Estudo de caso: minimização e reúso de água em shopping center da região sul do Brasil

The main issues related to water conservation in urban centers are the increase in water supply cost, demand growth, pollution and differences in the distribution of water resources. Water conservation, the controlled and efficient use of water, includes both measures as reasonable means of water reuse. Thus, conservation practices are an effective way to meet demand and supply water to new activities and users without jeopardizing the supplying water bodies and preserving the natural environment. This study aims to examine the water management of a shopping mall and the use of rainwater harvesting combined with greywater reuse. For buildings in general, water loss is common due to leaks in the hydraulic and restroom equipment. These losses, which are caused by a high volume of water used and wasted in the system, are often the result of design errors, incorrect maintenance procedures and users' bad habits In southern Brazil, where there is rainfall almost all year long, water shortages occasionally occur, particularly in some winter mouths. One difficulty that appears on rainwater studies is the proper determination of rainwater volume that can be used to address water supply systems. In this work, the simulation method was used to determine this volume. Thus, simulations with the following variables: rainfall, catchment area and water consumption were performed. For mall's hydraulic systems, segmented alternatives are adopted. That is, focusing on the use of rainwater or greywater reuse. Other alternatives of effluent reuse have been slightly discussed due to sanitary issues, those are effluents from toilets and kitchen sinks. The adoption of greywater may be feasible if there is a significant flow of greywater to comply water demand for toilet flushing. The inspections made in this study found that the quantity of sinks was insufficient to supply an adequate amount of water to toilets and urinals. The greywater reuse system was found to be infeasible in terms of demand and supply of water. Conversely, the rainwater harvesting system was entirely feasible and easily supplied water to all restrooms and contributed to the cooling of the air conditioning system with a short payback period. One of the challenges of this work was the need to compare the actual water consumption with a water consumption parameter used in buildings. Thus, a method that addresses the generation of specific consumption indexes for specific activity (like a mall) was used. The water consumption indices showed that this mall has a satisfactory water management program.

Transparência das informações públicas nos portais das instituições federais de educação profissional da região sul do Brasil

Considering the need of communication between public management and society and its citizens, in a way which is more effective and transparent, the aim of this research was to analyze the transparency of public information presented by the managers of the portals of southern Brazil’s Federal Institutes. It is a qualitative and quantitative research, applied as its purpose, and exploratory as its aim. In order to explain the issue from the theoretical frameworks published, it will be used as a procedure the bibliographic research and the further study field research in the six southern Brazil’s Federal Institutes. Therefore, the theoretical framework approaches aspects about public transparency, concepts of information and communication in the public sector, and it presents measurement indexes of public transparency. The data collection with the Institutes sought to measure – in the portals – the level of transparency of the information presented by the managers, applying a search tool which provided the transparency index of eleven categories of the researched items, besides verifying the presence of the required items by Access to Information Law. In the sequence, it sought to verify the Institutes managers’ perception of the aspects which composes the proposed theme, for the purpose of observing how the process of communication between public agencies and the citizen is happening. The main results obtained emphasize, in a general way, a low level of public information propagation, with a lower average of propagation to the information about social, environmental and economic responsibility, and a greater average to the information related to the institution’s general data – from its management structure to its ordinance. It was also observed that no institution which was researched fully comply with the demands of the Access of Information Law. The results about the manager perceptio demonstrate a tendency in publishing the produced information, however, elements such disorganization of information in the portals, lack of standardization of the virtual structure and type of language to use, and lack of procedures of popular participation and interaction in the portals are determiners to bring problems in the access and in the communication with the public. Besides, the short time of institutions’ creation and the short time of the managers assuming their functions must be considered as a reflex of the found results. Therewith, the present study highlighted the importance of Public Transparency theme and it reached a positive result to a scientific and social contribution.