Samuele Lo Piano

Samuele Lo Piano
University of Reading · School of Construction Management and Engineering

PhD

About

75
Publications
26,126
Reads
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2,143
Citations
Introduction
From Dec 1 2019 I am working in the CREDS research centre (Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions), flexibility theme area. My research interests include energy systems, sensitivity auditing, uncertainty quantification and global sensitivity analysis, science for governance, modelling and model (knowledge) quality assessment. My research interests also cover complexity and complex systems (such as societies).
Additional affiliations
December 2019 - present
University of Reading
Position
  • PostDoc Position
Description
  • PostDoctoral researcher on flexibility in energy demand
December 2017 - present
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
Position
  • PostDoc Position
October 2015 - present
Autonomous University of Barcelona
Position
  • PostDoc Position
Education
January 2009 - February 2013
Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa
Field of study
  • Spectroscopy of lanthanide complexes

Publications

Publications (75)
Preprint
Full-text available
In this paper, we analyse how impact assessment reports from the European Commission inform energy policy-making in the European Union. Our methodological lens is the sensitivity auditing seven-point checklist for the scrutiny of modelling activities at the science-policy interface, which looks into the overall modelling framing process and applica...
Article
Full-text available
This article explores how the modeling of energy systems may lead to an undue closure of alternatives by generating an excess of certainty around some of the possible policy options. We retrospectively exemplify the problem with the case of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) global modeling in the 1980s. We discuss dif...
Poster
Full-text available
Holistic approaches for urban modelling need to simultaneously consider the urban form, i.e., the physical characteristics of a city (e.g., urban surfaces, building morphology and fabric), urban function driven by economic, societal, cultural activities, and human behaviour. DAVE (Dynamic Anthropogenic actiVities and feedback to Emissions) is an ag...
Poster
Full-text available
Heat emissions from buildings in many cities play an important role for the urban surface energy balance (USEB) and the urban micro-climate. Heat generated indoors from human activities (e.g., use of electrical appliances, space heating, metabolic rate) is conducted through the building fabric and affects the USEB through long-wave radiation and tu...
Chapter
Climate change and COVID-19 have brought mathematical models into the forefront of politics and decision-making, where they are now being used to justify momentous and often controversial decisions. Such models are technically very complex, and sources of political authority. Yet disagreement among experts fuels a growing uneasiness about the quali...
Chapter
Full-text available
Climate change and COVID-19 have brought mathematical models into the forefront of politics and decision-making, where they are now being used to justify momentous and often controversial decisions. Such models are technically very complex, and sources of political authority. Yet disagreement among experts fuels a growing uneasiness about the quali...
Book
Full-text available
Climate change and COVID-19 have brought mathematical models into the forefront of politics and decision-making, where they are now being used to justify momentous and often controversial decisions. Such models are technically very complex, and sources of political authority. Yet disagreement among experts fuels a growing uneasiness about the quali...
Article
Full-text available
The present work looks at what we call “the multiverse of quantification”, where visible and invisible numbers permeate all aspects and venues of life. We review the contributions of different authors who focus on the roles of quantification in society, with the aim of capturing different and sometimes separate voices. Several scholars, including e...
Article
Full-text available
Miscalculating the volumes of water withdrawn for irrigation, the largest consumer of freshwater in the world, jeopardizes sustainable water management. Hydrological models quantify water withdrawals, but their estimates are unduly precise. Model imperfections need to be appreciated to avoid policy misjudgements.
Preprint
Full-text available
Abstract: CO2-based infection risk monitoring is highly recommended under the current COVID-19 pandemic. However, the CO2 monitoring thresholds proposed in the literature are mainly for spaces with fixed occupants. Determining CO2 threshold is challenging in spaces with changing occupancy due to the co-existence of quanta and CO2 remaining from the...
Article
Full-text available
Mathematical models are getting increasingly detailed to better predict phenomena or gain more accurate insights into the dynamics of a system of interest, even when there are no validation or training data available. Here, we show through ANOVA and statistical theory that this practice promotes fuzzier estimates because it generally increases the...
Article
Full-text available
