Educação para a sustentabilidade: O uso de Sistemas de Informação Geográfica Participativos como instrumento de participação de crianças e adolescentes na construção de sociedades mais sustentáveis

Tese de Doutoramento em Ciências da Educação (Área de Conhecimento: Educação ambiental e para a Sustentabilidade)

Analysis and selection of indicators for a sustainability assessment method for school buildings based on SBTool ‐ PT

Nowadays, the sustainability of buildings has an extreme importance. This concept goes towards the European aims of the Program Horizon 2020, which concerns about the reduction of the environmental impacts through such aspects as the energy efficiency and renewable technologies, among others. Sustainability is an extremely broad concept but, in this work, it is intended to include the concept of sustainability in buildings. Within the concept that aims the integration of environmental, social and economic levels towards the preservation of the planet and the integrity of the users, there are, currently, several types of tools of environmental certification that are applicable to the construction industry (LEED, BREEAM, DGNB, SBTool, among others). Within this context, it is highlighted the tool SBTool (Sustainable Building Tool) that is employed in several countries and can be subject to review in institutions of basic education, which are the base for the formation of the critical masses and for the development of a country. The main aim of this research is to select indicators that can be used in a methodology for sustainability assessment (SBTool) of school buildings in Portugal and in Brazil. In order to achieve it, it will also be analyzed other methodologies that already incorporate parameters directly related with the schools environment, such as BREEAM or LEED.

Intervention program on adolescent’s creativity representations and academic motivation

Creativity and its promotion are widespread concerns in education. However, few efforts have been made to implement intervention programs designed to promote creativity and other related aspects (e.g., academic motivation). The Future Problem Solving Program International (FPSPI), aimed for training creativity representations and creative problem solving skills in young people, has been one of the most implemented programs. This intervention’s materials and activities were adapted for Portuguese students, and a longitudinal study was conducted. The program was implemented during four months, in weekly sessions, by thirteen teachers. Teachers received previous training for the program and during the program’s implementation. Intervention participants included 77 Basic and Secondary Education students, and control participants included 78 equivalent students. Pretest-posttest measures of academic motivation and creativity representations were collected. Results suggest a significant increase, in the intervention group, in motivation and the appropriate representations of creativity. Practical implications and future research perspectives are presented.

Geotechnical engineering for sustainable transportation infrastructure

This paper highlights how transportation geotechnics can interact with transportation infrastructures and how through the planning, design, construction and maintenance can contribute to ensure solutions more safe, reliable and resilient in the future. In this context sustainable concepts are discussed and applied as best practices to preserve natural resources and assuring socio-economic and environment benefits for the society

Assessment of the effects of the expansion of the city of Estarreja on the rational land use

The management of urban environment, together with the preservation of the natural environment and the creation of a sustainable built environment, is a complex challenge for contemporary societies. In the name of progress, cities are contributing for the degradation of all surrounding ecosystems. Therefore there is an arising demand for developing new strategies and a new urban development paradigm settled in the search for the equilibrium between natural and built environments and efficient use of resources. The objective of this paper is to analyse how the urban expansion of the city of Estarreja took place in relation to the land use, based on the land capability classification maps of the area. Based in the results some sustainable development strategies that might be applied to the city are discussed. The obtained results demonstrate that the city has been growing faster then its population, consuming vast portions of land, since its growth as been occurring in a linear form. Despite this fact, results show that most of this expansion took place towards a territory of lower agricultural potential, when comparing to the location of its original settlement.

Study of the of the concept of community buildings and its importance for land use efficiency

Nowadays cities are facing several environmental problems due to the population migration to urban areas, which is causing urban sprawl. This way, it is very important to define solutions to improve Land Use Efficiency (LUE). This article proposes the use of community buildings features as a solution to increase land use efficiency. Community buildings consider the design of shared building spaces to reduce the floor area of buildings. This work tests the performance of some case-study buildings regarding LUE to analyse its possible pros and cons. A quantifiable method is used to assess buildingsâ LUE, which considers the number of occupants, the gross floor area, the functional area, the implantation area and the allotment area. Buildings with higher values for this index have reduced environmental impacts because they use less construction materials, produce less construction and demolition wastes and require less energy for building operation. The results showed that the use of community building features can increase Land Use Efficiency of buildings.

Avaliação do impacto na saúde da mobilidade no acesso aos Campi Universitários: estudo de caso UMinho

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Engenharia Civil

Gestão sustentável de águas pluviais em ambiente urbano

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Engenharia Civil

A study of risk-aware program transformation

In the trend towards tolerating hardware unreliability, accuracy is exchanged for cost savings. Running on less reliable machines, functionally correct code becomes risky and one needs to know how risk propagates so as to mitigate it. Risk estimation, however, seems to live outside the average programmer’s technical competence and core practice. In this paper we propose that program design by source-to-source transformation be risk-aware in the sense of making probabilistic faults visible and supporting equational reasoning on the probabilistic behaviour of programs caused by faults. This reasoning is carried out in a linear algebra extension to the standard, `a la Bird-Moor algebra of programming. This paper studies, in particular, the propagation of faults across standard program transformation techniques known as tupling and fusion, enabling the fault of the whole to be expressed in terms of the faults of its parts.

Influência do tipo de adesivo no comportamento de elementos de betão reforçados com laminados de CFRP de acordo com a técnica NSM

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Engenharia Civil

Historical analysis of the Brazilian cervical cancer screening program from 2006 to 2013: a time for reflection

BACKGROUND: The Cervical Cancer Database of the Brazilian National Health Service (SISCOLO) contains information regarding all cervical cytological tests and, if properly explored, can be used as a tool for monitoring and managing the cervical cancer screening program. The aim of this study was to perform a historical analysis of the cervical cancer screening program in Brazil from 2006 to 2013. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The data necessary to calculate quality indicators were obtained from the SISCOLO, a Brazilian health system tool. Joinpoint analysis was used to calculate the annual percentage change. RESULTS: We observed important trends showing decreased rates of low-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions (LSIL) and high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions (HSIL) and an increased rate of rejected exams from 2009 to 2013. The index of positivity was maintained at levels below those indicated by international standards; very low frequencies of unsatisfactory cases were observed over the study period, which partially contradicts the low rate of positive cases. The number of positive cytological diagnoses was below that expected, considering that developed countries with low frequencies of cervical cancer detect more lesions annually. CONCLUSIONS: The evolution of indicators from 2006 to 2013 suggests that actions must be taken to improve the effectiveness of cervical cancer control in Brazil.

O papel do transporte público nos padrões de mobilidade no acesso a um campus universitário

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Engenharia Civil

Análise integrada dos impactes ambientais e do desempenho energético de cenários de reabilitação energética de edifícios

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Engenharia Civil

Plano de revitalização do centro histórico de Braga

Dissertação de mestrado em Políticas Comunitárias e Cooperação Territorial

Sefficiency (sustainable efficiency) of water–energy–food entangled systems

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07900627.2015.1070091. It includes an easy-to-use spreadsheet that calculates the efficiencies used in this paper, that is Sefficiency with energy considerations.