Internacionalização, transporte marítimo e sistema logístico – o caso da empresa Iberglory, NVOCC, Consolidadores de Carga, Lda

Relatório de Estágio apresentado ao Instituto de Contabilidade e Administração do Porto para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Empreendedorismo e Internacionalização, sob orientação de Doutora Maria Clara Ribeiro

Topics regarding access to european information institutions: European Union so close and yet so far

From the 1990s, the Parliament, the Council and the European Commission adopted a new approach to disclosure of their working papers. Legal instruments to regulate and allow a fairly broad access to internal working documents of these institutions were created. European institutions also exploited the potential of Information and Communication Technologies, developing new instruments to register the documents produced and make them accessible to the public. The commitment to transparency sought to shows a more credible European government, and reduces the democratic deficit. However, the data analysis regarding access to EU institutions documents shows that general public is still far from direct contact with European bodies.

Dynamic Analysis and Pattern Visualization of Forest Fires

This paper analyses forest fires in the perspective of dynamical systems. Forest fires exhibit complex correlations in size, space and time, revealing features often present in complex systems, such as the absence of a characteristic length-scale, or the emergence of long range correlations and persistent memory. This study addresses a public domain forest fires catalogue, containing information of events for Portugal, during the period from 1980 up to 2012. The data is analysed in an annual basis, modelling the occurrences as sequences of Dirac impulses with amplitude proportional to the burnt area. First, we consider mutual information to correlate annual patterns. We use visualization trees, generated by hierarchical clustering algorithms, in order to compare and to extract relationships among the data. Second, we adopt the Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) visualization tool. MDS generates maps where each object corresponds to a point. Objects that are perceived to be similar to each other are placed on the map forming clusters. The results are analysed in order to extract relationships among the data and to identify forest fire patterns.

Field experiments for marine casualty detection with autonomous surface vehicles

In this paper we present a set of field tests for detection of human in the water with an unmanned surface vehicle using infrared and color cameras. These experiments aimed to contribute in the development of victim target tracking and obstacle avoidance for unmanned surface vehicles operating in marine search and rescue missions. This research is integrated in the work conducted in the European FP7 research project Icarus aiming to develop robotic tools for large scale rescue operations. The tests consisted in the use of the ROAZ unmanned surface vehicle equipped with a precision GPS system for localization and both visible spectrum and IR cameras to detect the target. In the experimental setup, the test human target was deployed in the water wearing a life vest and a diver suit (thus having lower temperature signature in the body except hands and head) and was equipped with a GPS logger. Multiple target approaches were performed in order to test the system with different sun incidence relative angles. The experimental setup, detection method and preliminary results from the field trials performed in the summer of 2013 in Sesimbra, Portugal and in La Spezia, Italy are also presented in this work.

Effects of Soil Compaction and Organic Carbon Content on Preferential Flow in Loamy Field Soils

Abstract: Preferential flow and transport through macropores affect plant water use efficiency and enhance leaching of agrochemicals and the transport of colloids, thereby increasing the risk for contamination of groundwater resources. The effects of soil compaction, expressed in terms of bulk density (BD), and organic carbon (OC) content on preferential flow and transport were investigated using 150 undisturbed soil cores sampled from 15 × 15–m grids on two field sites. Both fields had loamy textures, but one site had significantly higher OC content. Leaching experiments were conducted in each core by applying a constant irrigation rate of 10 mm h−1 with a pulse application of tritium tracer. Five percent tritium mass arrival times and apparent dispersivities were derived from each of the tracer breakthrough curves and correlated with texture, OC content, and BD to assess the spatial distribution of preferential flow and transport across the investigated fields. Soils from both fields showed strong positive correlations between BD and preferential flow. Interestingly, the relationships between BD and tracer transport characteristics were markedly different for the two fields, although the relationship between BD and macroporosity was nearly identical. The difference was likely caused by the higher contents of fines and OC at one of the fields leading to stronger aggregation, smaller matrix permeability, and a more pronounced pipe-like pore system with well-aligned macropores.

Picture marks semiotics between ontwerpen and vormgeving

This project seeks to implement and operationalize an analytical and schematic tool proposed in the doctoral thesis of Eduardo Aires applied to the first pages of newspapers (FBAUP: 2006), to the study of the symbol within the visual identity – the picture mark – starting with its semiotic analysis. Our research has the main objective to contribute to providing guidelines to facilitate both the communication and the methodology used by students and professionals of graphic design, translating, in a graphic way, implicit phenomena that is still in the spectrum of intuition, concerning Identity Design (specifically, the design of the graphic mark), and bringing them to the field of scientific definitions. It is our intention to provide the design of a picture mark, a graphic sign which is intended to synthesize, identify and bring positive values about an entity, with an educational tool that would constitute itself as knowledge so far nonexistent.

Contributos para a elaboração de um manual de procedimentos de compras públicas

A área de compras públicas tem vindo a assumir um papel preponderante na gestão estratégica das instituições públicas. Decorrente da publicação do Código dos Contratos Públicos, e na sequência das sucessivas alterações legislativas, quer nacionais, quer comunitárias, as instituições devem ter um Manual de Procedimentos que compreenda a multiplicidade de aspetos relacionados com a área de compras. O presente projeto tem como objetivo de estudo contribuir para a elaboração de um Manual de Procedimentos na área das Compras Públicas. O objetivo último será, por um lado, permitir ao auditor, no âmbito de uma auditoria à área de compras, formar uma opinião e emitir um parecer sobre a matéria analisada, e por outro lado, contribuir para aperfeiçoar os Sistemas de Controlo Interno dessas Instituições. Pela revisão da literatura, fomos conduzidos a abordar o contexto regulamentar da área de compras em Portugal, a analisar a perspetiva estratégica desta área, passando por uma descrição das diversas fases que compõem o processo de compras públicas, considerando ainda, uma abordagem ao sistema de controlo interno e riscos de negócio. Por fim, foi efetuada uma análise sobre a perspetiva de auditoria, na qual os auditores, quer internos, quer externos, têm um papel fundamental na promoção de melhorias na contratação pública, particularmente na adoção de uma abordagem construtiva e realçando as boas práticas. Decorrente da revisão da literatura, aferimos as perguntas de investigação e aplicamos a metodologia de um estudo de caso único numa instituição de ensino superior, através da elaboração de entrevistas e observação direta e participativa do investigador. As conclusões finais revelaram que o modelo de análise utilizado no nosso estudo tem no universo dos Serviços da Presidência do Instituto Politécnico do Porto uma taxa de confirmação de 59%, realçando-se positivamente o resultado da componente relativa à operacionalização das compras públicas, e destacando-se, de forma menos significativa, a componente relativa à política e gestão estratégica.