Acknowledging the conditionality of model-based evidence facilitates the dialogue between model developers and model users, especially when models are used to guide decisions at the science-policy interface. In general, model users have limited access to verify the realism of a model, being only exposed to model plausibility and trustworthiness; in...
Article
Full-text available
This contribution presents a novel approach to characterise uncertainty in the manual grape harvest of a winery in Tuscany (Italy). After identifying the potential sources of variability arising from randomness, weather, and management options, a model to define useful output variables is built. These output variables include the discrepancy in the...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Irrigation agriculture is the most important user of the global freshwater resources worldwide, which makes it one of the key actors conditioning sustainable development and water security. The anticipated future climate change, population growth, and rapidly rising global demand for food will likely lead to agricultural expansion by allowing the d...
Article
This contribution reviews the options proposed to reduce and/or act on the temporal profile of energy demand (flexibility), mainly at the residential level. Automated technology-driven options and/or monetary incentives towards behaviour shifting from end users are firstly examined. A relevant finding is the existing potential points of frictions b...
Article
Full-text available
In this contribution, we present an innovative data-driven model to reconstruct a reliable temporal pattern for time-lagged statistical monetary figures. Our research cuts across several domains regarding the production of robust economic inferences and the bridging of top-down aggregated information from central databases with disaggregated inform...
Article
Full-text available
The R package sensobol provides several functions to conduct variance-based uncertainty and sensitivity analysis, from the estimation of sensitivity indices to the visual representation of the results. It implements several state-of-the-art first and total-order estimators and allows the computation of up to fourth-order effects, as well as of the...
Poster
Full-text available
Abstract submission is now open for the 10th International Conference on Sensitivity Analysis of Model Output (SAMO). The conference will be held at Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida. The dates of the conference are March 14 -16, 2022, at the Florida State Conference Center. See: https://samo2022.math.fsu.edu/
Preprint
Full-text available
Variance-based sensitivity indices have established themselves as a reference among practitioners of sensitivity analysis of model outputs. A variance-based sensitivity analysis typically produces the first-order sensitivity indices $S_j$ and the so-called total-effect sensitivity indices $T_j$ for the uncertain factors of the mathematical model un...
Article
Full-text available
In this study, we review approaches for uncertainty appraisal in the life cycle assessment literature. We cover the acknowledgement of stochastic and epistemic uncertainty in uncertainty and sensitivity analysis and knowledge quality assessment, respectively. Consistent with previous works, our findings indicate that uncertainty is only appraised...
Preprint
Full-text available
This paper explores how the modelling of energy systems may lead to undue closure of alternatives by generating an excess of certainty around some of the possible policy options. We exemplify the problem with two cases: first, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) global modelling in the 1980s; and second, the modelling a...
Article
Full-text available
A sustainable management of global freshwater resources requires reliable estimates of the water demanded by irrigated agriculture. This has been attempted by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) through country surveys and censuses, or through Global Models, which compute irrigation water withdrawals with sub-models on crop types and calend...
Preprint
Full-text available
The R package "sensobol" provides several functions to conduct variance-based uncertainty and sensitivity analysis, from the estimation of sensitivity indices to the visual representation of the results. It implements several state-of-the-art first and total-order estimators and allows the computation of up to third-order effects, as well as of the...
Article
Full-text available
The Variogram Analysis of Response Surfaces (VARS) has been proposed by Razavi and Gupta as a new comprehensive framework in sensitivity analysis. According to these authors, VARS provides a more intuitive notion of sensitivity and it is much more computationally efficient than Sobol’ indices. Here we review these arguments and critically compare t...
Article
Full-text available
Sensitivity analysis (SA) is en route to becoming an integral part of mathematical modeling. The tremendous potential benefits of SA are, however, yet to be fully realized, both for advancing mechanistic and data-driven modeling of human and natural systems, and in support of decision making. In this perspective paper, a multidisciplinary group of...
Article
Full-text available
