Tarracomap: Development of an archaeological application on Google Maps navigation System

This paper describes the result of a research about diverse areas of the information technology world applied to cartography. Its final result is a complete and custom geographic information web system, designed and implemented to manage archaeological information of the city of Tarragona. The goal of the platform is to show on a web-focused application geographical and alphanumerical data and to provide concrete queries to explorate this. Various tools, between others, have been used: the PostgreSQL database management system in conjunction with its geographical extension PostGIS, the geographic server GeoServer, the GeoWebCache tile caching, the maps viewer and maps and satellite imagery from Google Maps, locations imagery from Google Street View, and other open source libraries. The technology has been chosen from an investigation of the requirements of the project, and has taken great part of its development. Except from the Google Maps tools which are not open source but are free, all design has been implemented with open source and free tools.

A Semantic wiki for quality management in software development projects

Quality management has become a strategic issue for organisations and is very valuable to produce quality software. However, quality management systems (QMS) are not easy to implement and maintain. The authors' experience shows the benefits of developing a QMS by first formalising it using semantic web ontologies and then putting them into practice through a semantic wiki. The QMS ontology that has been developed captures the core concepts of a traditional QMS and combines them with concepts coming from the MPIu'a development process model, which is geared towards obtaining usable and accessible software products. Then, the ontology semantics is directly put into play by a semantics-aware tool, the Semantic MediaWiki. The developed QMS tool is being used for 2 years by the GRIHO research group, where it has manages almost 50 software development projects taking into account the quality management issues. It has also been externally audited by a quality certification organisation. Its users are very satisfied with their daily work with the tool, which manages all the documents created during project development and also allows them to collaborate, thanks to the wiki features.

Impact of quality improvement tools on the performance of firms using different quality management systems

This study compares the impact of quality management tools on the performance of organisations utilising the ISO 9001:2000 standard as a basis for a quality-management system band those utilising the EFQM model for this purpose. A survey is conducted among 107 experienced and independent quality-management assessors. The study finds that organisations with qualitymanagement systems based on the ISO 9001:2000 standard tend to use general-purpose qualitative tools, and that these do have a relatively positive impact on their general performance. In contrast, organisations adopting the EFQM model tend to use more specialised quantitative tools, which produce significant improvements in specific aspects of their performance. The findings of the study will enable organisations to choose the most effective quality-improvement tools for their particular quality strategy

Considering tourist perceptions and network configuration in destination management

The competitiveness of tourism destinations is a relevant issue for tourism studies, moreso, is a key element on the daily basis of tourism destinations. In this sense, the management of tourism destinations is essential to maintain competitive advantages. In this article tourism destination is considered as a relational network, where interaction and cooperation is needed among tourist agents, to achieve major levels of competitive advantage and a more effective destination management system. In addition, the perceptions of tourists are obtained from two main sources. The first one is the social construction of a tourism destination previous to the visit and the second one is obtained from the interaction between tourists and tourism destination agents during the visit. In this sense, the management of tourism destination to emit a homogenous and collective image is a factor that can reduce the gap if dissatisfaction from the previous and real tourist perception. The discussion is centered on the relationship within a destination, between the supply network and the targeted demand, considering these two approaches jointly, to benefit destination management. The main result is a conceptual model that shows how tourism agents and tourists in the tourism destination interact to improve the destination competitiveness

Gestió dels residus alimentaris municipals procedents de les activitats comercials del municipi de Montmeló per tal de reduir, reutilitzar i reciclar-los

En el present treball es proposa com lluitar contra el malbaratament alimentari que es genera al llarg de tota la cadena alimentària, sent aquest degut a causa d'una planificació poc adequada. L'objectiu principal és planificar i implantar un sistema de gestió per tal de recuperar l'excedent alimentari que es genera als comerços i les indústries del municipi de Montmeló, elaborant així un protocol per tal de poder redistribuir aquest aliment als sectors de la població en situacions econòmiques més precàries. Com a objectius secundaris, es pretén conscienciar, fomentar i potenciar el treball en xarxa entre els diferents agents implicats, com ara: la ciutadania, les entitats socials (Càritas Parroquial Montmeló), sector privat (establiments alimentaris del municipi, mercat municipal, indústries del sector alimentari) i el sector públic (departament de serveis socials, medi ambient, comerç i brigada municipal). A l'hora de planificar i implantar un sistema de gestió per tal de recuperar l'excedent alimentari, s'ha analitzat i valorat el camí que hi realitza, des d'on es genera fins al beneficiari final. Aquest s'ha gestionat per etapes, en les que s'han identificat els generadors, el tipus i quantitat d'aliment que malbaraten. S'ha proposat un nou sistema de recollida d'informació i les pautes que han de seguir per garantir el bon estat de l'aliment com: una taula de conservació, un protocol de funcionament, un document d'entrega i una fitxa de control de les condicions d'higiene. Per tal d'assolir una bona coordinació entre totes les parts, s'han realitzat reunions conjuntes entre els generadors, serveis socials i Càritas on s'ha acabat signant un acord de col·laboració. Entre les conclusions més rellevants cal destacar que ha servit per establir un precedent d'aprofitament alimentari al municipi de Montmeló, aconseguint alimentar a un gran nombre de famílies amb greus problemes econòmics. A més s'ha arribat a disminuir la quantitat de residus generats, amb el conseqüent estalvi de recursos econòmics i materials on s'ha recuperat un total de 5.760 Kg d'aliments aptes pel consum.

