A panel vector error correction approach to forecasting demand in regional construction markets

Reliable forecasting as to the level of aggregate demand for construction is of vital importance to developers, builders and policymakers. Previous construction demand forecasting studies mainly focused on temporal estimating using national aggregate data. The construction market can be better represented by a group of interconnected regions or local markets rather than a national aggregate, and yet regional forecasting techniques have rarely been applied. Furthermore, limited research has applied regional variations in construction markets to construction demand modelling and forecasting. A new comprehensive method is used, a panel vector error correction approach, to forecast regional construction demand using Australia’s state-level data. The links between regional construction demand and general economic indicators are investigated by panel cointegration and causality analysis. The empirical results suggest that both long-run and causal links are found between regional construction demand and construction price, state income, population, unemployment rates and interest rates. The panel vector error correction model can provide reliable and robust forecasting with less than 10% of the mean absolute percentage error for a medium-term trend of regional construction demand and outperforms the conventional forecasting models (panel multiple regression and time series multiple regression model). The key macroeconomic factors of construction demand variations across regions in Australia are also presented. The findings and robust econometric techniques used are valuable to construction economists in examining future construction markets at a regional level.

Prefabricated modular housing: research vs practice

 Abstract: Prefabricated and modular solutions have formed a small part of the overall housing industry. This is particularly evident in Australia, where the market is dominated by hand-built housing using traditional construction techniques built by large-scale builders. This paper evaluates the ideal and the reality of prefabricated modular housing procurement in China for the Australian market. While there have been prefabricated components for the housing industry, primarily, most solutions are of volumetric nature. The findings question our understanding and methodology to prefabrication for Australia. The experiences of introducing building services into modules (pods) from overseas fabrication also have shortcomings. The case study presented indicates several of these problems and suggests a hybrid solution to volumetric delivery.

Determinação de indicadores de qualidade para avaliação do processo de gestão de pequenas e médias empresas do setor de construção civil habitacional

A escolha do tema ficou circunscrita ao subsetor de construção habitacional, que é caracterizado pela presença de pequenas e médias empresas. A consolidação de grandes empresas neste ramo de atividades tende a ocorrer sobretudo em conjunturas onde através da intervenção estatal são definidos programas habitacionais de grande escala que requerem das empresas participantes de maior volume de capital e o acesso a tecnologias mais sofisticadas. A importância da pequena empresa neste ramo de atividades pode ser notada atraves da experiência dos países da Comunidade Econômica Europeia, que em 1985 de um total de mais de um milhão de empresas de construção, 90% tinham até 10 empregados. Igual situação se verifica nos Estados Unidos da América onde conforme dados de 1965, também 90 % das 875.000 empresas então existentes no país empregavam menos de 10 pessoas (ONU, 1987). De uma maneira geral a importância do tema fica evidente quando se analisa o peso do setor da construção civil na economia nacional, que se situa em torno de 5% do PIB nos países industrializados, enquanto que nos países de industrialização recente, este percentual pode atingir o índice de 7% (PNU, op.cit.). Tal constatação evidencia que a indústria da construção representa o principal item na composição dos investimentos (formação bruta de capital fixo) das contas nacionais de diversos países, apresentando uma participação relativa quase sempre superior a 55% nos países industrializados e 60% nos países de industrialização recente (ONU, op.cit.). No Brasil tal importância se confirma pelo valor adicionado do setor habitacional correspondente a 2,2% do PIB, e numa visão mais abrangente, dentro dos contornos da indústria da construção civil como um todo, representando cerca de 7,3% do PIB (FIBGE, 1988). Quanto a questão da mão-de-obra, em que pese a ausência de dados no Brasil, e bastante visível sua larga influência na economia atuando como um ramo de atividades multiplicador de alocação de pessoal, principalmente a nível de utilização intensiva de mão-de-obra menos qualificada. Enquanto nos EEUU e CEE 90% das empresas constituíam-se de organizações com menos de 10 empregados, no Brasil onde há ausência de dados oficiais a respeito, na pior das hipóteses pode-se estimar que este percentual pode variar entre 50 a 70% do total de empresas, o que não deixa de ser um dado de extrema magnitude. Foram exatamente a expressão destes números, sem considerar o déficit habitacional em torno de 10 milhões de pessoas, um terço da população, moram em condições inadequadas (Exame, 1991), que influenciaram fortemente a escolha do tema da presente proposta de Tese.

