Energy efficiency and climate policy in the management of public spaces: public lighting

Public Lightning is an important part of municipality’s nighttime landscape. Lighting can be used to enhance public safety and security while improving the aesthetic appeal of the surrounding properties but with the current global financial crisis, such lighting systems must also be sustainable. Most climate policy efforts focus on the state and international level, however national governments won’t be able to meet their international commitments without local action. In Portugal, the Public Lighting is responsible for 3% of energy consumption. The problem is that the trend is to increase (about 4-5% per year) which represents very high costs for the municipal authorities. In terms of numbers are analyzed in this thesis 45 of 278 existent in Continental Portugal what represents only 16,2 % of the counties. This where the local authorities in Portugal that had a Sustainable Energy Action Plan (SEAP) that had been accepted and made available in the Covenant of Mayors website until the end of year 2013. It is important that the Covenant of Mayors will increase the local authorities awareness for energy efficiency and especially to public lighting because there is still a long way to go in terms of energy consumption reduction. In future works it would be interesting to see the payback of the EolGreen post in a real scenario due to lack of energy consumption from the grid it would allow to have a pretty high initial investment even with the maintenance that those technologies need.

Tracing the use of Communication Technologies in Higher Education

This chapter presents a comprehensive view of the main activities and findings of a research project entitled TRACER-Portuguese Public Higher Education Use of Communication Technologies, which focused on how the information about the use of Communication Technologies in Higher Education Institutions  can be collected, systematized, processed, and deployed to stakeholders. The project was carried out between 2011 and 2014 and its main results are a consolidated proposal of an analysis model to address the use of Communication Technologies in Higher Education institutions, as well as the U-TRACER® tool. This Web-based tool provides support to the process of collecting, processing, and deployment of data related with the use of Communication Technologies in a specific Higher Education or in a group of institutions, based on institutional or geographical criteria.

Participatory Patterns in an International Air Quality Monitoring Initiative

The issue of sustainability is at the top of the political and societal agenda, being considered of extreme importance and urgency. Human individual action impacts the environment both locally (e.g., local air/water quality, noise disturbance) and globally (e.g., climate change, resource use). Urban environments represent a crucial example, with an increasing realization that the most effective way of producing a change is involving the citizens themselves in monitoring campaigns (a citizen science bottom-up approach). This is possible by developing novel technologies and IT infrastructures enabling large citizen participation. Here, in the wider framework of one of the first such projects, we show results from an international competition where citizens were involved in mobile air pollution monitoring using low cost sensing devices, combined with a web-based game to monitor perceived levels of pollution. Measures of shift in perceptions over the course of the campaign are provided, together with insights into participatory patterns emerging from this study. Interesting effects related to inertia and to direct involvement in measurement activities rather than indirect information exposure are also highlighted, indicating that direct involvement can enhance learning and environmental awareness. In the future, this could result in better adoption of policies towards decreasing pollution.

The role of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) in information and communication in science. A conceptual framework and empirical study

Problem This dissertation presents a literature-based framework for communication in science (with the elements partners, purposes, message, and channel), which it then applies in and amends through an empirical study of how geoscientists use two social computing technologies (SCTs), blogging and Twitter (both general use and tweeting from conferences). How are these technologies used and what value do scientists derive from them? Method The empirical part used a two-pronged qualitative study, using (1) purposive samples of ~400 blog posts and ~1000 tweets and (2) a purposive sample of 8 geoscientist interviews. Blog posts, tweets, and interviews were coded using the framework, adding new codes as needed. The results were aggregated into 8 geoscientist case studies, and general patterns were derived through cross-case analysis. Results A detailed picture of how geoscientists use blogs and twitter emerged, including a number of new functions not served by traditional channels. Some highlights: Geoscientists use SCTs for communication among themselves as well as with the public. Blogs serve persuasion and personal knowledge management; Twitter often amplifies the signal of traditional communications such as journal articles. Blogs include tutorials for peers, reviews of basic science concepts, and book reviews. Twitter includes links to readings, requests for assistance, and discussions of politics and religion. Twitter at conferences provides live coverage of sessions. Conclusions Both blogs and Twitter are routine parts of scientists' communication toolbox, blogs for in-depth, well-prepared essays, Twitter for faster and broader interactions. Both have important roles in supporting community building, mentoring, and learning and teaching. The Framework of Communication in Science was a useful tool in studying these two SCTs in this domain. The results should encourage science administrators to facilitate SCT use of scientists in their organization and information providers to search SCT documents as an important source of information.

