DL 86/2003 - uma perspectiva jurídico-política sobre o regime das parcerias público-privadas

Neste artigo é feita uma análise jurídico-política das narinas gerais aplicáveis às Parcerias Público-Privadas (PPP), criadas com a aprovação e publicação do Decreto-Lei n.º 86/2003, de 26 de Abril, e respectiva legislação complementar. Defendo a posição segundo a qual não foram tanto factores de ordem jurídica, entenda-se de necessidade de regulação jurídica da matéria em causa, que levaram à sua elaboração, mas sim motivos de ordem política, de exercício da acção governativa, ditados pela necessidade de o Ministério das Finanças de disciplinar e controlar o processo de criação de despesa pública no âmbito das PPP. Este facto vai influenciar e "marcar" todo o regime jurídico, designadamente, a existência de um regime procedimental muito rigoroso e fortemente dependente do Ministério das Finanças.

Provisões e contingências

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Contabilidade e Finanças Orientador: Doutor, José Manuel Veiga Pereira

Agent-based simulation of electronic marketplaces with decision support

This paper presents a Multi-Agent Market simulator designed for analyzing agent market strategies based on a complete understanding of buyer and seller behaviors, preference models and pricing algorithms, considering user risk preferences and game theory for scenario analysis. The system includes agents that are capable of improving their performance with their own experience, by adapting to the market conditions, and capable of considering other agents reactions.

A multi-agent system for the support of producer coalition formation in electricity markets

All over the world Distributed Generation is seen as a valuable help to get cleaner and more efficient electricity. To get negotiation power and advantages of scale economy, distributed producers can be aggregated giving place to a new concept: the Virtual Power Producer. Virtual Power Producers are multitechnology and multi-site heterogeneous entities. Virtual Power Producers should adopt organization and management methodologies so that they can make Distributed Generation a really profitable activity, able to participate in the market. In this paper we address the development of a multi-agent market simulator – MASCEM – able to study alternative coalitions of distributed producers in order to identify promising Virtual Power Producers in an electricity market.

Self-managing agents for dynamic scheduling in manufacturing

The main purpose of this paper is to propose a Multi-Agent Autonomic and Bio-Inspired based framework with selfmanaging capabilities to solve complex scheduling problems using cooperative negotiation. Scheduling resolution requires the intervention of highly skilled human problem-solvers. This is a very hard and challenging domain because current systems are becoming more and more complex, distributed, interconnected and subject to rapidly changing. A natural Autonomic Computing (AC) evolution in relation to Current Computing is to provide systems with Self-Managing ability with a minimum human interference.

Programming atomic multicasts in CAN

In Distributed Computer-Controlled Systems (DCCS), a special emphasis must be given to the communication infrastructure, which must provide timely and reliable communication services. CAN networks are usually suitable to support small-scale DCCS. However, they are known to present some reliability problems, which can lead to an unreliable behaviour of the supported applications. In this paper, an atomic multicast protocol for CAN networks is proposed. This protocol explores the CAN synchronous properties, providing a timely and reliable service to the supported applications. The implementation of such protocol in Ada, on top of the Ada version of Real-Time Linux is presented, which is used to demonstrate the advantages and disadvantages of the platform to support reliable communications in DCCS.

Replica management in real-time Ada 95 applications

In this paper, we present some of the fault tolerance management mechanisms being implemented in the Multi-μ architecture, namely its support for replica non-determinism. In this architecture, fault tolerance is achieved by node active replication, with software based replica management and fault tolerance transparent algorithms. A software layer implemented between the application and the real-time kernel, the Fault Tolerance Manager (FTManager), is the responsible for the transparent incorporation of the fault tolerance mechanisms The active replication model can be implemented either imposing replica determinism or keeping replica consistency at critical points, by means of interactive agreement mechanisms. One of the Multi-μ architecture goals is to identify such critical points, relieving the underlying system from performing the interactive agreement in every Ada dispatching point.

Multi-μ: an Ada 95 based architecture for fault tolerance support of real-time systems

This paper presents an architecture (Multi-μ) being implemented to study and develop software based fault tolerant mechanisms for Real-Time Systems, using the Ada language (Ada 95) and Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) components. Several issues regarding fault tolerance are presented and mechanisms to achieve fault tolerance by software active replication in Ada 95 are discussed. The Multi-μ architecture, based on a specifically proposed Fault Tolerance Manager (FTManager), is then described. Finally, some considerations are made about the work being done and essential future developments.

Infraestruturas de telecomunicações. Grandes projetos

Decorridos três anos após a publicação da 2ª edição das Prescrições e Especificações Técnicas das Infraestruturas de Telecomunicações em Edifícios (Manual ITED), verificou-se uma melhoria substancial não só na oferta de prestação de serviços por parte dos operadores como uma maior flexibilidade de exploração por parte dos utilizadores. Com efeito, a publicação do DL 123/2009, com a respetiva redação conferida pelo DL 258/2009, não sendo uma legislação de rutura face ao anterior DL 59/2000 veio, uma vez mais, elevar os índices de qualidade das instalações e promover o desenvolvimento tecnológico no setor das comunicações eletrónicas.