Variance-based sensitivity indices have established themselves as a reference among practitioners of sensitivity analysis of model outputs. A variance-based sensitivity analysis typically produces the first-order sensitivity indices S_j and the so-called total-effect sensitivity indices T_j for the uncertain factors of the mathematical model under...
Preprint
Full-text available
The Variogram Analysis of Response Surfaces (VARS) has been proposed by Razavi and Gupta as a new comprehensive framework in sensitivity analysis. According to these authors, VARS provides a more intuitive notion of sensitivity and it is much more computationally efficient than Sobol' indices. Here we review these arguments and critically compare t...
Technical Report
Full-text available
BEIS issued a call for evidence on energy related products in the summer; this is the response from CREDS (Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions, a consortium of academics from UK universities who work with researchers, businesses & policy makers to support the transition to a low-carbon energy system.) Many of the questions in the call...
Preprint
Full-text available
Sensitivity analysis helps decision-makers to understand how a given model output responds when there is variation in the model inputs. One of the most authoritative measures in global sensitivity analysis is the Sobol' total-order index ($T_i$), which can be computed with several different estimators. Although previous comparisons exist, it is har...
Technical Report
In this contribution, we study the time lag between the local expenditures of European funds by beneficiaries in Italian regions and the corresponding payments reported in the European Commission (EC) database. We propose a model to reconstruct the timing of these local expenditures by back-dating the observed EC reimbursements. Our estimates are v...
Article
Full-text available
Decision-making on numerous aspects of our daily lives is being outsourced to machine-learning (ML) algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI), motivated by speed and efficiency in the decision process. ML approaches—one of the typologies of algorithms underpinning artificial intelligence—are typically developed as black boxes. The implication is...
Article
Full-text available
The reasons for and against composite indicators are briefly reviewed, as well as the available theories for their construction. After noting the strong normative dimension of these measures—which ultimately aim to ‘tell a story’, e.g. to promote the social discovery of a particular phenomenon, we inquire whether a less partisan use of a composite...
Article
Full-text available
Pandemic politics highlight how predictions need to be transparent and humble to invite insight, not blame. Pandemic politics highlight how predictions need to be transparent and humble to invite insight, not blame.
Technical Report
Full-text available
1. PURPOSE: This data set provides, in a single source, regionalised (NUTS-2) annual EU expenditure data (in current prices) for specific EU funds - ERDF, Cohesion Fund, EAFRD/EAGGF and ESF. This data can be used, among other purposes, to facilitate analysis on the effects of the EU funds. In terms of the regionalisation of EU payments made, this...
Article
Full-text available
Predictions of global irrigated areas are widely used to guide strategies that aim to secure environmental welfare and manage climate change. Here we show that these predictions, which range between 240 and 450 million hectares (Mha), underestimate the potential extension of irrigation by ignoring basic parametric and model uncertainties. We found...
Preprint
Full-text available
Decision-making on numerous aspects of our daily lives is being outsourced to machine-learning algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) (O’Neil 2016), motivated by speed and efficiency in the decision process. Machine learning (ML) approaches - one of the typologies of algorithms underpinning artificial intelligence - are typically developed as...
Article
Full-text available
The PAWN index is gaining traction among the modelling community as a sensitivity measure. However, the robustness to its design parameters has not yet been scrutinized: the size (N) and sampling (ε) of the model output, the number of conditioning intervals (n) or the summary statistic (θ). Here we fill this gap by running a sensitivity analysis of...
Preprint
Full-text available
De Graaf et al. (2019) suggest that groundwater pumping will bring 42--79\% of worldwide watersheds close to environmental exhaustion by 2050. We are skeptical of these figures due to several non-unique assumptions behind the calculation of irrigation water demands and the perfunctory exploration of the model's uncertainty space. Their sensitivity...
Article
Full-text available
The emerging scientific field of public health economics, considering health-related behaviours such as physical activity and smoking, is establishing itself as an important component in assessing the impact of policy interventions on preventing disease. Epidemiological evidence points to links between diet, lifestyle and non-communicable diseases...
Article
Full-text available
In this study we assess whether availability of silver could constrain a large-scale deployment of solar photovoltaics (PV). While silver-paste use in photovoltaics cell metallization is becoming more efficient, solar photovoltaics power capacity installation is growing at an exponential pace. Along photovoltaics, silver is also employed in an arra...
Preprint
