Methodology for collaborative enterprise reference ontology building

Dissertation presented at Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia of Universidade Nova de Lisboa to obtain the Master degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Liderança e motivação nas entidades responsáveis pela recolha e gestão de resíduos do concelho da Maia

O contexto, o tempo é de mudança. Ainda que o não fosse, falar de gestão de recursos humanos, falar de pessoas, é falar em mudança (ou mudanças). A economia mundial é que dita o presente e o futuro das organizações, privadas ou públicas, com ou sem fins lucrativos, pequenas, médias e grandes. Quando, em 2011, foi chumbado o quarto projeto do Programa de Estabilidade e Crescimento, vivia-se em Portugal um período crítico, ao qual não era alheia a conjuntura internacional de recessão económica. No domínio da Administração Pública, procurava-se redesenhar as organizações, imprimir-lhes uma gestão mais privatística, de otimização de recursos e controlo de custos. Hoje, sabe-se que aquela rejeição do programa político governamental teria outras consequências, as que atualmente os portugueses vêm sentindo. É um período de mudanças radicais, sem precedentes. Como lideram ou como administram os responsáveis pelas organizações, no contexto atual? Quais as qualidades de liderança que imperam em situações de crise e de austeridade? Como reagem líderes e liderados em períodos de recessão ou adversidade? E, sobretudo, como falham uns e são bem-sucedidos outros? Desde logo, há que reconhecer a importância e valorizar o capital humano: atrair, reter e desenvolver. Neste trabalho, procuramos responder aos crescentes interesse e preocupação em redesenhar, reformar e melhorar a gestão na administração pública. Daí o interesse pela motivação e a sua relação com o estilo de liderança adotado nas organizações deste setor, fator determinante para o comprometimento, a eficácia e a produtividade no trabalho. Mais concretamente, o objetivo deste estudo é compreender a relação entre o sistema de gestão que predomina nas entidades responsáveis pela recolha e gestão de resíduos do concelho da Maia e a motivação dos seus colaboradores, assim como a satisfação dos mesmos com a sua chefia. A metodologia de investigação utilizada orienta-se para a abordagem quantitativa, recorrendo-se a técnicas e instrumentos de natureza quantitativa, tais como o questionário de escala de resposta tipo Likert, por considerarmos ser a mais ajustada às pretensões desta investigação.

Avaliação do desempenho energético de uma pequena fracção de serviços existente tendo por base as metodologias regulamentares do RSECE e do RECS

A dependência energética das grandes economias mundiais, alertaram o mundo para a necessidade de mudar o comportamento relativo ao consumo de energia. O sector dos edifícios representa 40% dos consumos globais de energia na União Europeia, já no panorama nacional, o sector dos edifícios representa 28% dos consumos globais da energia, constituindo uma parte significativa no consumo global de energia, sendo portanto, essencial avaliar o desempenho energético dos edifícios, no sentido de promover a sua eficiência energética e beneficiar do grande potencial de economia de energia. Portugal à luz das linhas de orientação da União Europeia com o objectivo de instigar o aumento da eficiência energética nos edifícios, lançou o programa nacional para a eficiência energética nos Edifícios (P3E). Posteriormente, da transposição da Directiva 2002/91/CE para a ordem jurídica nacional surgiu o SCE, o RCCTE e o RSECE. Já em 2013, com a necessidade de transpor para a ordem da jurídica nacional a Directiva n.º 2010/31/EU, surge o Decreto-Lei n.º 118/2013, reunindo num só diploma o SCE, o REH e o RECS, promovendo uma revisão da legislação nacional, garantindo e promovendo a melhoria do desempenho energético dos edifícios. Através da presente dissertação, pretende-se avaliar o desempenho energético de uma pequena fracção de serviços existente tendo por base a metodologia regulamentar revogada do RSECE e a vigente metodologia regulamentar do RECS. Após apresentação dos dois regulamentos e da identificação das principais diferenças entre as duas metodologias regulamentares, procedeu-se ao enquadramento da fracção em estudo no âmbito de aplicação do RSECE e do RECS. Segundo os dois regulamentos a fracção não está sujeita a requisitos mínimos de qualidade térmica, nem a quaisquer requisitos energéticos e de eficiência dos sistemas técnicos, ao tratar-se de uma pequena fracção de serviços existente. Recorrendo ao software DesignBuilder, gerou-se o modelo da fracção em estudo, que através da simulação dinâmica multizona permitiu obter os consumos de energia anuais e a sua desagregação por utilização final. A partir dos consumos energia, determinaram-se os indicadores de eficiência energética de acordo com as duas metodologias, permitindo deste modo, proceder à classificação energética da fracção em estudo. De acordo com o RSECE a fracção em estudo obteve a classificação D, já segundo o RECS alcançou a classe C. Para aumentar a eficiência energética da fracção e consequentemente diminuir o consumo energético, foi proposto proceder à substituição das lâmpadas existentes por lâmpadas tubulares de tecnologia LED e à substituição do sistema de ventilação mecânico por um sistema de ventilação dimensionado para os novos valores de caudal de ar novo regulamentares. Com a implementação destas duas medidas a fracção em estudo melhoraria a sua classificação energética, exigindo um investimento baixo e apresentando um período de retorno de 1 ano e 5 meses. Segundo o RSECE passaria para a classe B, e aplicando a metodologia regulamentar do RECS alcançaria a classe B-.

