Moisture recycling in the Iberian Peninsula from a regional climate simulation: spatiotemporal analysis and impact on the precipitation regime

The contribution of the evapotranspiration from a certain region to the precipitation over the same area is referred to as water recycling. In this paper, we explore the spatiotemporal links between the recycling mechanism and the Iberian rainfall regime. We use a 9 km resolution Weather Research and Forecasting simulation of 18 years (1990-2007) to compute local and regional recycling ratios over Iberia, at the monthly scale, through both an analytical and a numerical recycling model. In contrast to coastal areas, the interior of Iberia experiences a relative maximum of precipitation in spring, suggesting a prominent role of land-atmosphere interactions on the inland precipitation regime during this period of the year. Local recycling ratios are the highest in spring and early summer, coinciding with those areas where this spring peak of rainfall represents the absolute maximum in the annual cycle. This confirms that recycling processes are crucial to explain the Iberian spring precipitation, particularly over the eastern and northeastern sectors. Average monthly recycling values range from 0.04 in December to 0.14 in June according to the numerical model and from 0.03 in December to 0.07 in May according to the analytical procedure. Our analysis shows that the highest values of recycling are limited by the coexistence of two necessary mechanisms: (1) the availability of sufficient soil moisture and (2) the occurrence of appropriate synoptic configurations favoring the development of convective regimes. The analyzed surplus of rainfall in spring has a critical impact on agriculture over large semiarid regions of the interior of Iberia.

Regional governance: strategies and disputes in health region management

OBJECTIVE To analyze the regional governance of the health systemin relation to management strategies and disputes.METHODOLOGICAL PROCEDURES A qualitative study with health managers from 19 municipalities in the health region of Bahia, Northeastern Brazil. Data were drawn from 17 semi-structured interviews of state, regional, and municipal health policymakers and managers; a focus group; observations of the regional interagency committee; and documents in 2012. The political-institutional and the organizational components were analyzed in the light of dialectical hermeneutics.RESULTS The regional interagency committee is the chief regional governance strategy/component and functions as a strategic tool for strengthening governance. It brings together a diversity of members responsible for decision making in the healthcare territories, who need to negotiate the allocation of funding and the distribution of facilities for common use in the region. The high turnover of health secretaries, their lack of autonomy from the local executive decisions, inadequate technical training to exercise their function, and the influence of party politics on decision making stand as obstacles to the regional interagency committee’s permeability to social demands. Funding is insufficient to enable the fulfillment of the officially integrated agreed-upon program or to boost public supply by the system, requiring that public managers procure services from the private market at values higher than the national health service price schedule (Brazilian Unified Health System Table). The study determined that “facilitators” under contract to health departments accelerated access to specialized (diagnostic, therapeutic and/or surgical) services in other municipalities by direct payment to physicians for procedure costs already covered by the Brazilian Unified Health System.CONCLUSIONS The characteristics identified a regionalized system with a conflictive pattern of governance and intermediate institutionalism. The regional interagency committee’s managerial routine needs to incorporate more democratic devices for connecting with educational institutions, devices that are more permeable to social demands relating to regional policy making.

Impact of a price-maker pumped storage hydro unit on the integration of wind energy in power systems

The increasing integration of larger amounts of wind energy into power systems raises important operational issues, such as the balance between power generation and demand. The pumped storage hydro (PSH) units are one possible solution to mitigate this problem, once they can store the excess of energy in the periods of higher generation and lower demand. However, the behaviour of a PSH unit may differ considerably from the expected in terms of wind power integration when it operates in a liberalized electricity market under a price-maker context. In this regard, this paper models and computes the optimal PSH weekly scheduling in a price-taker and price-maker scenarios, either when the PSH unit operates in standalone and integrated in a portfolio of other generation assets. Results show that the price-maker standalone PSH will integrate less wind power in comparison with the price-taker situation. Moreover, when the PSH unit is integrated in a portfolio with a base load power plant, the role of the price elasticity of demand may completely change the operational profile of the PSH unit. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Analysis of the domain of applicability of an algorithm for a resources system selection problem for Distributed/Agile/Virtual Enterprises integration

