Hydrothermal carbonization (in acronym, HTC) is a thermochemical conversion process through which it is possible to directly transform wet organic substrates into a carbonaceous material, referred as hydrochar. Hydrochar has chemical and physical characteristics that make it similar to fossil peats and lignite. Depending on the process conditions, mostly temperature and residence time, this material can be enriched in its carbon content, modifying its structure and providing it interesting characteristics that make it possible to be used for several applications, such as for energy production, as a soil conditioner and improver, for carbon dioxide sorption and sequestration, and some others reported in literature. HTC is a different process, if compared to other common thermochemical processes, such as pyrolysis, torrefaction, gasification, etc., because it works in wet conditions (humidity content higher than 60%). As a matter of fact, biomass is transformed into hydrochar because of the properties of hot pressurized water, that acts both as a reactant and as a catalyst. The HTC process has been studied from many years, although at present not all the chemical reactions that occur during the process are completely known. Moreover, the application of this quite new process to different substrates can bring to different results. Even though HTC can be applied to any kind of organic material (of both animal and vegetable derivation), the possible uses of hydrochar can strongly be influenced by the characteristics of the feedstock. This, for example, can be due to legislative constraints. In Chapter 1, an overview of the existing literature is presented. To get insights on this process, a small bench scale batch reactor has been designed and built at the Department of Civil, Environmental and Mechanical engineering of the University of Trento, Italy. This reactor has been tested, prior to be used with real substrates. In Chapter 2 the reactor and the preliminary tests done are described. In this work, the HTC process applied to three different substrates have been studied: grape marc, the EWC 19.05.03 residue and the EWC 19.12.12 residue. In Chapter 3 the three raw substrates are described. Grape marc is produced by the winery industries or by distilleries. This feedstock is composed by woody seeds and holocellulosic skins and it presents an average humidity content of about 60%. At present, it is used for the production of animal food or it is landfilled. In this case, the application of HTC can be an interesting alternative to these end uses because, through this process, grape marc can be recovered, for example, for energy production. The hydrochar produced from this feedstock could be even used as a soil conditioner. In Chapter 4 several analyses on the hydrochar, on the process water and on the gaseous phase obtained during the carbonization tests are presented. The EWC 19.05.03 residue is a by-product of the composting treatment applied to the organic fraction of municipal solid waste (MSW). In collaboration with Contarina S.p.A., a company that collects and treats MSW in the province of Treviso, in the North-East of Italy, this by-product was carbonized and tested both as a soil conditioner and for energy production. Results of the analyses on the solid, liquid and gaseous phases produced by the HTC process are reported in Chapter 5. The EWC 19.12.12 residue is a by-product of the refuse derived fuel (RDF) production, from the residual fraction of the MSW. This substrate was provided by Contarina S.p.A. and preliminary tests on the exploitability of the hydrochar for energy production are reported in Chapter 6, together with analyses on both the liquid and gaseous phases. A rigorous energy balance has been proposed in Chapter 8, based on the experimental data obtained for grape seeds. In this chapter, all the hypotheses and the assumptions taken to evaluate the enthalpy of the HTC reaction at different process conditions (namely, three different temperatures and three residence times) are described. In Chapter 8 a kinetic model is proposed, based on a two-step reaction mechanism. The activation energy and pre-exponential factor of the various degradation reactions were determined by means of least square optimization versus the experimental data of grape marc. A thermo fluid model is even proposed in this chapter. The model integrates mass, momentum and heat equations within the reactor domain by means of the finite volumes method (f.v.m.) approach. Convective and radiative exchange between the reactor and the fluid within the reactor have been implemented in the f.v.m. model. Under two strong assumptions (mono-component and mono-phase fluid, which fulfils the reactor), it was possible to estimate the behaviour of an equivalent fluid (eq_fluid), in terms of thermal properties of the fluid (thermal capacity, thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity). Moreover, a simplified dynamic analytic model is also presented – based on lumped capacitance method – in order to simulate the thermal behaviour of the system, using the actual temperature profile imposed by the reactor external heater. A resistance-capacitance network was used to describe the system. Finally, the Henry’s law has been applied to assess the amount of gas really produced during the HTC process. In Chapter 9, the main conclusions of this work are reported.

Every day, billions of mobile network log data (commonly defined as Call Detailed Records, or CDRs) are generated by cell phones operators. These data provide inspiring insights about human actions and behaviors, which are essentials in the development of context aware appli- cations and services. This potential demand has fostered major research activities in a variety of domains such as social and economic development, urban planning, and health prevention. The major challenge of this thesis is to interpret CDR for human activity recognition, in the light of background knowledge of the CDR data context. Indeed each entry of the CDR is as- sociated with a context, which describes the temporal and spatial location of the user when a particular network data has been generated by his/her mobile devices. Knowing, by leveraging available Web 2.0 data sources, (e.g., Openstreetmap) this research thesis proposes to develop a novel model from combination of logical and statistical reasoning standpoints for enabling human activity inference in qualitative terms. The results aimed at compiling human behavior predictions into sets of classification tasks in the CDRs. Our research results show that Point of Interest (POI)s are a good proxy for predicting the content of human activities in an area. So the model is proven to be effective for predicting the context of human activity, when its total level could be efficiently observed from cell phone data records.

