment affects human behaviour. In particular, walking emerges as a central topic. Walking, in fact, is conceptualized as a vector for engaging with the world, and as a conduit to physical activity, s...

The global process of urbanization, and the modification of social interaction determined by the pandemic crisis, poses the issue of the place of vulnerable users and, in particular, children, within the contemporary city. This research aimed to elaborate a theoretical and methodological framework, based on the concepts of affordance and capability...

The seven volumes LNCS 12249-12255 constitute the refereed proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications, ICCSA 2020, held in Cagliari, Italy, in July 2020. Due to COVID-19 pandemic the conference was organized in an online event. Computational Science is the main pillar of most of the present resear...

The seven volumes LNCS 12249-12255 constitute the refereed proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications, ICCSA 2020, held in Cagliari, Italy, in July 2020. Due to COVID-19 pandemic the conference was organized in an online event. Computational Science is the main pillar of most of the present resear...

The seven volumes LNCS 12249-12255 constitute the refereed proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications, ICCSA 2020, held in Cagliari, Italy, in July 2020. Due to COVID-19 pandemic the conference was organized in an online event. Computational Science is the main pillar of most of the present resear...

The seven volumes LNCS 12249-12255 constitute the refereed proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications, ICCSA 2020, held in Cagliari, Italy, in July 2020. Due to COVID-19 pandemic the conference was organized in an online event. Computational Science is the main pillar of most of the present resear...

The seven volumes LNCS 12249-12255 constitute the refereed proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications, ICCSA 2020, held in Cagliari, Italy, in July 2020. Due to COVID-19 pandemic the conference was organized in an online event. Computational Science is the main pillar of most of the present resear...

Cities play a fundamental role not only in the growth processes under the sustainability paradigm, but also as a driving-force behind economy and they constitute places of connectivity and innovation. More than two thirds of the European population live in urban areas and this percentage is continuously growing. Therefore, cities are fundamental hu...

The paper is focused on the evolution of the concept of accessibility, by considering data of the World Health Organization (WHO) and of the Istat (Italian statistical institute). From these data it emerges that the population (worldwide and in Italy) dealing with disability represents an important share of the total. These disabilities are linked...

One of the most challenging aspects of the actual smart city trend is to keep under control the environmental parameters with the aim of general sustainability. The impact of daily activities of humans in the city is presently very evident. The geographical and social characteristics of the cities may react and facilitate the sustainability as well...

The poor transport system in Sardinia, particularly in the inner areas, affects the social-economic development and the determinants of the productive activities. After illustrating the specificities of these areas in terms of transport accessibility, orography, and the relationship between populations, a new territorial organization is proposed, i...

Today’s cities are meeting places, economic and social development centers, where all citizens should have the opportunity to live and move, according to adequate quality of life standards. However, this does not always correspond to reality in particular for the most vulnerable categories of the population. So, UN’s 2030 Agenda underlines the need...

The principle that inspired the authors in the preparation of this study is the concept of “expanded accessibility” in terms of usability of spaces, places and services, for their users. From here, in the face of the periodic survey work carried out on local public transport vehicles managed by the transport company of the Municipality of Cagliari,...

Onboard bus comfort significantly depends on the bus lanes characteristics, such as horizontal curvature, pavement roughness, longitudinal, and transversal slope. A literature review shows a statistical relationship between acceleration level and passenger features, such as age and gender. A large number of onboard interviews have been collected an...

The purpose of the article is to evaluate territorial hierarchies, internal to an island context, through the theory of central places. To this end, the authors want to demonstrate how some key points of these theories are still relevant all the more if applied to geographically closed contexts, such as an island. Starting from these premises, this...

Thematic paths are a central aspect of urban policies for cultural heritage valorization. In fact, thematic paths are central spatial features for structuring the image of a historical landscape. Hence, this study proposes the cultural paths assessment tool (PAST) as a methodological framework for individuating a network of routes connecting cultur...

The global trend towards the growth of urban population poses the issue of the public space influence on outdoor practices of different subjects. Given that the urban public space is the carrier of an ever-increasing number and density of users. Walking, both as a form of transportation and as a vector to physical activity and social interactions,...

The seven volumes LNCS 12249-12255 constitute the refereed proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications, ICCSA 2020, held in Cagliari, Italy, in July 2020. Due to COVID-19 pandemic the conference was organized in an online event. Computational Science is the main pillar of most of the present resear...

The relations between island territories are the main goal of the nowadays issues on smart contexts. In fact, also the first Smart Island World Congress - SIWC (Calvià, Maiorca, 2018) focused on the future strategic challenges of insular territories, in order to understand the structural, social, environmental, urban and economic issues. It is know...

The research investigates the features of blue/green infrastructure integrated in the built environment that affect children’s independent mobility and outdoor activities. Independent activities, including mobility, spatial appropriation, imaginative play and cooperative and social activities, are instrumental to children’s physical, cognitive, emo...

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the landscapes planning, considering those of Sardinia in Italy, that are rich in natural, morphological and structural factors. In addition, the visualization of agricultural and pastoral lands are an important component to understand the social and economic dimension that characterizes the different s...