The process of resources systems selection takes an important part in Distributed/Agile/Virtual Enterprises (D/A/V Es) integration. However, the resources systems selection is still a difficult matter to solve in a D/A/VE, as it is pointed out in this paper. Globally, we can say that the selection problem has been equated from different aspects, originating different kinds of models/algorithms to solve it. In order to assist the development of a web prototype tool (broker tool), intelligent and flexible, that integrates all the selection model activities and tools, and with the capacity to adequate to each D/A/V E project or instance (this is the major goal of our final project), we intend in this paper to show: a formulation of a kind of resources selection problem and the limitations of the algorithms proposed to solve it. We formulate a particular case of the problem as an integer programming, which is solved using simplex and branch and bound algorithms, and identify their performance limitations (in terms of processing time) based on simulation results. These limitations depend on the number of processing tasks and on the number of pre-selected resources per processing tasks, defining the domain of applicability of the algorithms for the problem studied. The limitations detected open the necessity of the application of other kind of algorithms (approximate solution algorithms) outside the domain of applicability founded for the algorithms simulated. However, for a broker tool it is very important the knowledge of algorithms limitations, in order to, based on problem features, develop and select the most suitable algorithm that guarantees a good performance.

Market of resources for virtual enterprise integration

Most definitions of virtual enterprise (VE) incorporate the idea of extended and collaborative outsourcing to suppliers and subcontractors in order to achieve a competitive response to market demands (Webster, Sugden, & Tayles, 2004). As suggested by several authors (Browne & Zhang, 1999; Byrne, 1993; Camarinha-Matos & Afsarmanesh, 1999; Cunha, Putnik, & Ávila, 2000; Davidow & Malone, 1992; Preiss, Goldman, & Nagel, 1996), a VE consists of a network of independent enterprises (resources providers) with reconfiguration capability in useful time, permanently aligned with the market requirements, created to take profit from a specific market opportunity, and where each participant contributes with its best practices and core competencies to the success and competitiveness of the structure as a whole. Even during the operation phase of the VE, the configuration can change, to assure business alignment with the market demands, traduced by the identification of reconfiguration opportunities and continuous readjustment or reconfiguration of the VE network, to meet unexpected situations or to keep permanent competitiveness and maximum performance (Cunha & Putnik, 2002, 2005a, 2005b).

Assessment of the ensembles regional climate models in the representation of precipitation variability and extremes over Portugal

A new data set of daily gridded observations of precipitation, computed from over 400 stations in Portugal, is used to assess the performance of 12 regional climate models at 25 km resolution, from the ENSEMBLES set, all forced by ERA-40 boundary conditions, for the 1961-2000 period. Standard point error statistics, calculated from grid point and basin aggregated data, and precipitation related climate indices are used to analyze the performance of the different models in representing the main spatial and temporal features of the regional climate, and its extreme events. As a whole, the ENSEMBLES models are found to achieve a good representation of those features, with good spatial correlations with observations. There is a small but relevant negative bias in precipitation, especially in the driest months, leading to systematic errors in related climate indices. The underprediction of precipitation occurs in most percentiles, although this deficiency is partially corrected at the basin level. Interestingly, some of the conclusions concerning the performance of the models are different of what has been found for the contiguous territory of Spain; in particular, ENSEMBLES models appear too dry over Portugal and too wet over Spain. Finally, models behave quite differently in the simulation of some important aspects of local climate, from the mean climatology to high precipitation regimes in localized mountain ranges and in the subsequent drier regions.

Diversidade regional e dinâmicas demográficas: área metropolitana de Lisboa 2001-2025

Dissertação apresentada como requisito parcial para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Gestão de Informação

Factores que influenciam a mortalidade de abetarda e sisão por colisão em linhas de muito alta tensão. Análises às escalas local e regional e implicações para o Ordenamento do Território

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Ordenamento do Território e Planeamento Ambiental

Assessment and optimization of wind energy integration into the power systems: application to the portuguese system

The increasing integration of wind energy in power systems can be responsible for the occurrence of over-generation, especially during the off-peak periods. This paper presents a dedicated methodology to identify and quantify the occurrence of this over-generation and to evaluate some of the solutions that can be adopted to mitigate this problem. The methodology is applied to the Portuguese power system, in which the wind energy is expected to represent more than 25% of the installed capacity in a near future. The results show that the pumped-hydro units will not provide enough energy storage capacity and, therefore, wind curtailments are expected to occur in the Portuguese system. Additional energy storage devices can be implemented to offset the wind energy curtailments. However, the investment analysis performed show that they are not economically viable, due to the present high capital costs involved.

Is the electric vehicle a solution for the wind power integration in the portuguese power system?