Reabilitação do Aeroporto de Ondjiva em Angola

Com o progresso da tecnologia aeronáutica, a deslocação de pessoas e bens tornou-se bastante acessível para variados pontos de mundo, com espaço de tempo muito reduzido. Um dos motores essenciais deste avanço, concernente à mobilidade, é o transporte aéreo e a sua evolução. Este tipo de transporte requer a máxima segurança, sendo que um único acidente pode gerar centenas de vítimas. Atendendo a estas condições, a qualidade dos pavimentos aeroportuários é de grande importância para a segurança da movimentação das aeronaves em solo. Mas, por razões económicas e por vezes de espaço, perspetivas de novas construções perdem viabilidade comparativamente a soluções de reabilitação. A posição geográfica do aeroporto de Ondjiva faz com que seja um importante ponto de passagem entre a África do Sul e a Namíbia e, prevê-se que o número de voos que se efetuam no aeroporto cresça, sendo que o país está numa fase de grande evolução. O presente trabalho visa o conhecimento do processo de dimensionamento para pavimentos aeroportuários e soluções de correção para anomalias que possam apresentar, aplicando-os ao aeroporto de Ondjiva, em Angola. Atualmente, o aeroporto revela um grande desgaste das pistas de táxi, inadaptabilidade das cabeceiras face às cargas estáticas a que são submetidas e, largura insuficiente da pista para a aeronave de projeto, ou aeronave crítica, atendendo ao regulamento da ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization). Para melhorar o conforto, a segurança e eficiência dos serviços aéreos, o dimensionamento do aeroporto deve obedecer aos princípios e regras da ICAO. Pretende-se também a modelação de uma solução de reforço para o pavimento existente, para que não seja necessário construir um aeroporto de raiz, minimizando custos. Após a realização do dimensionamento, foi estudada a sinalização horizontal e luminosa da pista, para que esteja em conformidade com as suas novas medidas.

Electricity markets modeling considering complex contracts and aggregators

All over the world, the liberalization of electricity markets, which follows different paradigms, has created new challenges for those involved in this sector. In order to respond to these challenges, electric power systems suffered a significant restructuring in its mode of operation and planning. This restructuring resulted in a considerable increase of the electric sector competitiveness. Particularly, the Ancillary Services (AS) market has been target of constant renovations in its operation mode as it is a targeted market for the trading of services, which have as main objective to ensure the operation of electric power systems with appropriate levels of stability, safety, quality, equity and competitiveness. In this way, with the increasing penetration of distributed energy resources including distributed generation, demand response, storage units and electric vehicles, it is essential to develop new smarter and hierarchical methods of operation of electric power systems. As these resources are mostly connected to the distribution network, it is important to consider the introduction of this kind of resources in AS delivery in order to achieve greater reliability and cost efficiency of electrical power systems operation. The main contribution of this work is the design and development of mechanisms and methodologies of AS market and for energy and AS joint market, considering different management entities of transmission and distribution networks. Several models developed in this work consider the most common AS in the liberalized market environment: Regulation Down; Regulation Up; Spinning Reserve and Non-Spinning Reserve. The presented models consider different rules and ways of operation, such as the division of market by network areas, which allows the congestion management of interconnections between areas; or the ancillary service cascading process, which allows the replacement of AS of superior quality by lower quality of AS, ensuring a better economic performance of the market. A major contribution of this work is the development an innovative methodology of market clearing process to be used in the energy and AS joint market, able to ensure viable and feasible solutions in markets, where there are technical constraints in the transmission network involving its division into areas or regions. The proposed method is based on the determination of Bialek topological factors and considers the contribution of the dispatch for all services of increase of generation (energy, Regulation Up, Spinning and Non-Spinning reserves) in network congestion. The use of Bialek factors in each iteration of the proposed methodology allows limiting the bids in the market while ensuring that the solution is feasible in any context of system operation. Another important contribution of this work is the model of the contribution of distributed energy resources in the ancillary services. In this way, a Virtual Power Player (VPP) is considered in order to aggregate, manage and interact with distributed energy resources. The VPP manages all the agents aggregated, being able to supply AS to the system operator, with the main purpose of participation in electricity market. In order to ensure their participation in the AS, the VPP should have a set of contracts with the agents that include a set of diversified and adapted rules to each kind of distributed resource. All methodologies developed and implemented in this work have been integrated into the MASCEM simulator, which is a simulator based on a multi-agent system that allows to study complex operation of electricity markets. In this way, the developed methodologies allow the simulator to cover more operation contexts of the present and future of the electricity market. In this way, this dissertation offers a huge contribution to the AS market simulation, based on models and mechanisms currently used in several real markets, as well as the introduction of innovative methodologies of market clearing process on the energy and AS joint market. This dissertation presents five case studies; each one consists of multiple scenarios. The first case study illustrates the application of AS market simulation considering several bids of market players. The energy and ancillary services joint market simulation is exposed in the second case study. In the third case study it is developed a comparison between the simulation of the joint market methodology, in which the player bids to the ancillary services is considered by network areas and a reference methodology. The fourth case study presents the simulation of joint market methodology based on Bialek topological distribution factors applied to transmission network with 7 buses managed by a TSO. The last case study presents a joint market model simulation which considers the aggregation of small players to a VPP, as well as complex contracts related to these entities. The case study comprises a distribution network with 33 buses managed by VPP, which comprises several kinds of distributed resources, such as photovoltaic, CHP, fuel cells, wind turbines, biomass, small hydro, municipal solid waste, demand response, and storage units.

