Riskivector enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform

ERP systems are critical for the organization and management of day-to-day business activities regardless of a company's extent. They are designed around a single, defined data structure with a usually common database, ensuring that the information used in the enterprise is normalized, and based on common definitions and user experiences. Data is the treasure and lifeblood of every industry and its correct control is a key to business scaling. These key constructs in conjunction with business processes driven by workflows across different departments simply integrate people and technologies indoors a modern enterprise. Riskivector, Unipessoal Lda as a local affordable accommodation provider for international students faces a significant problem due to the rapid growth of demand. A significant amount of customers together with its correlated data distributed across several standalone data sources and an endless inventory of disconnected spreadsheets cause difficulties such as hard or impossible accessibility to crucial reports allowing proper decision-making, laborious administration of exponentially growing data. This work aims to improve the digital infrastructure of Riskivector, Unipessoal Lda by developing an innovative and user-friendly ERP system. The development of the application will ensure not only improvement in the organization of activities but also the digital transformation of the core business processes of the company. The system will contribute significantly to the idea of storing, organizing and processing critical data in a centralized repository, thereby confirming the ease of accessibility and deployment in consistency with the requirements of operational activities. After a profound understanding of company needs and thoroughgoing research data has been straightened out in an entity-relationship model and important architecture decisions were made to implement a robust and scalable web-based application programming interface that allows further development of ERP solution.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Document retrieval for question answering : a quantitative evaluation of text preprocessing

Question Answering (QA) has been an area of interest for researchers, in part motivated by the international QA evaluation forums, namely the Text REtrieval Conference (TREC), and more recently, the Cross Language Evaluation Forum (CLEF) through QA@CLEF, that since 2004 includes the Portuguese language. In these forums, a collection of written documents is provided, as well as a set of questions, which are to be answered by the participating systems. Each system is evaluated by its capacity to answer the questions, as a whole, and there are relatively few results published that focus on the performance of its different components and their influence on the overall system performance. That is the case of the Information Retrieval (IR) component, which is broadly used in QA systems. Our work concentrates on the different options of preprocessing Portuguese text before feeding it to the IR component, evaluating their impact on the IR performance in the specific context of QA, so that we can make a sustained choice of which options to choose. From this work we conclude the clear advantage of the basic preprocessing techniques: case folding and removal of punctuation marks. For the other techniques considered, stop word removal enhanced the performance of the IR system but that was not the case as far as Stemming and Lemmatization are concerned.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Robust question answering

A Question Answering (QA) system should provide a short and precise answer to a question in natural language, by searching a large knowledge base consisting of natural language text. The sources of the knowledge base are widely available, for written natural language text is a preferential form of human communication. The information ranges from the more traditional edited texts, for example encyclopaedias or newspaper articles, to text obtained by modern automatic processes, as automatic speech recognizers. The work developed in the present thesis focuses on the Portuguese language and open domain question answering, meaning that neither the questions nor the texts are restricted to a specific area, and it aims to address both types of written text. Since information retrieval is essential for a QA system, a careful analysis of the current state-of-the-art in information retrieval and question answering components was conducted. A complete, efficient and robust question answering system is developed in this thesis, consisting of new modules for information retrieval and question answering, that is competitive with current QA systems. The system was evaluated at the Portuguese monolingual task of QA@CLEF 2008 and achieved the 3rd place in 6 Portuguese participants and 5th place among the 21 participants of 11 languages. The system was also tested in Question Answering over Speech Transcripts (QAST), but outside the official evaluation QAST of QA@CLEF, since Portuguese was not among the available languages for this task. For that reason, an entire test environment consisting of a corpus of transcribed broadcast news and a matching question set was built in the scope of this work, so that experiments could be made. The system proved to be robust in the presence of automatically transcribed data, with results in line with the best reported at QAST.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Building and exploring semantic equivalences resources

Language resources that include semantic equivalences at word level are common, and its usefulness is well established in text processing applications, as in the case of search. Named entities also play an important role for text based applications, but are not usually covered by the previously mentioned resources. The present work describes the WES base, Wikipedia Entity Synonym base, a freely available resource based on the Wikipedia. The WES base was built for the Portuguese Language, with the same format of another freely available thesaurus for the same language, the TeP base, which allows integration of equivalences both at word level and entity level. The resource has been built in a language independent way, so that it can be extended to different languages. The WES base was used in a Question Answering system, enhancing significantly its performance.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

IdSay: question answering for portuguese

IdSay is an open domain Question Answering (QA) system for Portuguese. Its current version can be considered a baseline version, using mainly techniques from the area of Information Retrieval (IR). The only external information it uses besides the text collections is lexical information for Portuguese. It was submitted to the monolingual Portuguese task of the QA track of the Cross-Language Evaluation Forum 2008 (QA@CLEF) for the first time, and it answered correctly to 65 of the 200 questions in the first answer, and to 85 answers considering the three answers that could be returned per question. Generally, the types of questions that are answered better by IdSay system are measure factoids, count factoids and definitions, but there is still work to be done in these areas, as well as in the treatment of time. List questions, location and people/organization factoids are the types of question with more room for improvement.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The state as a large-scale aggregator : statist neoliberalism and waste management in Portugal