Testemunhos de um tempo vivido : fragmentos e contextos de uma narrativa de Janduís-RN

Shows up the memory of the elderly, as a consistent experience in the in the construction of the social memory of Janduís, Rio Grande do Norte, where the research takes place. Through an autobiographic narrative, in a qualitative approaching, the intent is to stand up aspects about the individual history and collective memories, starting in a simple question: what did they remember? A question that turns into many others, as how the remember and under which circumstances. So, the lived and remembered moments are the subject of this paper, as these testimonials shows and reveals the citizens typical aspects, intending to telling (again) the city s history by the memories of this people. By oral statements and the analysis that followed, subjective aspects that made a social memory, highlight in violent episodes, that, now remembered, occurred in the historical sediment, which connects several social times, establishing a narrative standard. In Janduís, this standard is about the memory that sticks out their individual ways, and the collective life, in the past, standing out the fair and the events that occurred on it, as the most remembered place, where the memories go stronger. When they narrate are incorporated others facts, the story is reinvented, connecting the past to the future. The paper also revels builders subjects aspects of a social memory, as historical sediment that joins the social times. At the present moment, the fair, to them, is a place that doesn t exist anymore; for the city, is a place of enlargement of women s presence at the trending spaces, which means a place of social transformation. That being said, the fair, in both times, present and past, turns into a analysis object, with important elements to reference narrative s time and place. And how the narrative update the past recorded in the old citizen s memory. What was intended to do was articulate the memory and the history form temporal and special etching that define the place and the narrative context: the lived and the remembered at the group s day by day. In that way, were identify the collective memory s common elements, enunciating the memory and the narratives that update that history, influencing and being influenced, forming in memories in a collective phenomenon fueling the local imaginary

Análise do modelo de gestão implantado no Centro de Atenção Psicossocial CAPS II OESTE de 1995 a 2005, situado no distrito sanitário Oeste do município de Natal/RN, à luz da Co-gestão

This dissertation has as aim the praxis of co-management of the health service of CAPS II OESTE of Natal-RN, where health workers, family members got to materialize guidelines and principles of psychiatric Brazilian reform in real possibilities of subjectivity construction, whereas they changed social relations in daily life. The path chosen to record was from testimonials and contributions of those who meant their done. Redeeming this story from social representations of the majority of their builders was an instigating, delicate and rewarding task, emphasizing the living memory, rebuilt in a line of time which could not be found in simple documentary collections. Mainly, by knowing that service routine was intense and had as characteristic the singular mobility itself from a creation process and therefore not always its dynamic allowed adequate records. At the same time, from this occurred the field and bibliographic research which allowed the detailed information from the prior milestones and motivated to the practice here reported. The rereading of concepts in an interface with the reports of the interviewees enabled the verification that the model of mental health advocated by psychiatric reform was understood. Once noticed the presence of the beliefs and values of people in motivating energy for the progress of reform, it has gone to fetch theoretical subsidies of administrative order to understand how they saw this building and that uniqueness has been printed. The theoretical way and praxis have tracked here has allowed to analyze how occurred such a process of production and subjectivity and collectives that when organize enabled themselves for analysis and intervention, including in crisis situations. Therefore, it was revealed that ethical and multi-disciplinarity, the humanitarian sense, the coresponsibility, co-production and horizontal management were the key factors for spread from a changing protagonist. One can thus conclude that co-management from that collective has been multi-disciplinary weaving a cross

Diagnóstico ambiental da gestão e destinação dos resíduos da construção e demolição (RCD): análise das Construtoras Associadas ao SINDUSCON/RN e empresas coletoras atuantes no município de Parnamirim - RN