Combining open and closed world reasoning for the semantic web

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Doutor em Informática

Multifunctional Biosensor Based on Localized Surface Plasmon Resonance for Monitoring Small Molecule–Protein Interaction

We report an optical sensor based on localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) to study small-molecule protein interaction combining high sensitivity refractive index sensing for quantitative binding information and subsequent conformation-sensitive plasmon-activated circular dichroism spectroscopy. The interaction of α-amylase and a small-size molecule (PGG, pentagalloyl glucose) was log concentration-dependent from 0.5 to 154 μM. In situ tests were additionally successfully applied to the analysis of real wine samples. These studies demonstrate that LSPR sensors to monitor small molecule–protein interactions in real time and in situ, which is a great advance within technological platforms for drug discovery.

Analysis of World Economic Variables Using Multidimensional Scaling

Waves of globalization reflect the historical technical progress and modern economic growth. The dynamics of this process are here approached using the multidimensional scaling (MDS) methodology to analyze the evolution of GDP per capita, international trade openness, life expectancy, and education tertiary enrollment in 14 countries. MDS provides the appropriate theoretical concepts and the exact mathematical tools to describe the joint evolution of these indicators of economic growth, globalization, welfare and human development of the world economy from 1977 up to 2012. The polarization dance of countries enlightens the convergence paths, potential warfare and present-day rivalries in the global geopolitical scene.

A Fractional Perspective to the Bond Graph Modelling of World Economies

Inspired in dynamic systems theory and Brewer’s contributions to apply it to economics, this paper establishes a bond graph model. Two main variables, a set of inter-connectivities based on nodes and links (bonds) and a fractional order dynamical perspective, prove to be a good macro-economic representation of countries’ potential performance in nowadays globalization. The estimations based on time series for 50 countries throughout the last 50 decades confirm the accuracy of the model and the importance of scale for economic performance.

A framework for using real data with distributed low cost sensors

Currently, due to the widespread use of computers and the internet, students are trading libraries for the World Wide Web and laboratories with simulation programs. In most courses, simulators are made available to students and can be used to proof theoretical results or to test a developing hardware/product. Although this is an interesting solution: low cost, easy and fast way to perform some courses work, it has indeed major disadvantages. As everything is currently being done with/in a computer, the students are loosing the “feel” of the real values of the magnitudes. For instance in engineering studies, and mainly in the first years, students need to learn electronics, algorithmic, mathematics and physics. All of these areas can use numerical analysis software, simulation software or spreadsheets and in the majority of the cases data used is either simulated or random numbers, but real data could be used instead. For example, if a course uses numerical analysis software and needs a dataset, the students can learn to manipulate arrays. Also, when using the spreadsheets to build graphics, instead of using a random table, students could use a real dataset based, for instance, in the room temperature and its variation across the day. In this work we present a framework which uses a simple interface allowing it to be used by different courses where the computers are the teaching/learning process in order to give a more realistic feeling to students by using real data. A framework is proposed based on a set of low cost sensors for different physical magnitudes, e.g. temperature, light, wind speed, which are connected to a central server, that the students have access with an Ethernet protocol or are connected directly to the student computer/laptop. These sensors use the communication ports available such as: serial ports, parallel ports, Ethernet or Universal Serial Bus (USB). Since a central server is used, the students are encouraged to use sensor values results in their different courses and consequently in different types of software such as: numerical analysis tools, spreadsheets or simply inside any programming language when a dataset is needed. In order to do this, small pieces of hardware were developed containing at least one sensor using different types of computer communication. As long as the sensors are attached in a server connected to the internet, these tools can also be shared between different schools. This allows sensors that aren't available in a determined school to be used by getting the values from other places that are sharing them. Another remark is that students in the more advanced years and (theoretically) more know how, can use the courses that have some affinities with electronic development to build new sensor pieces and expand the framework further. The final solution provided is very interesting, low cost, simple to develop, allowing flexibility of resources by using the same materials in several courses bringing real world data into the students computer works.

