Price Formation and Real Estate Characteristics Residential Real Estate, Lisbon - Portugal

Análisis del proceso de formación de precios en el mercado residencial de Lisboa desde el punto de vista de la eliminación de los aspectos subjetivos de la apreciación por el tasador de las características de los inmuebles

The Economic Value of Residential Land in Historical Areas: An Application of the Residual Method to the Secondary Market

Land value bears significant weight in house prices in historical town centers. An essential aim for regulating the mortgage market, particularly in the financial and property crisis that countries such as Spain are undergoing, is to have at hand objective procedures for its valuation, whatever the conditions (location, construction, planning). Of all the factors contributing to house price make-up, the land is the only one whose value does not depend on acquisition cost, but rather on the location-time binomial. That is to say, the specific circumstances at that point and at the exact moment of valuation. For this reason, the most commonly applied procedure for land valuation in town centers is the use of the residual method: once the selling price of new housing in a district is known, the other necessary costs and expenses of development are deducted, including those of building and the developer’s profit. The value left is that of the land. To apply these procedures it is vital to have figures such as building costs, technical fees, tax costs, etc. But, above all, it is essential to obtain the selling price of the new housing. This is not always feasible, on account of the lack of newbuild development in this location. This shortage of information occurs in historical town cities, where urban renewal is slight due to the heritage-protection policies, and where, nevertheless there is substantial activity in the secondary market. In these circumstances, as an alternative for land valuation in consolidated urban areas, we have the adaptation of the residual method to the particular characteristics of the secondary market. To these ends, there is the proposal for the appreciation of the dwelling which follows, in a backwards direction, the application of traditional depreciation methods proposed by the various valuation manuals and guidelines. The reliability of the results obtained is analyzed by contrasting it with published figures for newly-built properties, according to different rules applied in administrative appraisals in Spain and the incidence of an eventual correction due to conservation state.

New Constructive Solutions to Improve Energy Efficiency in Existing Buildings and their Economic Viability

The improvement of energy efficiency in existing buildings is always a challenge due to their particular, and sometimes protected, constructive solutions. New constructive regulations in Spain leave a big undefined gap when a restoration is considered because they were developed for new buildings. However, rehabilitation is considered as an opportunity for many properties because it allows owners to obtain benefits from the use of the buildings. The current financial and housing crisis has turned society point of view to existing buildings and making them more efficient is one of the Spanish government’s aims. The economic viability of a rehabilitation action should take all factors into account: both construction costs and the future operative costs of the building must be considered. Nevertheless, the application of these regulations in Spain is left to the designer’s opinion and always under a subjective point of view. With the research work described in this paper and with the help of some case-studies, the cost of adapting an existing building to the new constructive regulations will be studied and Energetic Efficiency will be evaluated depending on how the investment is recovered. The interest of the research is based on showing how new constructive solutions can achieve higher levels of efficiency in terms of energy, construction and economy and it will demonstrate that Life Cycle Costing analysis can be a mechanism to find the advantages and disadvantages of using these new constructive solutions. Therefore, this paper has the following objectives: analysing constructive solutions in existing buildings - to establish a process for assessing total life cycle costs (LCC) during the planning stages with consideration of future operating costs - to select the most advantageous operating system – To determine the return on investment in terms of construction costs based on new techniques, the achieved energy savings and investment payback periods.

Comparison of vibration and rolling noise emission of resilient and solid monobloc railway wheels in underground lines

Flat or worn wheels rolling on rough or corrugated tracks can provoke airborne noise and ground-borne vibration, which can be a serious concern for nearby neighbours of urban rail transit lines. Among the various treatments used to reduce vibration and noise, resilient wheels play an important role. In conventional resilient wheels, a slightly prestressed V­shaped rubber ring is mounted between the steel wheel centre and tyre. The elastic layer enhances rolling noise and vibration suppression, as well as impact reduction on the track. In this paper the effectiveness of resilient wheels in underground lines, in comparison to monobloc ones, is assessed. The analysed resilient wheel is able to carry greater loads than standard resilient wheels used for light vehicles. It also presents a greater radial resiliency and a higher axial stiffness than conventional V­wheels. The finite element method was used in this study. A quarter car model was defined, in which the wheelset was modelled as an elastic body. Several simulations were performed in order to assess the vibrational behaviour of elastic wheels, including modal, harmonic and random vibration analysis, the latter allowing the introduction of realistic vertical track irregularities, as well as the influence of the running speed. Due to numerical problems some simplifications were needed. Parametric variations were also performed, in which the sensitivity of the whole system to variations of rubber prestress and Poisson’s ratio of the elastic material was assessed.Results are presented in the frequency domain, showing a better performance of the resilient wheels for frequencies over 200 Hz. This result reveals the ability of the analyzed design to mitigate rolling noise, but not structural vibrations, which are primarily found in the lower frequency range.