Surveys carried out in many Brazilian cities have shown that the CDW Construction and Demolition Waste, in some cases, represent more than 50% of the mass of urban solid residue. Municipalities have struggled to manage in an effective way huge quantities of CDW generated every day and solve the problem of the illegal dumping in an inadequate area, which compromise the quality of life of the population as a whole, thus causing serious problems concerning social-environmental and sanitary. This paperwork was meant it carry out environmental diagnosis of the management and the final destination of the CDW in the city of Parnamirim/RN. The methodology used in this work constituted in the bibliographical research, conducted to give support and fundaments to the subject in question, identification of the main places of legal and illegal dumping, identification of the environmental impacts caused by the irregular deposition of the CDW, valuation of quantity and quality of the CDW and perception according to the Environmental Legislation. The necessary data for the elaboration of this study were carried out through the appliance of questionnaires with open and closed questions, applied to 14 (fourteen) Real Estate developer companies associated with SINDUSCON/RN and 05 companies that deal with the transportation and collection of CDW, formal and informal interviews, exploitational visits and photographical records. The collected data went through a statistic treatment being organized into tables and graphs. The main results obtained from this research show that the interviewees hold a medium knowledge of the specific Environmental Legislation; do not have an effective model of environmental management, resorting to only reusing CDW; that the reusing of CDW is not substantial, as much as the possibility of recycling has a minimal consideration. It was also verified that a considerable percentage of interviewees affirmed to send CDW to illegal and inadequate locations. It is expected that such study can be used as an important tool to subsidize the public administration in the pursuit of solutions which could bring benefits to society and the environment

Gestão dos resíduos sólidos das contruções prediais na cidade do Natal-RN

The present work has the objective of presenting an investigation about the quantification, classification and destination of the waste of construction and demolition (RCD) in the city of Natal - RN, focusing the aspects of the environmental impacts and the strategic importance of the environmental administration in the earnings of productivity of the companies. Of the environmental point of view the research intends to identify and to quantify the monthly and annual production of RCD in the city, as well as to know the places of deposition of those residues. To reach the objectives of the study, an exploratory and descriptive research was accomplished, using a questionnaire with closed subjects and an open one, applied in 25 entrepreneurs of the branch of the building site, being 21 builders and 4 entrepreneurs of collection companies and removal dumps. As form of analysis of the data, the descriptive analysis was used and of crossing. The production engineering considers important the insert of best production practices and administration of the product in the companies, with views to the increase of your competitiveness, productivity earnings and improvement of the environmental aspects with views to the consumer's satisfaction, in that case the buyer of immobile. The principal results of the investigation demonstrate that there was not great variability of answers with relationship to the interviewees opinion in what he refers to the environmental practices. In your majority the building site interviewees entrepreneurs evidenced the absence of the public power, particularly the city hall of Natal, in the control, fiscalization and creation of mechanisms for a correct destination of RCD, as well as for your reuse and recycle. On the other hand also it was evident that the recycle or the reuse of RCD on the part of the companies is a rare practice and a lot of times inexistent, although the entrepreneurs' of the building site section great majority recognizes that would have won of productivity with the correct and intensive use of such measures

Controle do cupim de montículo (Isoptera: Termitidae) de pastagem com fungos entomopatogênicos

The objective of this study was to evaluate the control of mound-building termites (Isoptera: Termitidae) by entomopathogenic fungi (Metarhizium anisopliae and Beauveria bassiana). We developed two experiments, with two copies of application in three sizes of nests. The first was installed in the Salto Macauba farm and second in the Laboratory of Plant Protection at the State University of Mato Grosso do Sul. The first experiment consisted of five repetitions, each nest an experimental unit, with treatments in a factorial 2 (fungi) x 2 (tests) x 2 (type of spraying) + 1 control, distributed completely at random in the area. The treatments were: 1) control - no implementation, 2) Metarril M103 (M. anisopliae) - 10 g/mound-dusting, 3) Metarril M103 - 10 g/mound - via net, 4) Metarril M103 - 15 g/mound-dusting, 5) Metarril M103 - 15 g/mound - via net, 6) Boveril B102 (B. bassiana) - 10 g/mound - dusting, 7) Boveril B102 - 10 g/mound - via net, 8) Boveril B102 - 15 g/mound-dusting and 9) Boveril B102 - 15 g/mound-via net. The testing of mortality were made spraying of the laboratory with the field measurements performed in compliance with the same separation of the nests. The results suggested that the road dust (dosage of 10 g) of the fungi studied showed higher mortality of nests of small size (53%). B. bassiana (Boveril) (10 g) gave 80% mortality of C. cumulans when applied to nests of small size.

