The participants at this international workshop noted that the political situation in the UK has been confused and in many respects unpredictable in the immediate wake of the recent EU membership referendum. This is especially because the outcome of the vote caught many of the key players unawares in both the “leave” and “remain” camps.
Smart cities: drivers for energy management and quality of life
The Paris Agreement has received mixed assessments, but it is widely recognized that it is indeed a step in the right direction. The framework allows for improvements and adjustments with respect to the key goal: Paris aims for peaking of global Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions as soon as possible and undertaking rapid reductions thereafter.
However, the 2°C target is unlikely to be achieved without the adoption of new policies and technologies.
By way of opening premise, the participants at this National Interest event observed that nanotechnologies have for several years now been at the center of global technological and scientific development and are based on the ability to control matter on an atomic scale. They are highly multidisciplinary in nature and have gained importance in many fields of scientific and technological interest.
Aspen Institute Italia’s aim in organizing this roundtable was to spark debate on the current economic conditions and future development prospects of southern Italy, in the belief that it is essential for the issue of the country’s neglected South to be once again tackled as a key concern of national policy.
Opening discussions at this National Interest session was the observation that new advanced therapies, which are being increasingly adopted today, represent a real revolution in the health sector. They look set to enable a redefinition of the medical as well as social approach to dealing with diseases, especially those defined as rare, which affect around 500 people per million of the population and for which there is largely no treatment available.
The attendees of the 21st Annual Conference for the Friends of Aspen pointed to development at an exponential pace, near-total ubiquity, and an increasing integration of man and machine as the defining features of the unfolding technological revolution – a new paradigm that would seem to be redrawing the very boundaries of epistemology.
Participants agreed that this year has been particularly complicated for the world economy. Risks are popping up in new places and the key role played in the past by the BRICS has faded to some extent. Geopolitical insecurity abounds in Europe (given the Brexit referendum, elections in Spain, difficulties in Greece, conflict in Ukraine, etc.) and the big question mark hanging over the American elections is also a source of instability. Turning these changes into opportunities requires reviewing the cards on the table and shuffling the deck.
Big Data is now ubiquitous. No longer confined to niche fields like astrophysics, genomics and machine learning, the analysis of massive databases is now applied to such diverse areas as retailing, human resources, traffic management, energy consumption or healthcare. Big Data already provides imaginative solutions to countless social, economic, and commercial problems that seemed intractable just a few years ago.
The most common tendency in times of need, in times of crisis – and today is no exception – is to turn to the state. The context, however, is different today. A full-blown Copernican-style revolution is underway in society, the economy, politics and culture. Competitiveness and investments need boosting, the public debt needs reducing and private savings are not in the best of health either thanks to the downturn. The factors that generate productivity need rational reconsideration.
Underpinning discussions at this Aspen Seminar for Leaders session devoted to the future of healthcare was the acknowledgement that major advances in research and the boost in diagnostic capabilities ensured by Big Data are shifting the development of medicine in the direction of personalized treatments, which are characterized by a stronger focus on prevention.
The consensus which emerged from this Aspen Seminars for Leaders session was that an innovative approach to the issue of infrastructure in Italy requires the notion itself to be redefined and its boundaries redrawn. Indeed, if the term “infrastructure” is considered to extend to that which is useful to the development and competitiveness of the country, then it would seem unavoidable for any analysis to be expanded to include all those systems that enable individuals and businesses to live and operate as best as possible.
This Aspen Seminar for Leaders session focused on the prevailing industrial scenario, characterized as one in which all stages of production are increasingly being swept up in the move towards digitalization and the advent of manufacturing 4.0, raising crucial questions regarding how to seize the opportunities afforded by the revolution underway.
The participants at this Meeting for The Aspen Junior Fellows openly acknowledged that standing up to international comparison represents one of the key challenges for Italy’s university education system posed by globalization.
The discussions at this roundtable session were informed by a series of questions posed at the event regarding the purposes served today by Italy’s national public broadcaster (RAI), and whether it still makes sense to talk of public broadcasting in this day and age.
The UN Rome-Based Agencies—the World Food Programme (WFP), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)—develop and implement critical food security and humanitarian interventions at the global level. Each agency’s impact is magnified through effective collaboration and partnerships with corporations, NGOs, and national governments, play a growing role in scaling pilot projects and marshaling funds for urgently needed food system development.
