Since December 2019, Coronavirus has been spreading rapidly across the world. From its early stages, while the rest of the world was still new to COVID-19, Italy was one of the first and most severely hit countries. The chronic nature of the COVID-19 outbreak and untimely treatments were translated into an unstable social and emotional environment. This study explores the societal response to the first wave of the pandemic outbreak in Italy, looking at geographic variations, social and policy perspectives, and sentiments across northern, central, and southern regions. For this study, we collected nearly three million tweets associated with the coronavirus outbreak in the Italian regions of Lombardy, Lazio, and Sicily, during the months of March-May, 2020. A sentiment analysis was developed to (i) identify the spatio-temporal distribution of the polarity patterns of anger, fear, and joy; (ii) test correlation between these sentiments and COVID-19 cases; and (iii) determine the statistical significance between the sentiments across geographies. Findings provide insights on the relationship between sentiment variations and spatio-temporal case distribution associated with regional differences. These findings align with those of the “Track IT. COVID-19 International Survey,” that investigated the societal response of Italians to the new measures enforced by local governments. Overall, the findings of this study can be weaved together into important implications for emotional wellbeing and economic perspective.

The pandemic spread rapidly across Italy, putting the region’s health system on the brink of collapse, and generating concern regarding the government’s capacity to respond to the needs of patients considering isolation measures. This study developed a sentiment analysis using millions of Twitter data during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in 10 metropolitan cities in Italy’s (1) north: Milan, Venice, Turin, Bologna; (2) central: Florence, Rome; (3) south: Naples, Bari; and (4) islands: Palermo, Cagliari. Questions addressed are as follows: (1) How did tweet-related sentiments change over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, and (2) How did sentiments change when lagged with policy shifts and/or specific events? Findings show an assortment of differences and connections across Twitter sentiments (fear, anger, and joy) based on policy measures and geographies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Results can be used by policy makers to quantify the satisfactory level of positive/negative acceptance of decision makers and identify important topics related to COVID-19 policy measures, which can be useful for imposing geographically varying lockdowns and protective measures using historical data.

This study employs a survey to investigate the societal response to COVID-19 in Italy. Data were collected via snowball sampling during the period April 2020 to April 2021 using the ArcGIS Survey 123 survey instrument. The study collected and analyzed 64 responses to investigate various aspects related to COVID-19. The areas covered in the analysis include socioeconomics, changing symptoms, relocation, physical distancing, health, social behaviors (past and future), personal attitudes, perceptions of government/public response and efficacy, beliefs, travel habits, well-being, current event worries, pandemic challenges, depression, vaccine, public opinion, personality, public health measures, social media preference, and contact with others. The study’s results provide a snapshot of how people across Italy experienced the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and can help public health organizations, decision-makers, and the general public address policies related to symptoms, social distance, policy measures/regulations, and social behaviors during the different policy phases and wave measures related to COVID-19 effects.

The AIT/AIV spacecraft test campaign undergoes an electrical verification program for all the units and instruments. The SpaceWire standard calls for LVDS signals in the physical layer and these are considered critical because the present LVDS technology is capable to drive signals up to 400 Mbit/s with low common mode voltage. Reliable SpaceWire communication can be difficult in the presence of induced noise, ground level differences, impedance mismatches, failure to effectively bias for idle line conditions, and other hazards associated with installation of a SpW network within the spacecraft. Therefore, the verification steps of SpW signals are very important and they shall be addressed with special care. Moreover, the new revision of the SpaceWire standard ECSS-E-ST-50-12C* rev.1 (currently under review) defines new requirements for the SpW signals in particular for the skew and the jitter budget and the margins. In addition, responsibilities for the two main actors (i.e. the unit manufacturer and the cable assembly manufacturer) are defined via jitter and skew budget calculation. All these aspects motivated ESA to the internal development of boards to perform the new requirement tests. This paper will summarize the related test campaign and the test coverage of various clauses of the new revision of the standard. A comprehensive plan and recommendations for the validation measurement of SpW link from the design to the final qualification/acceptance is proposed, distinguishing responsibilities among system architect, component manufacturer, unit supplier, cable assembly manufacturer and system integrator. References to on-going ESA projects will be presented. The effect on the overall skew and jitter budget calculation is discussed as well.