A Segurança Contra Incêndio em Edifícios (SCIE) e o projeto de instalações elétricas.

Neste artigo referem-se alguns aspetos a considerar no projeto de instalações elétricas relacionados com a SCIE (Segurança Contra Incêndios em Edifícios) e a legislação atualmente em vigor (DL 220/2008 e Portaria 1532/2008). São abordados, entre outros, alguns cuidados a ter em relação a: alimentação elétrica, fontes locais e centrais de energia de emergência (UPS, grupos geradores), quadros elétricos, ascensores, iluminação de segurança, deteção de incêndio, deteção de gases tóxicos e combustíveis, Matriz de Segurança.

ITED – infra‐estruturas de telecomunicações em edifícios. Novos horizontes alcançados

Ao longo das últimas décadas, o nosso estilo e hábitos de vida tem vindo, paulatinamente, a ser alterados e melhorados, a par do desenvolvimento das economias, e dos progressos tecnológicos, contribuindo, sobremaneira para uma melhoria generalizada das condições sociais. Com desenvolvimento do sector económico tem‐se assistido em Portugal à implementação de ambientes liberalizados em áreas tradicionalmente controladas pelo estado e, assim, sujeitas a um verdadeiro regime de monopólio, como eram os casos do sector energético e das telecomunicações. A publicação do Decreto‐Lei n.º 59/2000, de 19 de Abril e a subsequente publicação das Prescrições Técnicas de Instalações e Especificações Técnicas de Equipamentos e Materiais, projectou Portugal para a vanguarda de um verdadeiro ambiente concorrencial ao nível das telecomunicações. O presente artigo visa, sucintamente, reflectir sobre o novo enquadramento das Infra‐estruturas de Telecomunicações em Edifício (ITED) criado pelo DL n.º 59/2000, de 19 de Abril, assim como, evidenciar os aspectos mais específicos desse mesmo enquadramento.

A concepção e projecto de instalações eléctricas e o sistema nacional de certificação energética e da qualidade do ar interior em edifícios

O novo sistema nacional de certificação energética e da qualidade do ar interior em edifícios (SCE), que decorre da publicação dos DL, 78 a 80, de 4 de Abril de 2006, vêm impor um novo enquadramento regulamentar para a utilização de energia em edifícios no território nacional. Em particular para o caso dos grandes edifícios de serviços e para aqueles, de serviços ou residenciais, cujos sistemas de climatização ou de aquecimento de águas sanitárias (AQS) tenham uma potência superior a 25kw, o rsece-energia (DL 79/2006, de 4 de Abril), impõe indicadores de consumo específico máximo a verificar, denominados de indicadores de eficiência energética (IEE).

Radio link quality estimation in wireless sensor networks: a survey

Radio link quality estimation in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) has a fundamental impact on the network performance and also affects the design of higher-layer protocols. Therefore, for about a decade, it has been attracting a vast array of research works. Reported works on link quality estimation are typically based on different assumptions, consider different scenarios, and provide radically different (and sometimes contradictory) results. This article provides a comprehensive survey on related literature, covering the characteristics of low-power links, the fundamental concepts of link quality estimation in WSNs, a taxonomy of existing link quality estimators, and their performance analysis. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first survey tackling in detail link quality estimation in WSNs. We believe our efforts will serve as a reference to orient researchers and system designers in this area.

The generalized multiprocessor periodic resource interface model for hierarchical multiprocessor scheduling

Composition is a practice of key importance in software engineering. When real-time applications are composed it is necessary that their timing properties (such as meeting the deadlines) are guaranteed. The composition is performed by establishing an interface between the application and the physical platform. Such an interface does typically contain information about the amount of computing capacity needed by the application. In multiprocessor platforms, the interface should also present information about the degree of parallelism. Recently there have been quite a few interface proposals. However, they are either too complex to be handled or too pessimistic.In this paper we propose the Generalized Multiprocessor Periodic Resource model (GMPR) that is strictly superior to the MPR model without requiring a too detailed description. We describe a method to generate the interface from the application specification. All these methods have been implemented in Matlab routines that are publicly available.

Real-time scheduling with resource sharing on uniform multiprocessors

Consider the problem of scheduling a set of implicit-deadline sporadic tasks to meet all deadlines on a uniform multiprocessor platform where each task may access at most one of |R| shared resources and at most once by each job of that task. The resources have to be accessed in a mutually exclusive manner. We propose an algorithm, GIS-vpr, which offers the guarantee that if a task set is schedulable to meet deadlines by an optimal task assignment scheme that allows a task to migrate only when it accesses or releases a resource, then our algorithm also meets the deadlines with the same restriction on the task migration, if given processors 4 + 6|R| times as fast. The proposed algorithm, by design, limits the number of migrations per job to at most two. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first result for resource sharing on uniform multiprocessors with proven performance guarantee.