The course aims at providing students with the tools to analyze climate actions, environmental protection and sustainable development performances of countries through the economic complexity methodology, in use among international organizations as the European Commission (https://iri.jrc.ec.europa.eu/complexity), the World Bank and the United Nations (https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/entities/publication/1a3e3a79-9b4e-4fef-b950-c727a54b809b) and including country and regional offices (e.g., Spain https://cotec.es/proyectos-cpt/mapa-de-complejidad-economica-de-espana/; deComunidad Autonoma de Andalusìa https://www.unicajabanco.com/es/sala-de-comunicacion/buscador-noticias/2025/02/el-proyecto-crea-identifica-mas-de-130-oportunidades-de-crecimie).The economic complexity framework, which methods ground on complex network science, stems from the need to unveil the capabilities of territories to innovate [Hidalgo&Hausmann, PNAS, 2009; Tacchella et al., Sci. Reps., 2012, Sciarra et al., Nat. Comms, 2020], and its application has been proved to provide useful insights into systems’ dynamics, as such sustainable development [Sciarra et al., Sci. Reps., 2021; Ma et al., Nat. Comms, 2025], climate action [Costantini et al., Sci. Reps., 2024], labor market [Caldarola et al., arXiv, 2024], and low-carbon transition [Romanello et al., The Lancet Countdown Report, 2024].

Guest Lecture: The proposed teacher for this class is Carla Sciarra, Economic Analyst at the European Commission, Directorate General Joint Research Centre (JRC). At the JRC, Carla provides data-based insights that serve research and innovation policy-makers of the European Union, grounded on technological performances of countries and regions. Carla holds a PhD in Environmental Engineering from Politecnico di Torino and has specialized in the used of complexity tools to track innovation and sustainability performances of countries. She gained international experiences and collaborations with the University College of London, the University of California Berkeley, and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. She has a teaching track record of seven years on climate change and economics. The course first delves into the theory of economic complexity, its foundation in economics and data science, highlighting how its tools can show the innovation capabilities of territories (a special focus will be given to clean technologies for climate action and environmental protection. Indeed, any other technologies and enabling products in industrial and construction process could be analyzed through this framework). The class will provide two relevant example on how the tool can be applied to the sustainable development and climate action topics (in particular, carbon emissions and low-carbon transition for fossil fuels dependent countries). Finally, for an easy hands on approach, students will perform a complexity analysis on products that are relevant for the production of clean technologies (through the analysis of supply chain), trying to define the capabilities of countries (used as case studies) to innovate in certain industrial sectors, and thus unveiling possibilities and challenges. N.B. Although the class proposes the application to the economic complexity framework to the clean technologies any other technologies and enabling products in industrial and construction process could be analyzed through this framework. Thus, the class is open to all Doctoral Schools in Engineering and can provide useful insights for regional development too. The course is an intensive one. Day 1 (4h): Introduction (Laio + Economic Complexity): Day 2 (3h): Data and tools (HS Classification, CPC codes, coding tools). Day 3 (3h): Applications to Climate Action (carbon emissions and low-carbon transition) Day 4 (1.5h): Application to the Sustainable Development Goals Day 5 (4.5h): Case study on clean technologies and final presentation

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Sviluppo di project work in team

P.D.2-2 - Giugno