Tourist Destination Image in the New Technological Environments: Dialogism under the Public Relations Gaze

The dependence and influence of new media on social and organizational life have led to a new orientation of the communicational practices of organizations and to a research paradigm shift to a cocriational model within public relations theory. This model is based on dialogic rhetoric and dialogue that requires a joint production of content and meanings by organizations and publics, which have a central role in shaping image. The new social and communicational paradigms have also an impact on tourism research, implying the need to understand the role of new technologies, particularly websites, in image formation. The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of website in the formation of a tourist destination image (Portugal) through the understanding of the degree of adoption of dialogical principles on websites by official and unofficial tourist organizations and the identifying of denotative and connotative elements that are represented on published and shared photographs in these websites. The research corpus consisted of websites of entities and photographs published and shared on these websites. The methodology used is quantitative and qualitative, based on content analysis of data of websites and photographs. Results indicate that official tourist entities adopted the dialogic principles in a higher degree than unofficials. There is also a higher adoption of the principles related to technical dimension than dialogical dimension. Results confirm a relation between the adoption of dialogical link and an increased openness by entities to the possibility of photo sharing. The analysis of denotative and connotative elements of photography reflects a similarity in representations of entities and tourists. This study contributes to both theoretical perspectives, because it provides a conceptual scheme of destination image formation online and to a practical perspective, because it also suggests guidelines of dialogical practices to incorporate in websites of tourism entities.

Ion transport inside charged membranes.

Mode of access: Internet.

PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP FOR RESPONSIVE EXTENSION EDUCATION: THE CASE OF SAFE AND UCC IN GHANA

Developing nations in Africa are not shielded from the pressures of a globalized competitive agricultural marketplace. With an appreciable bulk of her people deriving livelihoods from diverse agricultural enterprises, these nations must respond to important contemporary issues shaping global agriculture. Farmers from such nations, including Ghana, will be able to improve their participation in the competitive local, regional and global agricultural marketplace if the appropriate agricultural technologies and extension information support are available. To achieve this, a new breed of agricultural extension graduates who can respond to current and emerging challenges in agriculture and interface effectively with farmers must be produced through responsive extension education and training. While extension education can produce effective extensionists to hasten agricultural development, budgetary constraints make it difficult for most African governments to successfully and sustainably implement such educational programs. However, public-private partnership (PPP) initiatives offer a way out of this financial dilemma. Beginning in 1993, the Sasakawa Africa Fund for Extension Education (SAFE) worked with the University of Cape Coast (UCC) in Ghana to develop an innovative extension education program through a public private partnership. The program, comprising a BSc. and Diploma components, was designed to respond to the myriad of challenges facing higher agricultural extension education in Ghana. A key practical feature of the curricula is the “Supervised Enterprise Projects” (SEPS), which enable students to work with relevant stakeholders to identify and tackle agricultural problems in farming communities through experiential extension approaches and action research. The SAFE-UCC initiative fulfils important education goals such as: expanding and improving access; ensuring quality and relevance; ensuring funding and mobilizing resources for sustainability; building partnerships and linkages; and promoting international co-operation. The paper discusses the underlying conditions for a successful public private partnership in agricultural and extension education and sheds light on the impacts, lessons learned and challenges.

Adaptive lighting design as a holistic approach to public lighting

Dissertação para obtenção do grau de Doutor em Design, apresentada na Universidade de Lisboa - Faculdade de Arquitetura.

