Utilização de dispositivos de armazenamento de energia em apoio ao funcionamento de redes isoladas

Este texto que se segue é um excerto resumido da dissertação realizada por Luís Miguel Carvalho Lourenço, no âmbito do curso de Mestrado em Engenharia Electrotécnica, Energia e Automação, concluído na Escola Superior de Tecnologia e Gestão do Instituto Politécnico de Leiria. Tem como titulo, Utilização de Dispositivos de Armazenamento de Energia em Apoio ao Funcionamento de Redes Isoladas

Compreender a influência da certificação pela ISO 9001 no desempenho das PME: dois estudos de caso portugueses

Considering the importance of small and medium-sized businesses in the economy and that the majority of quality management systems (QMS) implemented in SMEs are based on the requirements of the ISO 9001 standard, with this work our focus is on studying the influence of ISO 9001 standard certification on performance in SMEs. The data was collected through interviews in two SMEs. The study showed that the implementation of an ISO 9001-based QMS has distinct effects on the performance of the SMEs studied. While the implementation of such QMS had significantly improved the performance in one of the companies, in the other, the few changes brought by certification were in terms of external image and organization of documentation and may not be deemed to affect performance significantly.Considerando a importância das pequenas e médias empresas na economia e que a maioria dos sistemas de gestão da qualidade (SGQ) implantados nas PME se baseiam nos requisitos da norma ISO 9001, com este trabalho pretende-se estudar a influência da ISO 9001 no desempenho das PME. Os dados foram recolhidos através de entrevistas realizadas em duas PME. O estudo mostrou que a implementação de um SGQ baseado na ISO 9001 tem efeitos distintos no desempenho das PME estudadas. Enquanto a implementação desse SGQ melhorou significativamente o desempenho em uma das empresas, na outra, as poucas mudanças trazidas pela certificação foram em termos de imagem externa e organização da documentação e não podem ser consideradas como tendo influenciado significativamente o desempenho.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Implementação de sistema de gestão documental como veículo simplificador de processos e promotor da qualidade na formação de profissionais de saúde

Vários autores têm-se debruçado sobre o conceito de qualidade nos serviços, como um instrumento que visa promulgar a eficácia e eficiência desses mesmos serviços. A aplicação de instrumentos de gestão privada no seio da Administração Pública preconiza a introdução de uma nova gestão pública, atenta à qualidade, à simplificação de processos e por conseguinte à promoção da mudança nos serviços. Neste âmbito, a implementação de projectos que visem a simplificação de processos, constitui uma estratégia de que as organizações se podem recorrer para promoverem a melhoria contínua. Com base no enquadramento teórico elaborado na revisão de literatura, o objectivo deste estudo passa pela definição e análise de um sistema de gestão documental. Após a sua validação, este sistema poderá por um lado, constituir um mecanismo simplificador de processos, e por outro, ser um instrumento que irá fortalecer e contribuir para a qualidade dos profissionais de saúde que a instituição forma. E isto é extremamente importante uma vez que a educação tem um papel preponderante na transformação da sociedade (Morrow e Torres, 1997; Tedesco, 1999; Teodoro, 1994)

Big data analytics for intra-logistics process planning in the automotive sector

The manufacturing sector is facing an important stage with Industry 4.0. This paradigm shift impulses companies to embrace innovative technologies and to pursuit near-zero fault, near real-time reactivity, better traceability, and more predictability, while working to achieve cheaper product customization. The scenario presented addresses multiple intra-logistic processes of the automotive factory Volkswagen Autoeuropa, where different situations need to be addressed. The main obstacle is the absence of harmonized and integrated data flows between all stages of the intra-logistic process which leads to inefficiencies. The existence of data silos is heavily contributing to this situation, which makes the planning of intra-logistics processes a challenge. The objective of the work presented here, is to integrate big data and machine learning technologies over data generated by the several manufacturing systems present, and thus support the management and optimisation of warehouse, parts transportation, sequencing and point-of-fit areas. This will support the creation of a digital twin of the intra-logistics processes. Still, the end goal is to employ deep learning techniques to achieve predictive capabilities, all together with simulation, in order to optimize processes planning and equipment efficiency. The work presented on this thesis, is aligned with the European project BOOST 4.0, with the objective to drive big data technologies in manufacturing domain, focusing on the automotive use-case

Knowledge management framework based on brain models and human physiology

The life of humans and most living beings depend on sensation and perception for the best assessment of the surrounding world. Sensorial organs acquire a variety of stimuli that are interpreted and integrated in our brain for immediate use or stored in memory for later recall. Among the reasoning aspects, a person has to decide what to do with available information. Emotions are classifiers of collected information, assigning a personal meaning to objects, events and individuals, making part of our own identity. Emotions play a decisive role in cognitive processes as reasoning, decision and memory by assigning relevance to collected information. The access to pervasive computing devices, empowered by the ability to sense and perceive the world, provides new forms of acquiring and integrating information. But prior to data assessment on its usefulness, systems must capture and ensure that data is properly managed for diverse possible goals. Portable and wearable devices are now able to gather and store information, from the environment and from our body, using cloud based services and Internet connections. Systems limitations in handling sensorial data, compared with our sensorial capabilities constitute an identified problem. Another problem is the lack of interoperability between humans and devices, as they do not properly understand human’s emotional states and human needs. Addressing those problems is a motivation for the present research work. The mission hereby assumed is to include sensorial and physiological data into a Framework that will be able to manage collected data towards human cognitive functions, supported by a new data model. By learning from selected human functional and behavioural models and reasoning over collected data, the Framework aims at providing evaluation on a person’s emotional state, for empowering human centric applications, along with the capability of storing episodic information on a person’s life with physiologic indicators on emotional states to be used by new generation applications