Smart energy city (SEC) development is a component of the urban development initiative smart city, which has been a popular response to the global energy challenge in Europe during the past two decades. SEC development aims to increase the sustainability of urban energy systems and services. Since 2011, SEC development has been supported by the European Commission as part of the Strategic Energy Technology plan (SET-Plan) and through the European Union Programmes for Research and Technological Development (specifically FP7 and Horizon 2020). This, along with the promising vision of SEC development and considerable financial support by the private sector, has encouraged numerous European cities to initiate SEC projects. Successful implementation of these projects at the urban scale is crucial to achievement of urban energy objectives and sustainability of future urban development. The here presented thesis aims to support urban decision-makers towards successful implementation of urban scale smart energy city development in Europe. The study includes three stages. The first stage is dedicated to conceptual analysis. Within this stage, I conceptualized smart city through a keyword analysis of existing literature on the concept. Then, within the context of the smart city concept, I defined SEC development through literature review and expert knowledge elicitation. The second stage is dedicated to empirical investigation. Using the definition of SEC development, I distinguished and investigated 43 previously implemented SEC projects to identify common barriers that hinder successful implementation of SEC development. In addition, I proposed a new multi-dimensional methodology that allows a simultaneous prioritization of barriers against their probability, the level of impact, scale, origin, and relationship with other barriers. The third stage of the thesis is dedicated to learning methodologies that allow efficient transfer of knowledge from the past SEC experiences to the new SEC developments. I introduced the application of two learning methodologies that support decision-makers to predict barriers to the implementation of a new SEC project: case-based learning and decision tree learning. The former predicts barriers based on internal similarities between the new SEC project and the past projects. The latter uses the past projects and creates a predictive model for each barrier based on internal and external project characteristics. These models are later used to predict barriers to a new SEC project. Both methodologies were tested in a new SEC project, named SINFONIA. The conceptual analysis revealed that application of information and communication technologies, the collaboration of multiple stakeholders, integration of multiple urban domains, and sustainability evaluation are the constant characteristics (i.e. principles) of smart city and SEC development. It resulted in, to the best of my knowledge, the first multi-dimensional and comprehensive definition of SEC development, revealing its principles, objectives, domains of intervention, stakeholders, time and spatial dimensions. Furthermore, a list of smart energy solutions in each SEC domain of intervention was provided. The empirical investigation of the past SEC projects resulted in the identification of 35 common barriers to the implementation of SEC development, categorized in policy, administrative, legal, financial, market, environmental, technical, social, and information and awareness dimensions. The barrier prioritization showed that barriers related to collaborative planning, external funding of the project, providing skilled personnel, and fragmented ownership should be the key action priorities for SEC project coordinators. Application of case-based learning methodology resulted in identifying five past SEC projects that were the most similar to the SINFONIA project in terms of project internal characteristics. Investigating the barriers to the similar projects revealed that fragmented ownership is the most probable barrier to implementation of SINFONIA project. Application of the decision trees methodology resulted in generation of 20 barrier models, four of which showed a very good performance in prediction of barriers: lack of values and interest in energy optimization measures, time-consuming requirements by European Commission concerning reporting and accountancy, economic crisis, and local unfavorable regulations for innovative technologies. None of these four barriers were predicted to occur in the SINFONIA project. The application of this method in the SINFONIA showed a higher predicting power when a barrier was absent. The findings of the here presented thesis contribute to successful implementation of SEC development by supporting decision-makers in different phases of SEC projects. The results of the conceptual analysis contribute to a common understanding and foster the dialogue on the concept among various SEC stakeholders, particularly decision-makers and urban planners. The results of the empirical investigation lead to a better comprehension and evaluation of the barriers to the implementation of SEC projects in order to efficiently allocate resources to mitigate barriers. The proposed learning methodologies proved to be promising in helping decision-makers to identify similar projects to a new SEC development and to predict barriers to the implementation of new SEC projects. The thesis concludes that SEC is an outstanding urban development that can make a valuable contribution to the sustainability of urban energy systems. The specific characteristics of SEC development pose new challenges to the future smart and sustainable urban planning. Nevertheless, SEC development brings about unprecedented opportunities for integration and application of advanced quantitative techniques with current urban planning methods. This allows efficient knowledge transfer in not only intra-urban but also inter-urban levels in order to provide a collaborative, integrated and constructive movement towards successful implementation of SEC projects and sustainability of future urban development.

