Portuguese architect's career

This work project addresses the differences and similarities in Portuguese architects’ careers. As a study in the Human Resources Management area, where a contemporary career concept has been gaining strength, it is focused on architects’ careers since they are artistic/technical professional workers with no boundaries or specific motivations. A total of 21 semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted and studied, with different architects from different age groups and paths, using a qualitative methodology approach. The interviews explored themes as the reasons for deciding to be an architect, challenges and opportunities, academic paths, best projects and future prospects. This study revealed that Portuguese architects have specific motivations, relations and expertise that reflect particular reasons why, how and with whom architects work and what is to them a successful career as an architect.

Predicting the impacts of climate change on the distribution and conservation of endemic forest land snails of Madeira Island

Climate change is emerging as one of the major threats to natural communities of the world’s ecosystems; and biodiversity hotspots, such as Madeira Island, might face a challenging future in the conservation of endangered land snails’ species. With this thesis, progresses have been made in order to properly understand the impact of climate on these vulnerable taxa; and species distribution models coupled with GIS and climate change scenarios have become crucial to understand the relations between species distribution and environmental conditions, identifying threats and determining biodiversity vulnerability. With the use of MaxEnt, important changes in the species suitable areas were obtained. Laurel forest species, highly dependent on precipitation and relative humidity, may face major losses on their future suitable areas, leading to the possible extinction of several endangered species, such as Leiostyla heterodon. Despite the complexity of the biological systems, the intrinsic uncertainty of species distribution models and the lack of information about land snails’ functional traits, this analysis contributed to a pioneer study on the impacts of climate change on endemic species of Madeira Island. The future inclusion of predictions of the effect of climate change on species distribution as part of IUCN assessments could contribute to species prioritizing, promoting specific management actions and maximizing conservation investment.

The use of analytical hierarchy process in spatial decision support system for land use management

Geographic information systems give us the possibility to analyze, produce, and edit geographic information. Furthermore, these systems fall short on the analysis and support of complex spatial problems. Therefore, when a spatial problem, like land use management, requires a multi-criteria perspective, multi-criteria decision analysis is placed into spatial decision support systems. The analytic hierarchy process is one of many multi-criteria decision analysis methods that can be used to support these complex problems. Using its capabilities we try to develop a spatial decision support system, to help land use management. Land use management can undertake a broad spectrum of spatial decision problems. The developed decision support system had to accept as input, various formats and types of data, raster or vector format, and the vector could be polygon line or point type. The support system was designed to perform its analysis for the Zambezi river Valley in Mozambique, the study area. The possible solutions for the emerging problems had to cover the entire region. This required the system to process large sets of data, and constantly adjust to new problems’ needs. The developed decision support system, is able to process thousands of alternatives using the analytical hierarchy process, and produce an output suitability map for the problems faced.

Management consulting labs- Portugal Telecom

The purpose of this work project was to analyze and evaluate the potential impact of a technological innovation in the telecommunications sector, across a wide range of business areas. A cost-benefit and competitive analysis for each pre-selected business area was conducted, as well as national and international benchmarks. As a result of the analysis, a list of prioritized business areas, presenting more immediate opportunities for Portugal Telecom, was created and implications for go-to-market strategies were inferred from the conclusions reached. In addition, a final recommendation that redefined the company’s positioning strategy was made