Apropriação de novas mídias por estudantes universitárias

It is an investigation that seeks to reveal, record and analyze the process of appropriation and use of digital media by university students, aged between 40 and 60 years. Interested in studying how changes are perceived in the educational sphere for students Whois have gone through liberal/traditional school, ie, effected the first contact with technological devices media as adults, in the university. This investigation sought to contribute to the knowledge on the use of new learning strategies imposed by digital media by recording and analyzing the reports surveyed sample. Allowed to know the cultural universe of these women, revealing the context in which receive mediated messages and uses that maré these learning strategies within their daily academic life. Gathered in this work, reflexions guided by studies of media reception and role played by digital media as builders images and facilitators in knowledging acquisitions, it was chosen to work two main theorical notions: communication media and digital inclusion. As the research methodology, it was used the exploratory descriptive technical together with other appropriate tecniques. In ordem to approach the problem can be observed two phases: a quantitative one, which was used an investigative procedure, a survey data with closed questions; and a qualitative phase, which was used to collect data through a diary from situations encountered in the classroom. The main objective of analyzing how digital media are received, appropriated and used by university women has been fulfilled and it is remarkable that they access with dificulty and can not be considered included digitally. The results show that the problem of these agents is not the access, there are was of appropriation of digital media offered at IES, and it was possible to note that they seek to integrate to the technological world, and they even have devices that can insert them on this world. Insertion in cyberculture sets up the ability to find a favorable way to be aware of reality and production of knowledge and liberating and dignifying practices, in this case refers to an appropriation of citizenship through the field of technological devices offered as a perspective that they can interact

Identidade, espaço e tempo: negociações de sentido sobre a "gente de rua"

This research examines the street children s identity construction processes. Recently, the research about this population has focused on the socialization processes that organize their everyday, their situations of interaction, the meanings of their social practices, their street experience. The concept of identitary forms gives coherence to the set of these phenomena, articulating them theoretically, in order to describe their life conditions and details of their trajectories. This research utilized an ethnographic approach with a group of 11 street people, 9 of them boys and girls 16-18 years old, during 3 months. It included participant observation, informal and formal interviews, that resulted in young s narratives of lifestory. These narratives were interpreted according to the principles of positioning analysis and the Labovian Analysis model of oral narratives of personal experience. The observation of interaction among the studied group and other groups has showed that their social practices, supported on many particular bodily technologies, recreate space and time of these interactions semantically, as mediation of meaning negotiations among groups. Such meanings transform again the environment of these interactions, disclosing interpretative systems by means of which the groups apprehend this interaction in a particular way. These street children s bodily technologies imply identitary forms based on scarcity and abandonment, paradoxicalally related to their self-concept. The analysis of narratives revealed diversity and complexity in the meanings assembly for their street experience; it showed that the semantic arrangements reconstruct the temporal experience, creating a moral climate for each lifestory, and determining more or less aperture of identitary forms to change. The study concludes that space and time, builders of interaction regimes, produce identitary forms; that the narratives and the social practices of the studied group are sustained upon a master discourse that opposes the meanings of the home and the life in the streets

Implicações socioambientais da construção de um parque eólico no município de Rio de Fogo-RN