Stress Detection by means of Stress Physiological Template

This paper describes a stress detection system based on fuzzy logic and two physiological signals: Galvanic Skin Response and Heart Rate. Instead of providing a global stress classification, this approach creates an individual stress templates, gathering the behaviour of individuals under situations with different degrees of stress. The proposed method is able to detect stress properly with a rate of 99.5%, being evaluated with a database of 80 individuals. This result improves former approaches in the literature and well-known machine learning techniques like SVM, k-NN, GMM and Linear Discriminant Analysis. Finally, the proposed method is highly suitable for real-time applications

A robustness verification system for mobile phone authentication based on gestures using Linear Discriminant Analysis

This article evaluates an authentication technique for mobiles based on gestures. Users create a remindful identifying gesture to be considered as their in-air signature. This work analyzes a database of 120 gestures of different vulnerability, obtaining an Equal Error Rate (EER) of 9.19% when robustness of gestures is not verified. Most of the errors in this EER come from very simple and easily forgeable gestures that should be discarded at enrollment phase. Therefore, an in-air signature robustness verification system using Linear Discriminant Analysis is proposed to infer automatically whether the gesture is secure or not. Different configurations have been tested obtaining a lowest EER of 4.01% when 45.02% of gestures were discarded, and an optimal compromise of EER of 4.82% when 19.19% of gestures were automatically rejected.

Gaussian Multiscale Aggregation oriented to Hand Biometric Segmentation in Mobile Devices

New trends in biometrics are oriented to mobile devices in order to increase the overall security in daily actions like bank account access, e-commerce or even document protection within the mobile. However, applying biometrics to mobile devices imply challenging aspects in biometric data acquisition, feature extraction or private data storage. Concretely, this paper attempts to deal with the problem of hand segmentation given a picture of the hand in an unknown background, requiring an accurate result in terms of hand isolation. For the sake of user acceptability, no restrictions are done on background, and therefore, hand images can be taken without any constraint, resulting segmentation in an exigent task. Multiscale aggregation strategies are proposed in order to solve this problem due to their accurate results in unconstrained and complicated scenarios, together with their properties in time performance. This method is evaluated with a public synthetic database with 480000 images considering different backgrounds and illumination environments. The results obtained in terms of accuracy and time performance highlight their capability of being a suitable solution for the problem of hand segmentation in contact-less environments, outperforming competitive methods in literature like Lossy Data Compression image segmentation (LDC).

The future obligations of "project manager" as construction integral director (DIPE) in the law of buildings construction in spain (LOE)