Energy efficiency determinants: An empirical analysis of Spanish innovative firms

This paper examines the extent to which innovative Spanish firms pursue improvements in energy efficiency (EE) as an objective of innovation. The increase in energy consumption and its impact on greenhouse gas emissions justifies the greater attention being paid to energy efficiency and especially to industrial EE. The ability of manufacturing companies to innovate and improve their EE has a substantial influence on attaining objectives regarding climate change mitigation. Despite the effort to design more efficient energy policies, the EE determinants in manufacturing firms have been little studied in the empirical literature. From an exhaustive sample of Spanish manufacturing firms and using a logit model, we examine the energy efficiency determinants for those firms that have innovated. To carry out the econometric analysis, we use panel data from the Community Innovation Survey for the period 2008‐2011. Our empirical results underline the role of size among the characteristics of firms that facilitate energy efficiency innovation. Regarding company behaviour, firms that consider the reduction of environmental impacts to be an important objective of innovation and that have introduced organisational innovations are more likely to innovate with the objective of increasing energy efficiency. Keywords: energy efficiency, corporate targets, innovation, Community Innovation Survey. JEL Classification: Q40, Q55, O31

An energy efficient vertical handover decision algorithm

As wireless communications evolve towards heterogeneousnetworks, mobile terminals have been enabled tohandover seamlessly from one network to another. At the sametime, the continuous increase in the terminal power consumptionhas resulted in an ever-decreasing battery lifetime. To that end,the network selection is expected to play a key role on howto minimize the energy consumption, and thus to extend theterminal lifetime. Hitherto, terminals select the network thatprovides the highest received power. However, it has been provedthat this solution does not provide the highest energy efficiency.Thus, this paper proposes an energy efficient vertical handoveralgorithm that selects the most energy efficient network thatminimizes the uplink power consumption. The performance of theproposed algorithm is evaluated through extensive simulationsand it is shown to achieve high energy efficiency gains comparedto the conventional approach.

Standardised innovation management systems: a case study of the Spanish Standard UNE 166002:2006

This paper describes the experience of a Spanish manufacturing firm that implemented the UNE 166002:2006 standard, which is the first in the world to offer a certifiable standardised management system for innovation. After a brief review of innovation management in general, the paper describes the history, objectives, and content of the UNE 166002:2006 Spanish standard and the family of standards to which it belongs. The paper then presents a case study of the implementation of the standard in a manufacturing company, describing the benefits and difficulties of the implementation as detected by the company personnel involved. The paper concludes with a discussion of the desirability and feasibility of creating an international innovation management standard and a new generation of innovation management processes based on a standard for innovation

Energy intensity in road freight transport of heavy goods vehicles in Spain

This paper examines the factors that have influenced the energy intensity of the Spanish road freight transport of heavy goods vehicles over the period 1996–2012. This article aims to contribute to a better understanding of the factors behind the energy intensity change of road freight and also to inform the design of measures to improve energy efficiency in road freight transport. The paper uses both annual single-period and chained multi-period multiplicative LMDI-II decomposition analysis. The results suggest that the decrease in the energy intensity of Spanish road freight in the period is explained by the change in the real energy intensity index (lower energy consumption per tonne-kilometre transported), which is partially offset by the behaviour of the structural index (greater share in freight transport of those commodities the transportation of which is more energy intensive). The change in energy intensity is analysed in more depth by quantifying the contribution of each commodity through the attribution of changes in Divisia indices.

Control de la derivació de l'aigua de reg de Masjoan

RESUM Masjoan és una masia del segle XII on resideix la família Masferrer des del 1710. Actualment a Masjoan l’activitat principal és el cultiu i venta de plantes ornamentals, i l’explotació forestal per obtenir fusta. Pel que fa a l’aigua, tant per a la realització de l’activitat professional com per al subministrament de la casa, aquesta prové de mines d’aigua natural situades en la finca. L’objectiu d’aquest TFC ha estat dissenyar un sistema autònom per automatitzar el procés de derivació de l’aigua procedent d’una mina, i d’aquesta manera aprofitar millor els recursos naturals dels que és disposa. El desenvolupament d’aquest sistema, comprèn la selecció i configuració de sensors i actuadors, el disseny del circuit amb la realització de la placa, el disseny del sistema d’alimentació autònom, el software que controla el sistema, i dimensionar la resta d’elements de la instal•lació. Tot el sistema està controlat per un microcontrolador PIC16F876 i alimentat per un mòdul solar de 4W. En el disseny s’ha procurat, sobredimencionar les diferents etapes per possibles ampliacions o modificacions del sistema i que el circuit procures optimitzar el consum d’energia. Com a conclusions cal dir que s’han assolit els objectius proposats amb èxit. S’ha aconseguit un disseny funcional i estable que actualment es troba en funcionament.