Incorporating sustainability into a chemical company’s modus operandi

The intent of this dissertation is to review relevant existing management systems and chemical industry initiatives to identify synergies, overlaps and gaps with Sustainability best practices, to map the barriers to the incorporation of Sustainability and formulate recommendations to facilitate execution of Sustainability practices within existing management systems. A chemical industry Sustainability survey was conducted through APEQ, the Portuguese association of chemical companies, which constitutes the first baseline on the topic for this national industry association. The commonly used international standards and the Responsible Care® (RC) initiative were cross-referenced against the United Nations Global Compact Assessment Tool. Guidance on how to incorporate Sustainability into a company‘s modus operandi was collapsed into Sustainability Playbooks. The survey revealed that 73% of the APEQ member companies that participated in the survey have a Sustainability Plan. Both large and small/medium APEQ member companies see the market not willing to pay extra for ‗greener‘ products as one of the main barriers. APEQ large enterprise see complexity of implementation and low return on investment as the other most significant barriers while small/medium enterprise respond that the difficulty to predict customer sustainability needs is the other most significant barrier. Amongst many other insights from this survey reported to APEQ, Life Cycle Assessment practices were found to have a low level of implementation and were also considered of low importance, thus identifying a very important opportunity in Sustainability practices to be addressed by APEQ. Two hundred and seventy three assessment points from United Nations Global Compact Assessment Tool plus five additional items were cross-referenced with international standard requirements. With the authorization of the intellectual property owners, the United Nations Global Compact Assessment Tool was modified to introduce actionable recommendations for each gap identified by management standard. This tool was automated to output specific recommendations for 63 possible combinations after simply selecting from a list of commonly used management standards and the RC initiative. Finally this modified tool was introduced into Playbooks for Incorporation of Sustainability at two levels: a ―Get Started Playbook‖ for beginners or small/medium size enterprise and an ―Advanced Playbook‖ as a second advancement stage or for large enterprise.

Personalized public transportation information

Thesis to obtain the Master of Science Degree in Computer Science and Engineering

Long-term memory in financial prices: evidence from the Dutch stock market returns

Prepared for presentation at the Portuguese Finance Network International Conference 2014, Vilamoura, Portugal, June 18-20

Retaining repatriates: an exploratory study in portuguese companies

This study aims to understand the factors which may explain the retention of repatriates from companies acting within Portugal. These factors can be related either to the individual, or to the work, to the organisation or to non-working contexts. Eight companies located in Portugal have participated in this study. Several semi-structured interviews were done to 16 organizational representatives and to 28 repatriates. The obtained results show that the repatriates’ retention on the visited companies may be influenced by several categories of factors. We can conclude that it is (1) the good relation with the leadership, (2) the recognition of the performed job but, also (3) the seniority, (4) the age and the (5) depressed national job market. These are the major factors that emerge as relevant factors for the retention. Hence, there is not only one category of explaining determining factors for the retention decision, but there are several. These findings will be discussed in detail and implications and suggestions for future research will be proposed as well.

Desenvolvimento de um modelo para avaliar o nível lean de uma organização: caso de estudo

Trabalho Final de Mestrado para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Mecânica Perfil de Manutenção e Produção

Estratégia de centralização de compras e minimização de custos estudo de caso do Grupo Pinto & Cruz

Trabalho de Projeto apresentado ao Instituto de Contabilidade e Administração do Porto, para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Auditoria, sob orientação de Doutora Alcina Dias

Efeito país de origem e etnocentrismo: caso dos vinhos espumantes italianos

Dissertação de Mestrado Mestrado em Empreendedorismo e Internacionalização Orientada por Mestre Anabela Ribeiro

Octopus Lipid and Vitamin E Composition: Interspecies, Interorigin, and Nutritional Variability

Octopus vulgaris, Octopus maya, and Eledone cirrhosa from distinct marine environments [Northeast Atlantic (NEA), Northwest Atlantic (NWA), Eastern Central Atlantic, Western Central Atlantic (WCA), Pacific Ocean, and Mediterranean Sea] were characterized regarding their lipid and vitamin E composition. These species are those commercially more relevant worldwide. Significant interspecies and interorigin differences were observed. Unsaturated fatty acids account for more than 65% of total fatty acids, mostly ω-3 PUFA due to docosahexaenoic (18.4−29.3%) and eicosapentanoic acid (11.4− 23.9%) contributions. The highest ω-3 PUFA amounts and ω-3/ω-6 ratios were quantified in the heaviest specimens, O. vulgaris from NWA, with high market price, and simultaneously in the lowest graded samples, E. cirrhosa from NEA, of reduced dimensions. Although having the highest cholesterol contents, E. cirrhosa from NEA and O. maya from WCA have also higher protective fatty acid indexes. Chemometric discrimination allowed clustering the selected species and several origins based on lipid and vitamin E profiles.

