SPECIAL SESSION #10

Graziella Scandurra

Department of Engineering, University of Messina, Italy

• gscandurra@unime.it

Riccardo Caponetto

Department of Engineering, University of Messina, Italy

• riccardo.caponetto@unime.it

Carmine Ciofi

Department of Engineering, University of Messina, Italy

• cciofi@unime.it

Animal welfare is an increasingly relevant topic in both domestic and livestock environments, with important implications for health, sustainability, and ethical management. From a metrological and technological perspective, the availability of accurate, reliable, and continuous measurements is fundamental to assess animals’ conditions and their interaction with the surrounding environment. Recent advances in sensing technologies, Internet of Things (IoT), smart environments, and data-driven methods enable new measurement-based approaches to animal monitoring and welfare assessment.

This special session is dedicated to measurement, sensing, and monitoring technologies for animal welfare within smart living and farming environments and focuses on the role of the environment as an intelligent measurement system, enhanced through heterogeneous and, possibly, wearable sensors, embedded devices, and data processing techniques, capable of acquiring meaningful parameters related to animal behavior, health, comfort, and environmental quality.

Contributions are encouraged that address the design, calibration, validation, and integration of sensor systems for animal monitoring in smart homes, shelters, livestock facilities, veterinary infrastructures, and outdoor environments.

The session welcomes methodological and applied works leveraging environmental sensing, wearable and non-wearable devices, computer vision, and AI-based processing to extract reliable indicators of animal welfare and to support data-driven decision-making and aims to bring together researchers and practitioners working on measurement science, sensors, and smart environments to discuss innovative metrological solutions for reliable animal monitoring and welfare-oriented applications.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

• Measurement systems and sensor networks for animal monitoring;
• Environmental sensing in smart living and livestock environments;
• Metrology for animal welfare assessment;
• Calibration, validation, and uncertainty evaluation of sensors;
• Multimodal sensing and sensor fusion for behavior and health monitoring;
• Computer vision as a measurement tool for animal behavior;
• Edge and cloud-based measurement architectures;
• Data quality, reliability, and robustness in long-term monitoring;
• Measurement-driven decision support systems;
• Case studies and experimental setups in domestic and farming contexts.

Graziella Scandurra is currently Associate Professor of Electronics at the Department of Engineering, University of Messina, Italy and she obtained the National Scientific Qualification for the role of Full Professor in Electronics, on 11/13/2025. She is Coordinator of the Master's Degree Course in Electronic Engineering for Industry at the same University.
She received the Master’s Degree in Electronic Engineering and the Ph.D. Degree in Information Technology from the University of Messina in 2001 and 2005, respectively. Her current research interests include the design of dedicated, low noise and high sensitivity instrumentation and the characterization of sensors. In addition to the research activity focused on noise, Graziella Scandurra was also involved in research activities aimed at the realization of sensors (on flexible substrates too), at the design of instrumentation for sensors characterization and for FES (Fluctuation Enhanced Sensing) application and at the development of portable instrumentation for medical application and material characterization. She is responsible for the “Instrumentation, Measurement, Reliability and Quality” Laboratory of the University of Messina, where she teaches courses on analog and front-end electronics.

Riccardo Caponetto was born in Catania, Italy, in 1966. He received his degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Catania in 1991 and his Ph.D. degree in 1994 from the same university. He is currently a full Professor of Automatic Control at the Department of Engineering of the University of Messina. His research interests include systems modeling and control, fractional-order systems, and soft computing techniques.

Carmine Ciofi was born in Cosenza, Italy, in 1965. He received the M.Sc. degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy, in 1989, and the Ph.D. Degree from the Scuola Superiore S. Anna, Pisa, in 1993. He joined the Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Informazione, Elettronica Informatica eTelecomunicazioni, University of Pisa, where he remained until 1998. He is currently a Full Professor of Electronics with the Department of Engineering of the University of Messina, Messina, Italy. His main research interests include the characterization and the reliability of electron devices and the design and realization of dedicated electronic instrumentation.