A systematic review of economic analyses of active transport interventions that include physical activity benefits

Physical inactivity is one of the leading causes for the growing prevalence of non-communicable diseases worldwide and there is a need for more evidence on the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of interventions that aim to increase physical activity at the population level. This study aimed to update a systematic review published in 2008 by searching peer-reviewed and unpublished literature of economic evaluations of transport interventions that incorporate the health related effects of physical activity. Our analysis of methods for the inclusion of physical activity related health effects into transport appraisal over time demonstrates that methodological progress has been made. Thirty-six studies were included, reflecting an increasing recognition of the importance of incorporating these health effects into transport appraisal. However, significant methodological challenges in the incorporation of wider health benefits into transport appraisal still exist. The inclusion of physical activity related health effects is currently limited by paucity of evidence on morbidity effects and of more rigorous evidence on the effectiveness of interventions. Significant scope exists for better quality and more transparent reporting. A more consistent approach to the inclusion of benefits and disbenefits would reinforce the synergies between the health, environmental, transport and other sectors. From a transport sector perspective the inclusion of physical activity related health benefits positively impacts cost effectiveness, with the potential to contribute to a more efficient allocation of scarce resources based on a more comprehensive range of merits. From a public health perspective the inclusion of physical activity related health benefits may result in the funding of more interventions that promote active transport, with the potential to improve population levels of physical activity and to reduce prevalence of physical activity related diseases.

Celebrity screens/technologies of celebrity

Technology shapes the production of the public self. Celebrity has been positioned within the exigencies of different technological apparatuses - in film, television, online culture, and popular music - and is designed for very interesting but specific constructions of pleasure, performance and value. This essay situates the technological understructure of our celebrity culture and further situates the work in Part 5 of the book.

La gouvernance métropolitaine du transport collectif dans la région montréalaise : le cas du SRB Pie-IX

Montréal parle de disposer d’un service rapide par bus depuis une dizaine années. En 2015, les travaux pour réaliser le premier tronçon du projet appelé le SRB Pie-IX commencent à peine. Comment justifier des délais de réalisation de plusieurs années alors que d’autres villes y arrivent en moins de 3 ans? Plusieurs élus et organismes de Montréal dénoncent une problématique de gouvernance du transport collectif. Seulement, il n’est pas évident de saisir la signification de ce concept si souvent invoqué pour justifier, entre autres, les difficultés de la métropole à faire naître des projets métropolitains de transport collectif. Certains évoquent la responsabilité du gouvernement, d’autres avancent la mauvaise répartition des rôles et responsabilités ou encore déplorent le trop grand nombre d’intervenants dans la région métropolitaine. La gouvernance est un concept à la fois flou et complexe qui cherche à établir la bonne conduite des affaires publiques comme celle de la gestion métropolitaine du transport collectif. Cependant, le système de transport collectif fait intervenir une multitude de parties prenantes aux intérêts contradictoires. La « bonne gouvernance » serait d’établir une collaboration fructueuse qui dépasse les limites institutionnalisées des intervenants pour réaliser des projets d’envergure métropolitaine, comme le SRB Pie-IX.

A Multi-Criteria GIS-Based Route Selection Tool for Hazardous Material Transport: Consideration of Environmental Consequence, Traffic Congestions and Costs

Hazardous materials are substances that, if not regulated, can pose a threat to human populations and their environmental health, safety or property when transported in commerce. About 1.5 million tons of hazardous material shipments are transported by truck in the US annually, with a steady increase of approximately 5% per year. The objective of this study was to develop a routing tool for hazardous material transport in order to facilitate reduced environmental impacts and less transportation difficulties, yet would also find paths that were still compelling for the shipping carriers as a matter of trucking cost. The study started with identification of inhalation hazard impact zones and explosion protective areas around the location of hypothetical hazardous material releases, considering different parameters (i.e., chemicals characteristics, release quantities, atmospheric condition, etc.). Results showed that depending on the quantity of release, chemical, and atmospheric stability (a function of wind speed, meteorology, sky cover, time and location of accidents, etc.) the consequence of these incidents can differ. The study was extended by selection of other evaluation criteria for further investigation because health risk as an evaluation criterion would not be the only concern in selection of routes. Transportation difficulties (i.e., road blockage and congestion) were incorporated as important factor due to their indirect impact/cost on the users of transportation networks. Trucking costs were also considered as one of the primary criteria in selection of hazardous material paths; otherwise the suggested routes would have not been convincing for the shipping companies. The last but not least criterion was proximity of public places to the routes. The approach evolved from a simple framework to a complicated and efficient GIS-based tool able to investigate transportation networks of any given study area, and capable of generating best routing options for cargos. The suggested tool uses a multi-criteria-decision-making method, which considers the priorities of the decision makers in choosing the cargo routes. Comparison of the routing options based on each criterion and also the overall suitableness of the path in regards to all the criteria (using a multi-criteria-decision-making method) showed that using similar tools as the one proposed by this study can provide decision makers insights in the area of hazardous material transport. This tool shows the probable consequences of considering each path in a very easily understandable way; in the formats of maps and tables, which makes the tradeoffs of costs and risks considerably simpler, as in some cases slightly compromising on trucking cost may drastically decrease the probable health risk and/or traffic difficulties. This will not only be rewarding to the community by making cities safer places to live, but also can be beneficial to shipping companies by allowing them to advertise as environmental friendly conveyors.