Forest fire detection with a small fixed wing autonomous aerial vehicle

In this work a forest fire detection solution using small autonomous aerial vehicles is proposed. The FALCOS unmanned aerial vehicle developed for remote-monitoring purposes is described. This is a small size UAV with onboard vision processing and autonomous flight capabilities. A set of custom developed navigation sensors was developed for the vehicle. Fire detection is performed through the use of low cost digital cameras and near-infrared sensors. Test results for navigation and ignition detection in real scenario are presented.

Description of an injury in a human caused by a false tocandira (Dinoponera gigantea, Perty, 1833) with a revision on folkloric, pharmacological and clinical aspects of the giant ants of the genera Paraponera and Dinoponera (sub-family Ponerinae)

The authors observed an injury caused by the sting of a false tocandira ant in the hand of an amateur fisherman and they describe the clinical findings and the evolution of the envenoming, which presented an acute and violent pain, cold sweating, nausea, a vomiting episode, malaise, tachycardia and left axillary's lymphadenopathy. About three hours after the accident, still feeling intense pain in the place of the sting, he presented an episode of great amount of blood in the feces with no history of digestive, hematological or vascular problems. The intense pain decreased after eight hours, but the place stayed moderately painful for about 24 hours. In that moment, he presented small grade of local edema and erythema. The authors still present the folkloric, pharmacological and clinical aspects related to the tocandiras stings, a very interesting family of ants, which presents the largest and more venomous ants of the world.

Vision-Based Assisted Teleoperation for Inspection Tasks with a Small ROV

It is well-known that ROVs require human intervention to guarantee the success of their assignment, as well as the equipment safety. However, as its teleoperation is quite complex to perform, there is a need for assisted teleoperation. This study aims to take on this challenge by developing vision-based assisted teleoperation maneuvers, since a standard camera is present in any ROV. The proposed approach is a visual servoing solution, that allows the user to select between several standard image processing methods and is applied to a 3-DOF ROV. The most interesting characteristic of the presented system is the exclusive use of the camera data to improve the teleoperation of an underactuated ROV. It is demonstrated through the comparison and evaluation of standard implementations of different vision methods and the execution of simple maneuvers to acquire experimental results, that the teleoperation of a small ROV can be drastically improved without the need to install additional sensors.

How does gender affect visiting a world heritage site?

To date few studies have been undertaken in Portugal dealing with the attitudes, motivations, and profile of tourists who visit World Heritage Sites. Also, few studies have dealt with destination image (e.g., Agapito, Mendes & Valle, 2010; Lopes, 2011). As far as it is known, none have approached the issue of gender differences in the choice of a Portuguese heritage destination. Since cultural tourism destinations need to differentiate themselves from each other, appropriate market segmentation must be based on a deep understanding of the customers’ motivations and preferences. Keeping in mind results from empirical literature (e.g., Silberberg, 1995; Beerli & Martin, 2004; Richards, 2004; Pérez, 2009; Sheng, Shen, & Chen, 2008), gender seems to be a possible approach to market segmentation, whether for Guimarães or for other cultural tourism destinations around the world. Located in the north-western region of Portugal, Guimarães is a city of strong symbolic and cultural significance, and the nomination of its historical centre as a World Heritage Site in 2001 enhanced its tourism potential. This study analyses the possible relation between gender and attitudes and motivations towards a World Heritage Site, such as Guimarães. Additionally, the empirical approach used in the study tries to capture differences in the perceived attributes of the city. Commonalities and distinctions within and between groups of tourists, by focusing on the specific characteristic of gender, were analysed. The study addressed two main questions: first, whether males and females have similar or different preferences in choosing the city as their destination; and, second, whether there are gender differences in the perception of the attributes of Guimarães. A better understanding of the gendered nature of the destination is a valuable cue for shaping products and services according to visitors’ preferences.