Dynamic programming for a Markov-switching jump–diffusion

We consider an optimal control problem with a deterministic finite horizon and state variable dynamics given by a Markov-switching jump–diffusion stochastic differential equation. Our main results extend the dynamic programming technique to this larger family of stochastic optimal control problems. More specifically, we provide a detailed proof of Bellman’s optimality principle (or dynamic programming principle) and obtain the corresponding Hamilton–Jacobi–Belman equation, which turns out to be a partial integro-differential equation due to the extra terms arising from the Lévy process and the Markov process. As an application of our results, we study a finite horizon consumption– investment problem for a jump–diffusion financial market consisting of one risk-free asset and one risky asset whose coefficients are assumed to depend on the state of a continuous time finite state Markov process. We provide a detailed study of the optimal strategies for this problem, for the economically relevant families of power utilities and logarithmic utilities.

Definição de uma estratégia de comunicação online para a agência excentricGrey

Relatório de estágio apresentado à Escola Superior de Comunicação Social como parte dos requisitos para obtenção de grau de mestre em Publicidade e Marketing.

Uma abordagem à incorporação de lenhinosulfonatos e materiais reciclados em misturas de SBR para produção sustentável de solas

Mestrado em Engenharia Química - Ramo Otimização Energética na Indústria Química

Linóleo como revestimento de piso: processos construtivos, execução e patologia

Dissertação para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Civil na Área de Especialização em Edificações

Stochastic Framework for Strategic Decision-making of Load-serving Entities for Day-ahead Market

The deregulation of electricity markets has diversified the range of financial transaction modes between independent system operator (ISO), generation companies (GENCO) and load-serving entities (LSE) as the main interacting players of a day-ahead market (DAM). LSEs sell electricity to end-users and retail customers. The LSE that owns distributed generation (DG) or energy storage units can supply part of its serving loads when the nodal price of electricity rises. This opportunity stimulates them to have storage or generation facilities at the buses with higher locational marginal prices (LMP). The short-term advantage of this model is reducing the risk of financial losses for LSEs in DAMs and its long-term benefit for the LSEs and the whole system is market power mitigation by virtually increasing the price elasticity of demand. This model also enables the LSEs to manage the financial risks with a stochastic programming framework.

Smart Grid Market Using Joint Energy and Ancillary Services Bids

The power systems operation in the smart grid context increases significantly the complexity of their management. New approaches for ancillary services procurement are essential to ensure the operation of electric power systems with appropriate levels of stability, safety, quality, equity and competitiveness. These approaches should include market mechanisms which allow the participation of small and medium distributed energy resources players in a competitive market environment. In this paper, an energy and ancillary services joint market model used by an aggregator is proposed, considering bids of several types of distributed energy resources. In order to improve economic efficiency in the market, ancillary services cascading market mechanism is also considered in the model. The proposed model is included in MASCEM – a multi-agent system electricity market simulator. A case study considering a distribution network with high penetration of distributed energy resources is presented.

Elspot: Nord Pool Spot Integration in MASCEM Electricity Market Simulator

The energy sector in industrialized countries has been restructured in the last years, with the purpose of decreasing electricity prices through the increase in competition, and facilitating the integration of distributed energy resources. However, the restructuring process increased the complexity in market players' interactions and generated emerging problems and new issues to be addressed. In order to provide players with competitive advantage in the market, decision support tools that facilitate the study and understanding of these markets become extremely useful. In this context arises MASCEM (Multi-Agent Simulator of Competitive Electricity Markets), a multi-agent based simulator that models real electricity markets. To reinforce MASCEM with the capability of recreating the electricity markets reality in the fullest possible extent, it is crucial to make it able to simulate as many market models and player types as possible. This paper presents a new negotiation model implemented in MASCEM based on the negotiation model used in day-ahead market (Elspot) of Nord Pool. This is a key module to study competitive electricity markets, as it presents well defined and distinct characteristics from the already implemented markets, and it is a reference electricity market in Europe (the one with the larger amount of traded power).