Flood resilient housing recovery models: a theoretical case study in Maldives

Natural disasters are events that cause general and widespread destruction of the built environment and are becoming increasingly recurrent. They are a product of vulnerability and community exposure to natural hazards, generating a multitude of social, economic and cultural issues of which the loss of housing and the subsequent need for shelter is one of its major consequences. Nowadays, numerous factors contribute to increased vulnerability and exposure to natural disasters such as climate change with its impacts felt across the globe and which is currently seen as a worldwide threat to the built environment. The abandonment of disaster-affected areas can also push populations to regions where natural hazards are felt more severely. Although several actors in the post-disaster scenario provide for shelter needs and recovery programs, housing is often inadequate and unable to resist the effects of future natural hazards. Resilient housing is commonly not addressed due to the urgency in sheltering affected populations. However, by neglecting risks of exposure in construction, houses become vulnerable and are likely to be damaged or destroyed in future natural hazard events. That being said it becomes fundamental to include resilience criteria, when it comes to housing, which in turn will allow new houses to better withstand the passage of time and natural disasters, in the safest way possible. This master thesis is intended to provide guiding principles to take towards housing recovery after natural disasters, particularly in the form of flood resilient construction, considering floods are responsible for the largest number of natural disasters. To this purpose, the main structures that house affected populations were identified and analyzed in depth. After assessing the risks and damages that flood events can cause in housing, a methodology was proposed for flood resilient housing models, in which there were identified key criteria that housing should meet. The same methodology is based in the US Federal Emergency Management Agency requirements and recommendations in accordance to specific flood zones. Finally, a case study in Maldives – one of the most vulnerable countries to sea level rise resulting from climate change – has been analyzed in light of housing recovery in a post-disaster induced scenario. This analysis was carried out by using the proposed methodology with the intent of assessing the resilience of the newly built housing to floods in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami.

Environmental sustainability adoption

Double degree

Hospital-empresa : crónica de um nascimento retardado : Políticas de saúde : Em foco

RESUMO - A gestão empresarial dos hospitais é uma velha aspiração do sistema e dos profissionais da saúde em Portugal. Já o Estatuto Hospitalar de 1968 previa a organização e a gestão dos hospitais «em termos de gestão empresarial». A Lei de Bases da Saúde, de 1990, relembrava que a administração das unidades de saúde deveria obedecer a «regras de gestão empresarial». O Hospital Fernando da Fonseca, criado desde 1991, foi objecto de concessão de gestão por contrato, precedendo concurso público, a uma entidade privada, em 1995. Em 1997, o relatório do Grupo de Trabalho sobre o Estatuto Jurídico do Hospital recomendava a adopção da figura de instituto público com natureza empresarial, adequada autonomia de gestão e forte responsabilidade, podendo regular-se, em alguns domínios, por normas de direito privado. Em 1998 foi criado o Hospital de São Sebastião, em Santa Maria da Feira, com formas inovadoras de gestão, utilizando meios de gestão maleáveis. Em 1999 foi criada a Unidade Local de Saúde de Matosinhos, englobando não apenas o Hospital de Pedro Hispano, naquela cidade, mas também os quatro centros de saúde da sua área de atracção. Em 2001 foi criado o Hospital do Barlavento Algarvio, em moldes semelhantes aos do Hospital de São Sebastião. Os restantes hospitais públicos mantiveram a estrutura e regras de funcionamento convencionais. Observa-se que o modelo de gestão convencional do hospital público tem hoje consequências desfavoráveis para os cidadãos, para os profissionais que nele trabalham e também para o sistema de saúde no seu conjunto. Em 2002, uma nova lei alterou disposições da Lei de Bases da Saúde de 1990 e aprovou um novo regime jurídico de gestão hospitalar. De acordo com ele, a rede de prestação de cuidados de saúde passou a integrar vários modelos de hospitais: hospitais SPA, hospitais EPE, hospitais SA, clínicas privadas com ou sem nome de hospital, instituições e serviços geridos por entidades públicas ou privadas, mediante contrato de gestão e hospitais PPP. Analisam-se os ganhos introduzidos pelo modelo inovador de hospital SA, no que respeita ao estatuto, dotação de capital, poderes especiais, regras de controlo financeiro, regimes laborais, órgãos sociais, instrumentos de gestão e direcção técnica. Finalmente, antecipa-se um quadro analítico de oportunidades e riscos sobre este modelo. As críticas têm-se concentrado sobre a estratégia de mudança e sobre o mecanismo de escolha dos dirigentes e das respectivas chefias intermédias. Em relação à estratégia, conclui-se ser a questão mais empírica do que conceptual. Em relação à forma de identificação dos dirigentes, recomenda-se o acompanhamento crítico da experiência, salientando-se, a par do que ela pode trazer de positivo, os riscos de partidarização e instabilidade.

Learning domain-specific sentiment lexicons with applications to recommender systems

Search is now going beyond looking for factual information, and people wish to search for the opinions of others to help them in their own decision-making. Sentiment expressions or opinion expressions are used by users to express their opinion and embody important pieces of information, particularly in online commerce. The main problem that the present dissertation addresses is how to model text to find meaningful words that express a sentiment. In this context, I investigate the viability of automatically generating a sentiment lexicon for opinion retrieval and sentiment classification applications. For this research objective we propose to capture sentiment words that are derived from online users’ reviews. In this approach, we tackle a major challenge in sentiment analysis which is the detection of words that express subjective preference and domain-specific sentiment words such as jargon. To this aim we present a fully generative method that automatically learns a domain-specific lexicon and is fully independent of external sources. Sentiment lexicons can be applied in a broad set of applications, however popular recommendation algorithms have somehow been disconnected from sentiment analysis. Therefore, we present a study that explores the viability of applying sentiment analysis techniques to infer ratings in a recommendation algorithm. Furthermore, entities’ reputation is intrinsically associated with sentiment words that have a positive or negative relation with those entities. Hence, is provided a study that observes the viability of using a domain-specific lexicon to compute entities reputation. Finally, a recommendation system algorithm is improved with the use of sentiment-based ratings and entities reputation.

Ideation at Canon business services

Digitalisation, globalisation, and evolving customer demands are only a few of the factors that are bound to transform the business process services industry for CBS. By investigating new ways to address these imminent challenges, this thesis explores the feasibility of implementing a formal approach to ideation to complement CBS’ service innovation practice. Two workshops were therefore conducted to put theory into action by generating new service ideas in a multifunctional team. Applying both divergent and convergent ideation techniques revealed that the latter improved an idea’s novelty and creativity as opposed to the expected increase in workability and relevance. Additionally, further analysis sheds light into the potential influence of individual characteristics and group dynamics on creativity. The thesis concludes with a discussion on the organisational implications of the findings and recommendations for future research.