The African Economy

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Transformando a Paixão em Profissão

O presente relatório de estágio integra-se no 2ºano de Mestrado em Ensino de Educação Física no Ensino Básico e Secundário, com o objetivo de apresentar as vivências e experiências realizadas na âmbito do estágio profissional, que decorreu de setembro de 2022 a junho de 2023, na escola básica e Secundária D.Dinis, em Santo Tirso (EBSDD). O objetivo do Estágio Profissional (EP) é proporcionar ao estudante-estagiário uma experiência prática no ambiente escolar, vivenciando a dinâmica de uma escola, a interação com a comunidade educativa e aplicar os conhecimentos teóricos e práticos adquiridos ao longo da formação académica. Durante o estágio, obtive a oportunidade de participar em diferentes atividades, tais como o planeamento e execução de aulas das Unidades de Formação e Curta Duração (UFCD) de Step - a aula, Step - montagem coreográfica e Ginástica Localizada - montagem, a uma turma de Curso Profissional de Técnico de Desporto (CPTD). Apesar de não ser uma disciplina curricular de Educação Física, estas são umas das UFCD pré-definidas na formação do CPTD, onde tem como objetivo capacitar os alunos para o trabalho em ginásios, academias e centros de lazer. Além disso, pude aprimorar as habilidades de comunicação, liderança e trabalho em equipa, ao mesmo tempo em que ajudou a desenvolver uma compreensão mais profunda dos desafios e oportunidades encontrados no contexto educacional, proporcionando também um espaço de reflexão sobre a minha prática. Esta foi uma experiência enriquecedora e transformadora, preparando-me para enfrentar diferentes desafios na minha futura carreira de docente.The present internship report is part of the 2nd year of the master's degree in teaching physical education in Primary and Secondary Education, with the aim of presenting the experiences and activities carried out during the professional internship, which took place from September 2022 to June 2023 at the D. Dinis Basic and Secondary School in Santo Tirso (EBSDD). The objective of the Professional Internship (PI) is to provide the student-intern with practical experience in the school environment, experiencing the dynamics of a school, interacting with the educational community, and applying the theoretical and practical knowledge acquired throughout the academic training. During the internship, I had the opportunity to participate in various activities, such as planning and conducting classes in Short Duration and Thematic Units (UFCD) of Step - the class, Step - choreographic assembly, and Localized Gymnastics - assembly, to a group of students from the Professional Course of Sports Technician. Although not a curricular subject in Physical Education, these are some of the pre-defined UFCDs in the Sports Technician Course, which aim to equip students for work in gyms, fitness centers, and leisure centers. Furthermore, I was able to enhance my communication, leadership, and teamwork skills, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the challenges and opportunities encountered in the educational context, providing a space for reflection on my practice. This was an enriching and transformative experience, preparing me to face different challenges in my future teaching career

Interdependence of flows when merge in rail tunnel evacuations

The understanding of merging flows during evacuation can have important implications for rail tunnels safety. This paper explores the interdependence of the merging of flows coming from the walkway with those exiting the train. Eight train exit configurations were tested using a mock-up of a rail car exit and a lateral walkway involving 77 participants (mean age 48; standard deviation 15; range 18-74). New measurements and data processing methods are proposed allowing statistical analysis to be performed. The results provide quantitative evidence of the preferences between flows. We found that the bias in the evacuation was slightly in favour of the walkway when train exit was at 0 m in height. Contrary to expectations a moderate dominance of walkway flow was observed at 0.8 m in height. Less variation was found for the train exit at 1.2 m in height with a clear priority of walkway flow. This happened despite deference behaviours performed by participants, i.e. people stopped to help those entering from the rail car. This novel contribution aims to provide a new method for those involved in development and validation of new and current evacuation modelling tools and those who want to improve their understanding of merging behaviour during evacuation in rail tunnels.The authors would like to thank the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (MINECO) for funding the SIGNAL project on the frame of the Subprogram RETOS-COLABORACIÓN 2016 call (Ref -RTC-2016-5474-4) as well as the European Union through ERDF funding under the objective of Strengthening Research, Technological Development and Innovatio