Full-text available
Variance-based sensitivity indices have established themselves as a reference among practitioners of sensitivity analysis of model output. It is not unusual to consider a variance-based sensitivity analysis as informative if it produces at least the first order sensitivity indices S_j and the so-called total-effect sensitivity indices T_j for all t...
Code
Python-based Jupyter notebooks on applied statistics, uncertainty quantification and sensitivity analysis of mathematical models output, quality of evidence used for policy and sensitivity auditing. Contents: https://github.com/pbstark/Sensitivity-Sather/blob/master/index.ipynb The collection of Jupyter notebooks can be run from the docker: http...
Presentation
Full-text available
• Tools from post-normal science inspiration such as sensitivity auditing were applied to health-economics models. • Room for improvement has been identified in several respects. • Modelling practices adopted in engineering and environmental modelling are suggested as new standard for the field. • The adoption of these practices could imply the...
Article
Full-text available
This paper investigates the empirical and theoretical basis of the decoupling between energy throughput and economic growth, with a critical view of the use of the decoupling concept as a policy priority. We provide an analysis of the historical trends of the metabolic pattern of European economies over a period of 18 years focusing on the changes...
Article
Full-text available
In a paper recently published on the journal Food Ethics (Saltelli and Lo Piano, 2017), we take issue with a scenario for the future of agriculture recently published. The scenario we target, which is not uncommon in present discourse on food security, assumes that improving in agricultural techniques and adopting better dietary styles will lead to...
Technical Report
Full-text available
The yearly breakdown of expenditure included in the consolidated financial dataset of ESIF payments 1989-2015 follows the cycle of the European Commission payments to the Member States and not the dates in which expenditures took place on the ground. This characteristic may negatively affect the analytic work subsequently done by the experts to car...
Presentation
Full-text available
A post-normal-science approach using sensitivity auditing and quantitative story telling (QST) is applied to deconstruct a dubious quantification in the field of global food security. This shows that: - Several of the assumptions taken in the model are questionable - Spurious accuracy manifests itself with an implausible number of digits in the m...
Article
Full-text available
Over the course of human history food security has represented a primary challenge for civilizations and societies. In the light of the projected trends of population expansion in the forthcoming decades, its primary importance in the global agenda has never decreased. Our contribution to this debate comes in the form of a critique of a paper recen...
Article
Naples has experienced serious waste mismanagement during the last several decades. Illegal waste trafficking, the lack of an appropriate municipal solid waste management plan, and the subsidizing of energy generation from indiscriminate waste incineration generated social unrest and an unremitting paralysis of waste services throughout much of the...
Presentation
Full-text available
Presentation read at the International Policy Workshop organised by the Waseda University and Aoyama University of Tokyo
Article
Municipal solid waste (MSW) management is a system involving multiple sub-systems that typically require demanding inputs, materials and resources to properly process generated waste throughput. For this reason, MSW management is generally one of the most expensive services provided by municipalities. In this paper, we analyze the Japanese MSW mana...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
EROI is the ratio of the amount of net energy acquired from a source to the amount of energy expended to obtain that net quantity. Therefore, EROI can be used as an indicator of energy transformation performance. Unfortunately, EROI is a far from satisfactory means by which (or way) to evaluate the overall energy and material balance associated wit...
Article
Full-text available
In this paper we deal only with the demographic and energy issues associated with China's metabolic patterns and present several serious problems that China would face in the future. For this purpose we use our general multi-scale methodology, Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism (MuSIASEM for short). The second sect...
Article
Full-text available
The VCD spectra of lanthanide chelates with two chiral ligands display conserved sequences of bands throughout the Ln series. Some compounds (Tm, Yb) feature increased bands and strongly improved signal-to-noise ratios, an effect we dub Lanthanide Induced VCD Enhancement (LIVE).
Article
Full-text available
Reversible and selective binding of a dynamically racemic europium(iii) complex to α(1)-acid glycoprotein and α(1)-antitrypsin is characterised by a significant change in the europium total emission spectral fingerprint and the switching on of a large circularly polarised luminescence (CPL) signal from the metal centre. Observation of an induced CD...

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