Interdisciplinar Central Subject List

Author: Giuliano Vitali  
2002-07-01

 

This document introduces to some interdisciplinar subjects, people working on them and their competence.

1. The Context
2. A Reference View Point

3. Present Interests

3.1 Soil Water Relations

3.2 Incoherent Porous Media

3.3 Model Identification

3.4 Decision Making

 

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The Context: Interdisciplinarity VS Multisciplinarity
In applied sciences many subject stay in between two or more disciplines and can be approached only with a multiple competence or close collaborations. While MULTIDISCIPLINARITY focuses on Competences and Resources, INTERDISCIPLINARITY address a main attenction on subjects, and expecially to those which do not pertains traditional studies.Interdisciplinar subjects are often as basic as fundamental however the lack of a local multidisciplinar knowledge together with the time to grow it, discourages attempts of going into them. It follows that, the need for a WHO's Working On Interdisciplinarity, which lists some interdiscinar subjects and the people involved, to increase resource availability and information exchange also between research worlds which nowadays tend to speak different languages.
 

 

 

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A reference View Point
Even if the Site is open to any form of Interdisciplinar Work-in progress, this site is born at University of Bologna inside a Faculty centered on Vegetal Production therefore the site contents will reflect the research environment context:
  • Research Activities at Univerisity of Bologna
  • Research in Natural - Territorial Sciences and Engineering
  • Research in an Agro - Environmental Context

Starting from a naive approach, the World System is, at a first, guessed by a classical physical compartmentalisation:

- Air > Atmosphere
- Ground > Soil / Rocks
- Water > Oceans

Over such a viewpoint we may imagine a series of structural and functional layers, e.g.:

- physical > processes
- chemical > transformations
- biological > live
- intelligence > man

Such layers are investigated by means of a series of tools:

- experimental VS theoretical

- data analysis VS data representation

- formal VS conceptual modelling

 

 

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Present Interests

The site is presently hosting those Interests which are deeply characterised by INTERDISCIPLINARITY, in the realm of the disciplines drawn above.

The subjects listed below are studied as a part-time research and developped in parallel to other founded researches.

It follows that no available public material can be found on this site.

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Soil Water Relations: Rapid in Situ Measurements

Crop Science and Hydrology assisted since 1960s to the birth of new science, the Soil Physics, addreessed to the study of one of the major earth media: soil. Even if many theories have been developped and are now considered as reliable for the majority of applications, soil remains one of less understood systems, and a new generation of theories are facing the scientific literature, together with a renewal of more sofisticated measures, all in the name of worldwide problems as water resource access and conservation. New age Soil Physicists need knowledge of recent development in the fields of Materials and Electronics , the latter both for data acknoledgemnt (transducers) and for signal conditioning and digital transformation, which may occurs at several points of the path of information. Such information is finally moved to some elaborator, where computer scientist's techniques is more and more required.

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Incoherent Porous Media: Soil Water Dynamics

Soil Physics born from the efforts of few authors to apply already known Partial Differential Equations from Continuous Dynamics to the Soil Moisture field. The development were quick and surprising at the beginning, but recently the Continuous Medium Paradigm leaves unsatisfied a growing number of researchers. The Continuous Model was and still is a fundamental brick of many applications (as in Hydrology), even if its limits let it appear as a strainer. Runoff generation, preferential flow, isteretic behaviour are some of the phenomena which are not comprised in a unified interpretative model for soil water dynamics. At the end of 1980's models based on scale dependency (e.g. Fractals) begun to appear and now Soil Research are close as ever to new perspectives for interpretation of the Soil System. Going into such theme requires a mix of competences in Soil Physics, Physics, Applied Mathematics, Sochastic Process Mathematics.

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Model Identification: An Optimum Plant Growth Model

A common problem of Complex System as Natural ones (Crop Systems, Hydrological Systems, Territorial Systems, ...) stay in Model Identification, which means identification of the (best) model adherent to the Experimental Framework, which in turn allows us the knowledge of the Real System structure and behaviour. Approaching such a a subject requires the knowledge of multiple programming languages supporting different information paradigms from one side, and a deep knowledge of a Complex System, from the other side, so as to be able to coin continuously opeartive and reliable examples to check the tool.

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Decision Making: Management of Agronomic Operations

A typical application of Crop Science is Desion Making about Management at short time, as pesticide application or irrigations, as much as long time planning as breed selection and economy driven planting and harvesting. At a territorial level decision is also coupled to other non-agronomic factors related to other human activities and land use. In all of these cases since 1970's Decison Support Softwares has become to appear to allow for specific knowledge be available toFarmers or Extension Service technicians. In these kind of applications a Knowledge Engineer is required to interact with Agronomists and Crop / Land Engineers for Designing the Information Structure, Formalisation of Knowledge and Modelling Interaction.

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  • Giuliano Vitali (DiSTA-UNIBO)
    Knowledge Engineer

  • Luigi Cavazza (DiSTA-UNIBO)
    Crop Scientist

  • Alberto Vicari (DiSTA-UNIBO)
    Crop Scientist

  • Guido Baldoni (DiSTA-UNIBO)
    Crop Scientist

 

 

 

 

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The subjects above are all Work in Progress ... which means:

1. They have been started and objectives and technology are largely defined

2. You can obtain Know How IF you decide to partecipate

3. Your partecipation is meant in term of Resources = People Sharing and/or Founds

Contact: Giuliano Vitali