A new approach for modelling passenger trains evacuation procedures

This paper presents EvacTrain 2.0 a new model to simulate and explore the results of different evacuation strategies in passenger trains. This model is stochastic and can generate several results within a few seconds. This is why it is intended to be used for decision support during emergencies. EvacTrain is compared with another evacuation model and partially validated against a fire drill. Results show that this model can provide an accurate representation of real evacuation process. The general findings suggest a new paradigm for the application of evacuation modelling in passenger trains: their potential use for supporting emergency decisions in real-time.The authors would like to thank to the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness for the EVACTRAIN Project grant, Ref.: BIA2011-26738, co-financed by FEDER

Intelligent emergency management system for railway transport

Nowadays, a major safety challenge in rail transport is to manage the incidents and emergencies in the most efficient possible way. The current contingency plans tend to be based on static procedures not taking into account how real-time conditions affect them. Consequently, the decision-making process may well suffer delays and the possibility of occurrence for human mistakes could raise since the required measures are expected to be carried out under important pressure. In this study, focused on commuter trains, railway safety is enhanced by a new intelligent emergency management system which aims to support the operator tasks in a realtime incident or emergency situation. This cyber-physical system is composed by two main modules: one on board the train, including sensors and GPS, and other integrated in the control centre addressing four computational models. Those models cover (1) the detection of different types of incidents/emergencies using the information received from on board sensors, (2) the calculation of the evacuation process (if necessary), (3) the selection, estimation of routes and communication with emergency services required for each event, and finally (4) a provision of actions to support the operator decisions. Communication between modules is provided by GPRS due to actual technology available in the pilot trains. This system has been implemented in an actual railway line in Cantabria (Santander-Cabezón de la Sal) and three practical demonstrations were defined based on several use cases, which were tested using a pilot facility incorporating all sensors and devices installed in those trains. Results demonstrated the benefits of the new system.The authors would like to thank the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (MINECO) for funding the SIGNAL project on the frame of the Subprogram RETOS-COLABORACIÓN 2016 call (Ref-RTC-2016-5474- 4), as well as the European Union through ERDF funding under the objective of Strengthening Research, Technological Development and Innovation and also to SETELSA company for their partnership, dedication and support for the developing of the project

Real-time evacuation route selection method for complex buildings

This paper proposes a novel real-time decision methodology for the selection of optimal evacuation routes for buildings. A summary of the mathematical formulation, the solution algorithm and the computer model are presented. The optimization algorithm is based on the stochastic evacuation model predictions by considering emergency data such as the location of the hazard. The method is applied to an industrial building. The stochastic evacuation model is compared with the commercial evacuation model STEPS. In addition, the computational model is applied to several emergency scenarios to evaluate its validity.The authors would like to acknowledge the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness for the DEFENDER Project grant, Ref: BIA2016-64866-R, co-financed by ERDS funds

A method to assess the accuracy of pseudo-random number sampling methods from evacuation datasets

We propose a method for assessing the accuracy of pseudo-random number sampling methods for evacuation modelling purposes. It consists of a systematic comparison between experimental and generated distributions. The calculated weighted relative error (Ew_rel) is based on the statistical parameters as central moments (mean, standard deviation, skewness and kurtosis) to shape the distribution. The case study involves the Box?Muller transform, the Kernel-Epanechnikov, the Kernel-Gaussian and the Piecewise linear generating samples from eight evacuation datasets fitted against normal, lognormal and uniform distributions. Keeping in mind that the Bos Muller method has two potential sources of error (i.e. distribution fitting and sampling), this method produces plausible results when generating samples from the three types of distributions (Ew_rel 0.80). Results suggest that the Piecewise linear is the most accurate method (Ew_rel = 0.01 normal; Ew_rel = 0.04 lognormal; Ew_rel = 0.009 uniform). This method has the advantage of sampling directly from empirical datasets i.e. no previous distribution fitting is needed. While the proposed method is used here for evacuation modelling, it can be extended to other fire safety engineering applications.The authors would like to thank the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness for the DEFENDER Project Grant, Ref.: BIA2015-64866-R, co-financed by ERDS funds