Governing the smart city

The purpose of the “USAS” workshop is to collect papers on the criteria and applications, methodologies and tools useful to ensure the accessibility and safety of the urban space to all categories of users, with specific reference to the most disadvantaged people.

In fact, the concepts of “Accessibility and Safety” have assumed a fundamental importance for the use of urban space, becoming the basis of any good project and fundamental requirements in the implementation of good practices for using city’s places.

Talking about accessibility and safety implies referring to these concepts in its broadest sense, not only the physical ones, but also all their other forms, including psycho-cognitive accessibility and related safety.

Finally, the “accessibility and Safety” are based on the latest generation ITS technologies, such as innovative flexible services and real-time users’ information, augmented reality, virtual reality and smart roads.

Users’ information is also another aspect to derive the concept of accessibility and safety: transport networks have become increasingly complex and dynamic, intermodality is an indispensable new mobility paradigm and users need to be guided along their movements.

Accessibility also means demand segmentation: diversifying services, correlating different data sources and providing specific information with respect to different types of users and access devices.

Focusing on “accessibility and safety”, this workshop may critically explore (but is not limited) these relevant issues:

1. Studying and recognizing the specificities and differences between the various categories of people with disabilities, identifying needs and, at the same time, widening the concept of disability to populations considered up to now as “able-bodied” (elderly, children, etc.);
2. Analysis of the conditions for an independent life for people with disabilities, or for their self-determination, through the study of measures and strategies that give the possibility of living one’s life as or almost like any other person;
3. Design and creation of spaces, strategies and measures to promote accessibility and safety;
4. Highlighting how public spaces in cities favour quality and urban security, contrasting urban degradation and how foster a comprehensive regeneration of urban spaces according to accessibility and safety criteria;
5. Supporting public system strategies in order to guarantee an optimal use of resources for the creation of overall present and future value in local communities;
6. Promoting social inclusion and raising people well-being and autonomy also through the development of knowledge, methodologies, technological tools and advanced automation techniques.

Given the focus of the Conference on Computational Science issues, the workshop USAS welcomes contributions on ICT and computational aspects, proposals and applications from a wide variety of scholars on the issues proposed.

Engineers, Geologists, Urban and Regional Planners, Landscape Architects, Geographers and Economic Geographers, Environmental Engineers, among others are welcome to contribute.

Keywords: Accessibility, Safety, Urban space, Cities, Augmented reality, Virtual reality, Accessibility design, Cultural tourism accessibility, ITS, Innovative flexible services, Real-time information, Big-data.

Each paper will be independently reviewed by 3 programme committee members. Their individual scores will be evaluated by a small sub-committee and result in one of the following final decisions: accepted, or accepted on the condition that suggestions for improvement will be incorporated, or rejected. Notification of this decision will take place on April 2021.
Individuals and groups should submit complete papers (10 to 16 pages).
Accepted contributions will be published in the Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) volumes

Authors Guideline
Please adhere strictly to the formatting provided in the template to prepare your paper and refrain from modifying it. The submitted paper must be camera-ready and formatted according to the rules of LNCS. For formatting information, see the publisher’s web site (http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0). Submission implies the willingness of at least one of the authors to register and present the paper.

download the template

Submission
Papers should be submitted at: http://ess.iccsa.org/
Please don’t forget to select “Urban Space Accessibility and Safety” – USAS_2021)” workshop from the drop-down list of all workshops.

Proceedings
Papers accepted to “USAS 2021” will be published in the ICCSA Conference proceedings, in Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series, with doi, indexed by WOS, Scopus and DBLP.

Organizers Information:

Francesco Pinna, (DICAAR, University of Cagliari)
Chiara Garau, (DICAAR, University of Cagliari)
Claudia Yamu, (CASUS lab, University of Groningen)
Vincenza Torrisi, (DICAR, University of Catania)
Matteo Ignaccolo (DICAR, University of Catania)
Michela Tiboni (DICATAM, University of Brescia)
Silvia Rossetti (DIA, University of Parma)

Anna Maria Colavitti, University of Cagliari

Mauro Coni, University of Cagliari, Italy

Tanja Congiu, University of Sassari, Italy

Chiara Garau, University of Cagliari, Italy

Matteo Ignaccolo, University of Catania, Italy

Francesca Maltinti, University of Cagliari, Italy

Beniamino Murgante, University of Basilicata, Italy

Enrica Papa, University of Westminster, London, United Kingdom

Mariano Pernetti, University of Campania, Italy

Francesco Pinna, University of Cagliari, Italy

Alessandro Plaisant, University of Sassari, Italy

Silvia Rossetti, University of Parma, Italy

Francesco Scorza, University of Basilicata, Italy

Michela Tiboni, University of Brescia, Italy

Vincenza Torrisi, University of Catania, Italy

Claudia Yamu, University of Groningen

Paola Zamperlin, University of Florence, Italy