The integration of Plug-in electric vehicles in the transportation sector has a great potential to reduce oil dependency, the GHG emissions and to contribute for the integration of renewable sources into the electricity generation mix. Portugal has a high share of wind energy, and curtailment may occur, especially during the off-peak hours with high levels of hydro generation. In this context, the electric vehicles, seen as a distributed storage system, can help to reduce the potential wind curtailments and, therefore, increase the integration of wind power into the power system. In order to assess the energy and environmental benefits of this integration, a methodology based on a unit commitment and economic dispatch is adapted and implemented. From this methodology, the thermal generation costs, the CO2 emissions and the potential wind generation curtailment are computed. Simulation results show that a 10% penetration of electric vehicles in the Portuguese fleet would increase electrical load by 3% and reduce wind curtailment by only 26%. This results from the fact that the additional generation required to supply the electric vehicles is mostly thermal. The computed CO2 emissions of the EV are 92 g CO2/kWh which become closer to those of some new ICE engines.

Integration of e-learning systems with repositories of learning objects

This paper describes a communication model to integrate repositories of programming problems with other e-Learning software components. The motivation for this work comes from the EduJudge project that aims to connect an existing repository of programming problems to learning management systems. When trying to use the existing repositories of learning objects we realized that they are mainly specialized search engines and lack features for integration with other e-Learning systems. With this model we intend to clarify the main features of a programming problem repository, in order to enable the design and development of software components that use it. The two main points of this model are the definition of programming problems as learning objects and the definition of the core functions exposed by the repository. In both cases, this model follows the existing specifications of the IMS standard and proposes extensions to deal with the special requirements of automatic evaluation and grading of programming exercises. In the definition of programming problems as learning objects we introduced a new schema for meta-data. This schema is used to represent meta-data related to automatic evaluation that cannot be conveniently represented using the standard: the type of automatic evaluation; the requirements of the evaluation engine; or the roles of different assets - tests cases, program solutions, etc. In the definition of the core functions we used two different web services flavours - SOAP and REST - and described each function as an operation for each type of interface. We describe also the data types of the arguments of each operation. These data types consist mainly on learning objects and their identifications, but include also usage reports and queries using XQuery.

The Neogene of the Lower Tagus Basin (Portugal)

Revista Española de Paleontologia 19 (2), 229-242

Integration of repositories in Moodle

Current Learning Management Systems focus on the management of students, keeping track of their progress across all types of training activities. This type of systems lacks integration with other e-Learning systems. For instance, learning objects stored in a centralized repository are unavailable throughout an organization for potential reuse. In this paper we present the interoperability features of crimsonHex - a service oriented repository of learning objects - highlighting the use of XML languages. Its nteroperability features are compliant with the existing standards and we propose extensions to the IMS interoperability recommendation, adding new functions, formalizing an XML message interchange and providing also a REST interface. To validate the proposed extensions and its implementation in crimsonHex we designed two repository plugins for Moodle 2.0, the first of which is already implemented and is expected to be included in the next release of this popular learning management system.

Using the learning tools interoperability framework for LMS integration in service oriented architectures

The LMS plays an indisputable role in the majority of the eLearning environments. This eLearning system type is often used for presenting, solving and grading simple exercises. However, exercises from complex domains, such as computer programming, require heterogeneous systems such as evaluation engines, learning objects repositories and exercise resolution environments. The coordination of networks of such disparate systems is rather complex. This work presents a standard approach for the coordination of a network of eLearning systems supporting the resolution of exercises. The proposed approach use a pivot component embedded in the LMS with two roles: provide an exercise resolution environment and coordinate the communication between the LMS and other systems exposing their functions as web services. The integration of the pivot component with the LMS relies on the Learning Tools Interoperability. The validation of this approach is made through the integration of the component with LMSs from two vendors.

Integration of e-portfolios in learning management systems

The LMS plays a decisive role in most eLearning environments. Although they integrate many useful tools for managing eLearning activities, they must also be effectively integrated with other specialized systems typically found in an educational environment such as Repositories of Learning Objects or ePortfolio Systems. Both types of systems evolved separately but in recent years the trend is to combine them, allowing the LMS to benefit from using the ePortfolio assessment features. This paper details the most common strategies for integrating an ePortfolio system into an LMS: the data, the API and the tool integration strategies. It presents a comparative study of strategies based on the technical skills, degree of coupling, security features, batch integration, development effort, status and standardization. This study is validated through the integration of two of the most representative systems on each category - respectively Mahara and Moodle.