VIU News
The first DISCO General Assembly of 2025 was held online over two productive days, on 26th and 27th March 2025. This virtual gathering brought together all project partners to reflect on recent achievements, share key updates, and align on the next steps for the project’s development.
Resilience has been the theme of this semester’s Plenary Workshop, one of the most anticipated and carefully planned events of the semester. The workshop took place on Friday April 11.
Rolling admissions are open for the last places in some of our 2025 Summer Schools:
- Ethics and Health Care
- Wandering Across Sustainable Terrains and Environments
- Advanced Transportation, Logistics, and Supply Chain Management
April 7-8, 2025
Earlier this year, a successful online kick-off of VIU's new Cities and Global Change Research Network was held on January 22, bringing together over 30 participants from VIU's member institutions. The virtual gathering marked the launch of a promising collaboration focused on some of the most pressing challenges facing today’s urban environments.
Building on this momentum, a two-day in-person workshop was held last week on April 7-8, 2025, bringing together 23 scholars and research officers from 10 member institutions to shape the agenda of the research network.
Navigating the Venice Archipelago. Lagoon Stories for Sustainable Futures is an interactive multimedia exhibit developed by Venice International University in collaboration with the University of Padua and is displayed in the Italian pavilion at Osaka Expo 2025.
Visitors engage with the immersive exhibit using a large touch screen to explore the history of the city and its lagoon, choosing different thematic itineraries: water and food, public health, city defense, religious settlements, historic ceremonies and festivities, and sustainability in the present day.
Starting on April 18, 2025, occasional visitors and day-trippers to the city of Venice will have to pay an "Access Fee" to the Municipality of Venice on selected dates.
Students and professors of VIU activities are exempt from the payment.
The Silent Echoes of a Great Sound Sculpture
(The Campanone of St. Peter’s Basilica)
curated by: Umberto Vattani and Valentino Catricalà
with the support of: Enel, Gruppo FS Italiane, and Meyer Sound
from February 16, 2025 - 8 pm to 10 pm
As part of the 2025 Jubilee - Basilica of St. Peter - Vatican City, Rome
February 21 - March 30, 2025
San Servolo Island
DISCO will be presented at the RTR Conference during the session "Digital innovative solutions for sustainable urban logistics" on the 11th February 2025, 16:30-18:45
The European Conference on Results from Research Projects on Road Transport (RTR Conference) will return for a 7th time in Brussels, Belgium from 5-7 February 2024.
The RTR Conference is a unique entry point into the achievement of EU-funded projects in road transport.
Thursday, December 19, 2024
5 pm, Aula Magna (1E)
CERTH, CEntre for Reasearch and Technology Hellas, has officially launched the first version of the Meta Model Suite that is reachable HERE:
The Model Suite is a tool:
_to know more about DISCO;
_to assess the Phisical Internet readiness of your city;
_to select the most suitable DISCO-X for your case;
_to get guidance on how to implement it.
Venice International University (VIU), in collaboration with Iuav University of Venice and Sabanci University in Istanbul, present the exhibition Manutius and the Book Revolution at the Italian Pavilion at the Frankfurt Book Fair, October 16-20, 2024.
The exhibition "Manutius and the Book Revolution" takes visitors on an immersive journey through Renaissance Venice, where Aldus Manutius revolutionized the world of books. Through interactive displays, the exhibition explores his life, the tools in his workshop, and the city he lived in.
Visitors can experience Venice of the time through a unique installation and learn about Manutius’ groundbreaking inventions, including the portable book format and innovations in typography that forever transformed the literary world. The exhibition also features beautiful illustrations from the most famous book printed by Manutius, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphilii, and an original Aldine edition from 1513, offering a rich exploration of his lasting legacy.
The exhibition set up in the Italian Pavilion also highlights the influence of Manutius in the Ottoman Empire.
Registration Open for the Joint Webinar on Find Space for Mobility and Logistics Data
October 29, 2024 at 13:00 – 14:30 CET
The rules for common European data spaces will cover areas like health, mobility, environment, energy and agriculture, to make better use of publicly held data for research for the common good, support voluntary data sharing by individuals, and. set up structures to enable key organisations to share data. However, application of data space in urban mobility, particularly how to apply data space in the urban logistics sector, is still in flux. Currently, there is a project (deployEMDS) working on European Mobility Data Space, and DISCO aims to application of data space in urban logistics. In the framework of DISCO project, an award dedicated to data space integration will be announced in October, and this webinar will invite the winner to share their practice.
This webinar will invite experts in data space and pioneers of using data space in the urban mobility sector, and engage with current R&I project practitioners to exchange views, and inform each other technical development and implementation.
Monday, October 14, 2024
4.30 pm, Room 9A
Venice International University, San Servolo Island
Danielle Hipkins, Professor at University of Exeter
Romana Andò, Professor at Sapienza Università di Roma
Leonardo Campagna, Research Assistant at Sapienza Università di Roma
Maria Elena Alampi, Postdoctoral Research Assistant at the University of Exeter
Wednesday, March 19, 2025
4.30 pm CET, Room 1G
Venice International University, San Servolo Island
Francesco Goglia, Professor at University of Exeter
Francesco Della Puppa, Associate Professor at Ca’ Foscari
Giulia Ferro, Research Fellow at Ca’ Foscari
Valeria Tonioli, Research Fellow at Ca’ Foscari
Wednesday, April 9, 2025
4.30 pm CEST, Room 1E
Venice International University, San Servolo Island
Jill R. Horwitz, Founding Faculty Director of the Lowell Milken Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofits, UCLA
Registration is open for the Webinar: From theory to practice - Demonstration and planned development of the DISCO Urban Freight Data Space
November 5, 2024 at 10:00 – 11:00 CET
This webinar aims to address Data Spaces, first through a short introduction on what data spaces are, including their role in enabling secure, sovereign, and interoperable data sharing among organizations, sectors, or regions, their benefits, principles and architecture. Then guide participants from theory to practice showcasing the capabilities of the DISCO Urban Freight Data Space DEMO version and following with the next steps. In this way, we aim to dive a bit deeper into the topic and complement the first two webinars on Data Spaces conducted within the DISCO project.
Registration is open for the Webinar: Key Performance Indicators Framework – the experience of DISCO project
November 19, 2024 at 10:00 – 11:00 CET
This webinar aims to provide an understanding of what Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are, why they are important, and how they are used to measure urban logistic solutions and initiatives. Choosing the most relevant and actionable KPIs is essential to ensure their alignment with strategic city goals, and their practicability and effectiveness to facilitate monitoring and evaluation. This webinar will showcase the insights, challenges and solutions identified within the DISCO project and DISCO Living Labs to effectively address KPIs as a crucial step in monitoring DISCO implementation. The KPI dashboard developed within the project will also be shown.
On September 25, 2024 the Ambassador of the People's Republic of China, Jia Guide, visited the Venice International University, where he was received by the president, Ambassador Umberto Vattani.
During the meeting, the VIU delegation briefed Ambassador Guide on the longstanding relationship between Venice International University and Chinese institutions, in particular through the training activities that began in 2003 to promote the human factor and capacity building as a fundamental driver of sustainable development, contributing to China's development of strategies to address environmental management and sustainability issues.