La gouvernance métropolitaine du transport collectif dans la région montréalaise : le cas du SRB Pie-IX

Montréal parle de disposer d’un service rapide par bus depuis une dizaine années. En 2015, les travaux pour réaliser le premier tronçon du projet appelé le SRB Pie-IX commencent à peine. Comment justifier des délais de réalisation de plusieurs années alors que d’autres villes y arrivent en moins de 3 ans? Plusieurs élus et organismes de Montréal dénoncent une problématique de gouvernance du transport collectif. Seulement, il n’est pas évident de saisir la signification de ce concept si souvent invoqué pour justifier, entre autres, les difficultés de la métropole à faire naître des projets métropolitains de transport collectif. Certains évoquent la responsabilité du gouvernement, d’autres avancent la mauvaise répartition des rôles et responsabilités ou encore déplorent le trop grand nombre d’intervenants dans la région métropolitaine. La gouvernance est un concept à la fois flou et complexe qui cherche à établir la bonne conduite des affaires publiques comme celle de la gestion métropolitaine du transport collectif. Cependant, le système de transport collectif fait intervenir une multitude de parties prenantes aux intérêts contradictoires. La « bonne gouvernance » serait d’établir une collaboration fructueuse qui dépasse les limites institutionnalisées des intervenants pour réaliser des projets d’envergure métropolitaine, comme le SRB Pie-IX.

High interannual variability in connectivity and genetic pool of a temperate clingfish matches oceanographic transport predictions

Adults of most marine benthic and demersal fish are site-attached, with the dispersal of their larval stages ensuring connectivity among populations. In this study we aimed to infer spatial and temporal variation in population connectivity and dispersal of a marine fish species, using genetic tools and comparing these with oceanographic transport. We focused on an intertidal rocky reef fish species, the shore clingfish Lepadogaster lepadogaster, along the southwest Iberian Peninsula, in 2011 and 2012. We predicted high levels of self-recruitment and distinct populations, due to short pelagic larval duration and because all its developmental stages have previously been found near adult habitats. Genetic analyses based on microsatellites countered our prediction and a biophysical dispersal model showed that oceanographic transport was a good explanation for the patterns observed. Adult sub-populations separated by up to 300 km of coastline displayed no genetic differentiation, revealing a single connected population with larvae potentially dispersing long distances over hundreds of km. Despite this, parentage analysis performed on recruits from one focal site within the Marine Park of Arrábida (Portugal), revealed self-recruitment levels of 2.5% and 7.7% in 2011 and 2012, respectively, suggesting that both long- and short-distance dispersal play an important role in the replenishment of these populations. Population differentiation and patterns of dispersal, which were highly variable between years, could be linked to the variability inherent in local oceanographic processes. Overall, our measures of connectivity based on genetic and oceanographic data highlight the relevance of long-distance dispersal in determining the degree of connectivity, even in species with short pelagic larval durations.

Researching the Use of Communication Technologies in Higher Education Institutions in Portugal

This paper describes a research which main purpose was identifying and characterizing the use of Communication Technologies by Portuguese Public Higher Education Institutions to support learning activities. An analysis model was created and used to develop a nationwide online survey used to collect data from students, teachers and institutional managers. The results show that institutional policies and resources are in place and being used to support learning; learning management systems and interpersonal communication technologies are intensely used and widely adopted; and that there are gender differences as far as the students' use of Communication Technologies is concerned. The results of this project provide a useful insight on the use of Communication Technologies by Portuguese Public Higher Education Institutions and give valuable information for ongoing decision making processes regarding the institutional adoption and development of learning models that take advantage of these technologies.