Data management for cloud supported cooperative driving

Tese de mestrado, Engenharia Informática (Arquitetura, Sistemas e Redes de Computadores) Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências, 2020The increasing number of technologies inserted into vehicles, allowed the common user to have access to a broad number of utilities that allows driving to be easier, safer and more economical. ABS, GPS, Bluetooth and onboard computer are some of the technologies associated with a recent vehicle. On more experimental ones there is obstacle detection, automatic braking and self-driving technologies, which can be supported by a wireless network connection to further improve their capabilities. That connection allows the transformation of each independent vehicle into nodes in an ad-hoc network. The current challenge is to connect all those vehicles and be able to provide the data needed for their correct functioning in a timely manner. That is the challenge this dissertation will seek to analyse: the possibility to create a reliable vehicular information system for cooperative driving based on the cloud. Cloud-based storage can support an ever changing number of vehicles while still satisfying scalability requirements and maintaining ease of access without the need to maintain a physical infrastructure, as that responsibility is laid upon the provider. To understand which service is the best to host the vehicular information system it was analyzed three services from Amazon Web Services (AWS): S3, EC2 and DynamoDB. Ease of utility, latency, scalability and cost were the main requirements tested as they are the most important aspects for a real-time vehicular information system for autonomous vehicles. After deciding which cloud service would be the most appropriate to implement the vehicular information system, two client models were created that fulfilled a set of requirements. They were based in an already existing algorithm named Two-Step Full Replication which utilizes a group of Key-Value Stores services from various clouds to simulate a shared-memory based on multi-writer, multi-reader (MWMR) registers. This algorithm tolerates Byzantine faults by using Byzantine quorum techniques and integrity and authenticity checks. It was defined and implemented the necessary changes on the algorithm to create usable a client for a vehicular information system. The first model called ”Atomic Snapshot Client”, uses the modified Two-Step Full Replication interface with the Atomic Snapshot algorithm. This model guarantees that the read of the system (snapshot) is done atomically without being adulterated by concurrent writes, sacrificing execution latency. The second model is a faster version of the first one with the objective of obtaining faster responses from the system without overly sacrificing data consistency, which is called ”Fast Snapshot Client”. The main change from the first one is the reduction of the guarantees of the atomic registers to regular ones making the reads (scan) and writes (update) simpler and faster, although removing the atomic snapshot feature. With the analysis of the data collected from experiments performed with this model it was possible to observe a relation between the increase of the scan latency time and the total time spent on the execution of the read and write operations on an application with various clients. To solve this problem a simple garbage collector was implemented, which cleans each register when the number of outdated writes that it contains goes over a specified threshold. This solution, although simple, proved to be effective to reduce each scan time. Finally, a vehicular information system based on the AWS S3 service was implemented. It is composed by two types of clients based on the Fast Snapshot Client, named vehicular client and calculator client. The two types of client work together, where the vehicular clients trade information with the calculator. The calculator client scans the registers of the vehicle clients and writes on its registers the processed data for each vehicular client. The vehicle clients need to write all the relevant data they gather and read the register of their respective calculator client and act according to the data read. Each of the clients was tested separately and analysed in order to discuss the viability of this system in a real-world application as well as possible changes to further improve it

Avaliação da segurança de dois pavimentos em madeira

Apresentam-se nesta comunicação dois casos de estudo correspondentes à inspecção, avaliação e reforço de dois pavimentos de madeira. O primeiro corresponde a um pavimento da Câmara Municipal de Arcos de Valdevez, onde, após uma intervenção para a sua reabilitação, se realizou uma inspecção estrutural e um ensaio de carga para a avaliação da segurança do pavimento. O segundo pavimento corresponde ao do coro alto da igreja da N. Sr.a da Conceição do Instituto Monsenhor Airosa, em Braga, onde se levou a cabo uma inspecção estrutural, compreendendo um conjunto de ensaios não-destrutivos, apresentando-se no final algumas recomendações para a protecção da madeira e reforço do sistema estrutural

Static and dynamic structural monitoring of the Santa Maria of Belém church, in Lisbon

The paper details two monitoring systems implemented in the main nave of Santa Maria of Belém Church of the Monastery of Jerónimos, in Lisbon. The monitoring systems are being installed to better understand the static and dynamic behavior of the structure, with the purpose of damage detection and the improvement of seismic resistance of the monument. In the paper, preliminary investigations, numerical non-linear analyses and the first dynamic modal identification analyses are described. Also the preliminary works for the monitoring systems are presented, including the points selected for observation, the discussion of the sensors technical characteristics, as well as preliminary inspection and diagnosis. The first results of the dynamic monitoring system are shown and the future developments on the systems are presented, aiming at a full integration of all adopted techniques.European-Indian Economic Cross Cultural Program - Contract ALA/95/23/2003/077-122

Modeling and vulnerability of historical city centers in seismic areas : a case study in Lisbon

Historical city buildings are an integral part of the built heritage to be preserved, and their safety is a primary requirement in seismic areas. Collapse of ancient masonry buildings due to seismic actions occur mostly due to overturning of the perimeter walls. This paper addresses the issue of seismic analysis and vulnerability of historical city centers, with a specific case study: the 18th century downtown part of Lisbon, Portugal. The finite element method was adopted for a number of different analyses, introducing non-linear behavior of the materials. From the analysis, the following issues have been addressed: (a) seismic vulnerability of this type of constructions; (b) influence of the group of buildings on the seismic behavior of the individual buildings that compose a single compound; and (c) methodology for action. It is believed that the conclusions obtained with respect to the seismic assessment of masonry buildings can be extrapolated for the wide variety of historical city centers