In the year 1999 approves the Law of Construction Building (LOE, in Spanish) to regulate a sector such as construction, which contained some shortcomings from the legal point of view. Currently, the LOE has been in force 12 years, changing the spanish world of the construction, due to influenced by internationalization. Within the LOE, there regulating the different actors involved in the construction building, as the Projects design, the Director of Construction, the developer, The builder, Director of execution of the construction (actor only in Spain, similar as construcion engineer and abroad in), control entities and the users, but lacks figure Project manager will assume the delegation of the promoter helping and you organize, direct and management the process. This figure assumes that the market and contracts are not legally regulated in Spain, then should define and establish its regulation in the LOE. (Spain Construction Law) The translation in spanish of the words "Project Manager is owed to Professor Rafael de Heredia in his book Integrated Project Management, as agent acting on behalf of the organization and promoter assuming control of the project, ie Integraded Project Management . Already exist in Spain, AEDIP (Spanish Association Integrated of Project Construction management) which comprises the major companies in “Project Management” in Spain, and MeDIP (Master in Integrated Construction Project) the largest and most advanced studies at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, in "Construction Project Management" they teach which is also in Argentina. The Integrated Project ("Project Management") applied to the construction process is a methodological technique that helps to organize, control and manage the resources of the promoters in the building process. When resources are limited (which is usually most situations) to manage them efficiently becomes very important. Well, we find that in this situation, the resources are not only limited, but it is limited, so a comprehensive control and monitoring of them becomes not only important if not crucial. The alternative of starting from scratch with a team that specializes in developing these follow directly intervening to ensure that scarce resources are used in the best possible way requires the use of a specific methodology (Manual DIP, Matrix Foreign EDR breakdown structure EDP Project, Risk Management and Control, Design Management, et ..), that is the methodology used by "Projects managers" to ensure that the initial objectives of the promoters or investors are met and all actors in process, from design to construction company have the mind aim of the project will do, trying to get their interests do not prevail over the interests of the project. Among the agents listed in the building process, "Project Management" or DIPE (Director Comprehensive building process, a proposed name for possible incorporation into the LOE, ) currently not listed as such in the LOE (Act on Construction Planning ), one of the agents that exist within the building process is not regulated from the legal point of view, no obligations, ie, as is required by law to have a project, a builder, a construction management, etc. DIPE only one who wants to hire you as have been advanced knowledge of their services by the clients they have been hiring these agents, there being no legal obligation as mentioned above, then the market is dictating its ruling on this new figure, as if it were necessary, he was not hired and eventually disappeared from the building process. As the aim of this article is regular the process and implement the name of DIPE in the Spanish Law of buildings construction (LOE)

Health and safety in the construction : subject pending to be included in the curriculum of architecture in Spain

The art of construction is a risky activity that directly affects the life and physical integrity of persons. Since the approval of Law 31/1995, of November 8, Prevention of Occupational Risks was the first legislation that established the current basis in all sectors and then transposed into Spanish law Directive 92/57/CEE called Royal Decree 1627/1997 of October 24, on minimum safety and health dispositions in construction works, measures have been proposed to develop a mixed body of scientific literature composed of researchers and professionals in the field of occupational safety and health, but even today there is still no clear and firm proposal, showing a lack of awareness in the occupational risk prevention and, therefore, a consolidation of the culture of prevention in society. Therefore, the technicians, who make up the building process, can incur in very high responsibilities, such as: Author of the project, Coordinator of Safety and Health during the preparation of the project and during the execution of works, Site Management: Site Manager. This involves the immediate creation of a general training in prevention for all architects starting when still studying, as well as specific training, appropriate and complementary to all the architects that will be devoted to the specialty of occupational safety and health in construction works. That is, first, we must make the responsible bodies aware of the urgent need to integrate risk prevention in the curricula of architecture and later in the continuing education of the profession. It is necessary that our teaching must conform to the laws on safety and health, due to the fact that the law recognizes our academic degrees and professional qualifications to perform functions in that area

Empleo de fermentaciones secuenciales con levaduras no-Saccharomyces y aplicación de bloqueadores metabólicos para reducir el grado alcohólico en vinos

La combinación secuencial de especies no-Saccharomyces y Saccharomyces durante la fermentación y la adición de bloqueadores metabólicos como el furfural, o-vainillina, glicolaldehído y p-benzoquinona pueden resultar unas técnicas de vinificación interesantes para reducir el grado alcohólico del vino. El grado alcohólico se determinó por HPLC-IR y los azúcares residuales mediante tests enzimáticos. Las cepas de levadura 7013 (Torulaspora delbrueckii) y 938 (Schizosaccharomyces pombe) destacaron por su capacidad para reducir significativamente el grado alcohólico (reducción media del 2.1 % v/v) dando lugar a un vino seco (azúcares menor que 1.5 gl-1) en fermentación secuencial con la 7VA (Saccharomyces cerevisiae). La o-vainillina permitió una disminución en el contenido de etanol del 0.54 % v/v a dosis de 50 mg l-1, mientras que el efecto bloqueador del glicolaldehído fue más efectivo a la dosis de 200 mg l-1 con una reducción del 0.95 % v/v. Finalmente con la p-benzoquinona se logró una reducción en el grado alcohólico de hasta 0.85 % v/v.