The purpose of this study was to investigate the social-environmental implications of the first large scale wind farm recently built in Brazil (2006), Parque Eólico de Rio do Fogo (PERF), to the nearby communities. The research was base on the adjustment of the DIS/BCN tool to analyze social impact and it was linked to the multi-method approach. Applying the autophotography strategy, cameras were given to five children from the district of Zumbi, the nearest location to PERF, and they were asked to individually photograph the six places they liked the most and the six places they liked the least in their community. Then, these children were interviewed individually and collectively about the photographs. Adult locals in Zumbi, residents of Zumbi/Rio do Fogo settlement, members of the State and Municipal government and representatives of the PERF were also interviewed with the aid of some of the pictures taken by the children and others that might trigger something to say, as a strategy called sample function. The five children presented positive image towards PERF; all of them chose to photograph it as one of places they liked. Adult population of Zumbi presented positive visual evaluation towards PERF. A small number of the interviewees were aware of the environmental and social benefits of wind energy production. Residents did not participate of the decision making process regarding PERF. They approved the project, especially because of the jobs provided during construction. Nowadays, PERF is something apart from their lives because it no longer provides jobs or any other interaction between the facility and the locals. Residents relate to the land, not with the facility. However, there is no evidence of rejection towards PERF, it is simply seen as something neutral to their lives. The low levels of education, traditional lack of social commitment and citizenship, and the experience accumulated by PERF´s planners and builders in other countries, may be contributing points to the fact that Zumbi residents did not oppose to PERF. It is clear that the country needs a legislation which seriously considers the psycho-social dimension involved in the implementation of wind farms

Caracterização dos sedimentos superficiais de fundo do complexo recifal de Maracajaú

The study carried out in the environment of Maracajaú reef an São Roque channel, had as main objective to analyze the characteristics of sediments active locally expressed in the grains, through collections of sediments in the field, technical processing and data analyzes of sediments. Data processing were made on three main aspects: biotic composition, concentration of calcium carbonate and particle size of the sediment. Differences between the sediments of the reefs and channel were observed. It was emphasized the contribution of algae limestone in the production of carbonate, with some influence of foraminifera near the coast. The particle size distribution presented significant results for the understanding of locally sedimentary deposits. The results showed an environment of carbonate, with predominance of algae limestone, associated to unconsolidated sediments with gross granularity, besides the presence of rhodoliths in all samples.The fragmentation of biotic components and the prevalence of elliptical rhodoliths with little or no branch, indicate an environment of high energy hydrodynamics. This work is a further contribution to the understanding of sedimentology active locally in reef environments, in particular the of Maracajaú reef, by virtue of their complex ecosystem composed of a diversity of wild fauna and flora that still little studied in Brazil comparing to accelerated growth of teeth extractions and usufructs of natural resources causing often irreversible impacts to the environment

Caracterização geológica tridimensional e monitoramento de dunas no litoral oriental do Rio Grande do Norte

This work presents geophysical and geological results obtained in a dunefield located in the east coast of Rio Grande do Norte State, with the aim to recognize the aeolian body depositional geometries to a future geologic modeling of the aeolian petroliferous reservoirs. The research, which was done in blowouts region situated at Nisia Floresta Municipally, included the characterization of external geometries with GPS and internal geometry analysis by GPR. Data was integrated in GoCAD software, where it was possible the three-dimensional characterization and interpretation of the studied deposits. The interpretation of GPR profiling allowed identifying: First-order bounding surfaces that separated the aeolian deposits of the Barreiras Formation rocks; Second-order bounding surfaces, which limit dune generations and Third-order bounding surfaces, a reactivation surface. This classification was based and adapted by the Brookfield (1977) and Kocurek (1996) propose. Four radarfacies was recognized: Radarfacies 1, progradational reflectors correlated to foresets of the dunes, Radarfacies 2, plain parallels reflectors related to sand sheets, Radarfacies 3, plain parallels reflectors associated to reworking of the blowout dune crest and Radarfacies 4, mounded reflectors associated to vegetated mound of sand or objects buried in subsurface. The GPR and GPS methods was also employed to the monitoring of dunefields susceptible to human activities in Buzios Beach, where the constructions along the blowout region and the tourism are changing the natural evolution of the deposits. This fact possibly to cause negative impacts to the coastal zone. Data obtained in Dunas Park, a unit environmental conservation, was compared with information of the Buzios Beach. There is a major tendency of erosion in Buzios, specifically in blowout corridor and blowout dune