PRIN PNRR 2022 - DiGiur - Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza

DAFNE (Democratic governance of Automated systems for Fake NEws)

Breve descrizione, finalità e risultati attesi: DAFNE (Democratic governance of Automated systems in Fake NEws detection) provides a legal impact assessment of fake news moderation systems and details high-level guidelines for their development and deployment in accordance with fundamental rights and the rule of law. In particular, DAFNE has three main objectives: 1) Empirical objective: it expands empirical knowledge on the development and use of automated systems to detect and moderate fake news. It examines the actors involved, employed technologies, delegated tasks, relevant processes, and how each component interacts with others. 2) Legal-doctrinal objective: it provides a deeper understanding of the concept of fake news and the legal challenges connected to their automated moderation. It considers the legal relevance of fake news connecting it to the existing legal concepts and theories. It analyses the impact of fake news moderation on fundamental rights (e.g., freedom of expression, privacy etc.). It covers the obligations and legal responsibilities of actors and assesses legal procedures, including issues linked to jurisdiction and applicable law. 3) Legal-regulatory objective: it reviews existing EU, national and transnational principles, rules, codes and standards applicable to moderation systems and maps the existing regulatory models, considering the extent to which they contribute to implementing fundamental rights. It suggests regulatory actions and design to reconcile effective fight against disinformation and the protection of freedom of expression/the rule of law. The project pursues the above objectives focusing on two domains, i.e., online commerce and political communication. DAFNE employs an interdisciplinary approach, which combines expertise in EU, national, international public and private law, fundamental rights law, data and consumer protection law, ICT Law, legal informatics, socio-technical studies and AI ethics. It develops a multi-layered methodology based on qualitative, empirical and doctrinal research, consisting of data collection, socio-technical methods, legal research, and regulatory design. DAFNE has the potential to have a strong impact on science and technology, placing Italian legal research and practice at the forefront of the ethical and human-centred development of technology. It provides new knowledge in the field of fake news moderation, legal concepts, rights and procedures connected to fundamental rights protection and details guidelines for legal compliance for developers/deployers. DAFNE also contributes to societal and economic developments. It clarifies the legal framework applicable to fake news moderation systems, thus facilitating compliance by online actors, and identifies the need for new laws/regulatory paradigms to better protect fundamental rights. It increases citizens’ digital literacy and awareness of legal rights and procedures, thus empowering users vis-a-vis online platforms and fostering trust in the digital economy

Importo totale del finanziamento: € 241.820

Importo totale UniUrb: € 82.545

Periodo: 30/11/2023 – 29/11/2025

Struttura UniUrb di riferimento: Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza

Referente UniUrb: Prof.ssa Licia Califano

Codice Progetto: P2022R7RS9_001

CUP: H53D23010930001

PRIORITY. Shaping the Prosecution Organisational Model of Criminal Reports

Breve descrizione, finalità e risultati attesi:  As the offices of public prosecutors do not have sufficient resources to handle all the crime reports they receive, the public prosecutors are forced to indicate, in the organisational plans of the office, what reports are to be given priority. Law no. 71/2022 established that these priority indications shall be made, from now on, in compliance with general criteria to be set by the Parliament. This aims at levelling out as much as possible the prosecutors’ choices throughout the Country, as well as ensuring compliance with the constitutional principles of trial efficiency and mandatory prosecution. This research intends to provide the Parliament and public prosecutors with effective tools to apply the new rules. The work is composed of several parts and includes numerous units to portray local and regional features and to ensure an in-depth analysis of possible problems arising from the aforementioned rules. The first phase of the research will focus on collecting data on how Italian public prosecutors’ offices currently make priority choices. The cataloguing of organisational plans will be followed by specific questionnaires and by an analysis of software used in the judicial system for the effective management of the workload. The second phase will be devoted to processing the data collected locally and to identifying problematic profiles to be investigated by the units. The analysis will be carried out by looking both at the state of the art in doctrine and jurisprudence, as well as at the most relevant civil law and common law systems suitable for comparison. In the third phase, the results will be analysed to provide institutions with proposals for managing crime reports flows. This activity will lead to:

a) a regulatory model for identifying the general criteria for the definition of priorities;

b) a prototype to organise public prosecution offices on the basis of said priorities;

c) a mathematical model and the related software to implement the aforementioned organisational plans.

The last phase will be devoted to dissemination. The proposals will be presented and discussed with representatives of the Parliament and the judiciary. The findings will also be published and updated on a dedicated website, as well as disseminated within the scientific community through the organisation of conferences and the publication of a collective work.

Importo totale del finanziamento: € 242.942

Importo totale UniUrb: € 9.525

Periodo: 30/11/2023 – 29/11/2025

Struttura UniUrb di riferimento: Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza

Referente UniUrb: Prof.ssa Chiara Gabrielli

Codice Progetto: P2022P84H7_008

CUP: H53D23010900001

From Beaches to Coasts: towards an Integrated Protection of the Coasts. Acronimo: BeProCoasts

Breve descrizione, finalità e risultati attesi: This research project is about the protection of the coasts, with special regard to Italy. For the purposes of the research project, coastal protection must be interpreted as a unitary but multi-faceted concept that includes both the protection of coasts in a strict sense (that is, their preservation and conservation of integrity) and the enhancement of coastal zones (that is, an advancement of knowledge about Italian coasts and, thus, an increase in the quality of regulation, planning, management and regulatory enforcement regarding private and public uses of coasts). In this sense, the protection of the coasts and their enhancement are ends or goals, while regulation, planning, management and regulatory enforcement are means or instruments. The underlying assumption is that both ends and means should be taken into due account and both must be considered in light of "Do No Significant Harm" principle that is established by EU law. The research project has three main distinguishing traits: it proposes an approach to coastal protection that is dynamic, interdisciplinary, and helpful for policy formation and management in this field. The approach must be dynamic in the sense of being rooted in an adequate understanding of climate change. In this respect, while the 20th century was characterized by the shoreline advance, the 21st century is characterized by the shoreline retreat caused by an erosion that is closely connected with climate change and which according to the EU Commission "could result in the near extinction of almost half of the world’s sandy beaches by the end of the century". This requires a number of new initiatives to build the capacity to monitor and assess the new challenges. It is precisely because there are several challenges concerning coasts (erosion, also as a result of climate change; lack of orderly and regular planning of the various uses; threats deriving from unchecked human action) that they can only be properly understood against the background of an inter-disciplinary approach. Finally, in addition to providing an advancement of knowledge concerning coastal protection, the approach that is being proposed may provide insights for adjusting public policies which in the last decade or so have placed excessive emphasis on the administrative regime of beaches. Concretely, the research project is characterized by plurality of areas and of types of deliverables. On the one hand, there are four areas to which the new inter-disciplinary inquiry might usefully direct its researches; that is, fact assessment, indicators, policy-making and, last but not least, legal standards. On the other hand, there will be various types of deliverables, including a new website, various scholarly works (an edited book, some articles in leading scientific journals, and a thematic atlas of coastal sustainability in Italy), a glossary, a set of indicators and, finally, a report with best practices and recommendations.

Importo totale del finanziamento: € 236.612

Importo totale UniUrb: € 41.916

Periodo: 30/11/2023 – 29/11/2025

Struttura UniUrb di riferimento: Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza

Referente UniUrb: Prof. Matteo Gnes

Codice Progetto: P2022WCTEW_005

CUP: H53D23010970001