See-and-avoid quadcopter using fuzzy control optimized by cross-entropy

In this work we present an optimized fuzzy visual servoing system for obstacle avoidance using an unmanned aerial vehicle. The cross-entropy theory is used to optimise the gains of our controllers. The optimization process was made using the ROS-Gazebo 3D simulation with purposeful extensions developed for our experiments. Visual servoing is achieved through an image processing front-end that uses the Camshift algorithm to detect and track objects in the scene. Experimental flight trials using a small quadrotor were performed to validate the parameters estimated from simulation. The integration of crossentropy methods is a straightforward way to estimate optimal gains achieving excellent results when tested in real flights.

Effect of the Wake of the Transducer Supports on the Ultrasonic Anemometer Measurements

The wake produced by the structural supports of the ultrasonic anemometers (UAs)causes distortions in the velocity field in the vicinity of the sonic path. These distortions are measured by the UA, inducing errors in the determination of the mean velocity, turbulence intensity, spectrum, etc.; basic parameters to determine the effect of wind on structures. Additionally, these distortions can lead to indefinition in the calibration function of the sensors (Cuerva et al., 2004). Several wind tunnel tests have been dedicated to obtaining experimental data, from which have been developed fit models to describe and to correct these distortions (Kaimal, 1978 and Wyngaard, 1985). This work explores the effect of a vortex wake generated by the supports of an UA, on the measurement of wind speed done by this instrument. To do this, the Von Karman¿s vortex street potential model is combined with the mathematical model of the measuring process carried out by UAs developed by Franchini et al. (2007). The obtained results are the correction functions of the measured wind velocity, which depends on the geometry of the sonic anemometer and aerodynamic conditions. These results have been validated with the ones obtained in a wind tunnel test done on a single path UA, especially developed for research. The supports of this UA have been modified in order to reproduce the conditions of the theoretical model. Good agreements between experimental and theoretical results have been found.

Social Housing in Great Metropolitan Areas: A New Methodology for Integrated Quality Evaluation and Comparison.

Este artículo expone la primera aplicación experimental de un método para el análisis y la comparación de experiencias de vivienda social internacional en el contexto de las grandes áreas metropolitanas. El método, desarrollado en la Universidad Politécnica Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) desde 2009, se basa en la utilización de códigos gráficos y numéricos comunes y la integración de diferentes escalas de aproximación al entorno construido, de la vivienda y su arquitectura, a sus materiales de construcción y llegando más lejos, la ciudad. Además, los datos están vinculados a tres conceptos clave estrechamente relacionados con las condiciones específicas de las grandes áreas metropolitanas: la economía, la densidad y la diversidad. El objetivo final de la investigación es proporcionar una herramienta para la evaluación de la calidad de las viviendas sociales, optimización de recursos y un diseño innovador.

Pulsatile flow in coronary bifurcations for different stenting techniques

The objective of this work is to analyze the local hem odynamic changes caused in a coronary bifurcation by three different stenting techniques: simple stenting of the main vessel, simple stenting of the main vessel with kissing balloon in the side branch and culotte. To carry out this study an idealized geometry of a coronary bifurcation is used, and two bifurcation angles, 45º and 90º, are chosen as representative of the wide variety of re al configurations. In order to quantify the influence of the stenting technique on the local blood flow, both numeri- cal simulations and experimental measurements are performed. First, steady simulations are carried out with the commercial code ANSYS-Fluent, and then, experimental measurements with PIV (Particle Image Velocimetry) obtained in the laboratory are used to validate the numerical simulation. The steady computational simulations show a good overall agreement with the experimental data. Second, pulsatile flow is considered to take into account the tran- sient effects. The time averaged wall shear stress, scillatory shear index and pressure drop obtained numerically are used to compare the behavior of the stenting techniques.

Numerical treatment of thick shells with holes

A Boundary Integral Equation Method (B.I.E.M.)formulation is presented. After a general situation of the method among other usual numerical ones, the possibilities of discretization are developed. As this is done only in the boundary the treatment of tridimensional problems is greatly simplified in comparison with other methods. Some results on a simple shell with holes are finally presented.