[pt] O homem propõe e exposto a mudanças tecnológicas desde os primeiros dias da humanidade. No entanto, o XX e início do século XXI, apresentou uma aceleração no desenvolvimento de tecnologias que transformam a vida quotidiana. Os mesmos avanços tecnológicos, juntamente com a melhoria da qualidade de vida, têm gerado um acelerado processo de envelhecimento da população e propor um campo de ação que se torna indispensável a considerar para o Design. Este trabalho teve como ponto de partida as questões sobre como idosos interagem com novas tecnologias, qual é a relação que têm com os objetos e serviços que incluem tecnologias que são estranhas ou novas para eles, bem como o impacto e a importância elas têm em suas vidas diárias. Também é importante saber, quais são os fatores que lhes permitem se aproximar ou afastar destas novas tecnologias? Para responder a estas perguntas, foram utilizadas técnicas metodológicas voltadas para o ser humano, e de inspiração etnográfica, design empático e design emocional, como forma de reconhecer o usuário idoso e propor soluções que facilitam a interação entre as pessoas idosas e as novas tecnologias. Esta tese apresenta uma abordagem metodológica de aproximação e compreensão das características e necessidades do usuário idoso. Foi realizado em duas experiências imersivas em casas de convivência para idosos; uma no Rio de Janeiro e outra na Cidade do México. Em ambos os casos foi proposta uma experiência de aprendizagem do uso básico de tablets e computadores para pessoas acima de 70 anos. A experiência serviu como uma técnica de pesquisa e reconhecimento de as motivações, frustrações e desejos que este grupo da população tem com respeito de um tipo particular de tecnologia que era estranha para eles. A partir deste trabalho são apresentados conclusões e considerações que podem ser retomadas pelos designers quando eles enfrentem o desenvolvimento de propostas de design que envolvam novas tecnologias e cujo usuário final são aqueles que excedam os 70 anos. / [en] The human being, generates and exposes himself to technological changes from the earliest days of humanity; however, the 20th and 21st centuries have showed an acceleration in the development of technologies tha t transforms daily life. The same technological advances, added to an improvement in the quality of life, have generated an accelerated aging of the population. Both factors (technology and ageing combined) presents fundamental fields of action to consider for the Design. This work had as its starting points, questions about the way older adults interact and relate with objects and services that include technologies that are new to them, as well as the impact and importance that these artifacts have in their daily lives, or the factors that bring them closer or far away of these new technologies. To answer these questions, human-centered design, empathic and emotional design and ethnographic-inspired methods, were used. This thesis presents a proposal for an approximation and understanding of the characteristics and needs of the elderly adult user related to technologies that are strange to them. It was made in two immersion experiences in recreation centers for seniors; one in Rio de Janeiro and the other in Mexico City. / [es] El ser humano propone y se expone a los cambios tecnológicos desde los primeros días de la humanidad, sin embargo, los siglos XX y XXI, han presentado una aceleración en el desarrollo de tecnologías que transforman la vida diaria. Los mismos avances tecnológicos, sumados a una mejora en la calidad de vida, han generado un acelerado proceso de envejecimiento de la población y proponen un campo de acción que se vuelve indispensable de considerar para el Diseño. Este trabajo tuvo como punto de partida los cuestionamientos acerca de cómo es que los adultos mayores interactúan con los nuevos medios, cuál es la relac ión que tienen con los objetos y servicios que incluyen tecnologías que les son ajenas o nuevas así como el impacto e importancia que tienen en su vida diaria. También es importante reconocer ¿Cuáles son los factores que los acercan o alejan de estas nuevas tecnologías?. Para responder a estos cuestionamientos, fueron utilizadas técnicas metodológicas centradas en el ser humano, y de inspiración etnográfica, el diseño empático y el diseño emocional, como la forma de reconocer al usuario adulto mayor, así como para proyectar propuestas de solución que faciliten la interacción entre los adultos mayores y las nuevas tecnologías. Esta tesis presenta una propuesta de metodología de aproximación y de entendimiento de las características y necesidades del usuario adulto mayor realizada en dos experiencias de inmersión en casas de esparcimiento para adultos mayores; una en Río de Janeiro y otra en la Ciudad de México. En ambos casos, se realizó una experiencia de aprendizaje básico de uso de tabletas y computadoras de escritorio para mayores de 70 años que sirvió como técnica de investigación y reconocimiento de las motivaciones, frustraciones y deseos que este grupo de la población tiene con respecto a un tipo de tecnología en particular que les resultaba ajena. A partir de este trabajo, se presentan conclusiones y consideraciones que pueden ser retomadas por los diseñadores cuando se enfrenten al desarrollo de propuestas de Diseño que involucran nuevas tecnologías y cuyo usuario final sean aquellos que sobrepasan los 70 años.