This paper explores state-economy relations in an understudied European country, i.e. Portugal. Main research questions are: How does the country fit into the Varieties of Capitalism conceptual framework? Are there specific patterns that define the case as a distinct model of statist economy? The research is influenced by Becker´s open, historical institutionalist approach to capitalism (Becker, U. 2009. Open Varieties of Capitalism. Continuity, Change and Performances. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). The paper offers a macro-account of major transformations in state ownership, in democratic Portugal, followed by analysis of stateeconomy relations at a sectorial level, namely in the waste management sector. Findings suggest that Portuguese capitalism has evolved from statist socialism into a formally liberalised economy but, in reality, it re-configured into a model of statedependency perpetuated by the allocation of vast external resources. From large-scale owner to large-scale privatizer, the state adjusted its role as a large-scale aggregator.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Geologia, petrologia e geoquímica do Corpo Ultramáfico Caboclo dos Mangueiros, noroeste da Bahia, e seu depósito de sulfeto de Ni-Cu

Dissertação (mestrado)—Universidade de Brasília, Instituto de Geociências, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Geologia, 2017.O depósito magmático de sulfetos de Ni-Cu Caboclo dos Mangueiros representa recente descoberta feita pela Companhia Baiana de Pesquisa Mineral (CBPM) no ano de 2012, por meio de trabalhos exploratórios no extremo noroeste do estado da Bahia, próximo à divisa com o estado do Piauí. O depósito está situado na borda noroeste do Cráton do São Francisco, próximo à zona de contato com a faixa de dobramentos Neoproterozoica Rio Preto, região em que outros complexos máfico-ultramáficos (M-UM) mineralizados são encontrados, a exemplo do complexo M-UM Campo Alegre de Lourdes, mineralizado a Fe-Ti-V. Quinze furos de sondagem rotativa foram realizados, totalizando 2670 m, e indicaram recurso preliminar de aproximadamente [email protected]%Ni e 0.13%Cu. A sulfetação de Ni-Cu no depósito compreende um corpo de minério hospedado em intrusão de composição essencialmente ultramáfica com aproximadamente 2 km de comprimento na direção WNW-ESE, ~500 m de largura, chegando a 270 m de profundidade na porção central e ~100 m nas extremidades. A estrutura remete a um sill (soleira) alongado em forma de barco. Dados litogeoquímicos de rocha total indicam que a composição das rochas ultramáficas é controlada pelo tipo e proporção modal de minerais cúmulus. Gráficos dos óxidos selecionados de elementos maiores e menores versus MgO indicam predominância de olivina e clinopironênio cumulados. Estes por sua vez seguem a seguinte sequência de cristalização: Ol => Ol + Cpx => Cpx, indicando composição insaturada em sílica para o magma parental. A intrusão está fracionada da porção norte, onde dunito e wehrlito prevalecem, para a porção sul em que clinopiroxenito é abundante. O fracionamento é também observado no decréscimo progressivo dos valores de #Mg catiônico (i.e., Mg/[Mg+Fe2+]) de cristais cúmulus de clinopiroxênio em direção à porção sul da intrusão, como indicado pela variação de #Mg catiônico em clinopiroxênios de clinopiroxenito e wehrlito de furos de sondagem localizados na seção central perpendicular à intrusão (i.e., NE-SW). A variação composicional de #Mg catiônico nos clinopiroxênios é entre 0.78 e 0.94, sugerindo composição moderada a muito primitiva para o magma parental. Perfis de elementos terras raras e elementos traço resistentes à alteração, em gráficos normalizados ao manto primitivo, para as rochas cumuláticas ultramáficas mostram enriquecimento em elementos terras raras leves (ETRL) com significativas anomalias negativas de Nb e Ta. Este enriquecimento também é mostrado em perfis de elementos traço resistentes à alteração para o líquido parental estimado, embora anomalias negativas de Nb-Ta não são observadas. Os dados revelam que os padrões de ETRL são dependentes da proporção modal de clinopiroxênio nas rochas cumuláticas, como indicado pela diminuição progressiva nos valores da razão La/Sm (normalizados ao manto primitivo) de dunito, wehrlito, olivina-clinopiroxenito e clinopiroxenito. Significativa assimilação de rochas crustais não é suportada pela sequência de cristalização típica de magmas insaturados em sílica, bem como pela falta de anomalias negativas de Nb-Ta. A mineralização do depósito é dominantemente (i.e., ~99% em volume) de natureza primária e disseminada em forma de agregados (blebs) intersticiais, formando associações de pirrotita, pentlandita, calcopirita e pirita. A mineralização secundária consiste da remobilização e recristalização da mineralização primária e compreende em torno de 1% em volume do depósito. Ocorre em forma de brechas, vênulas ou ao longo do plano de foliação da rocha quando associadas a zonas de cisalhamento discretas. As texturas primárias e o conteúdo de sulfetos no depósito, acima da proporção considerada cotética numa intrusão mineralizada, sugerem entradas de magma carreando sulfetos em suspensão através de estrutura de conduto magmático que posteriormente se solidificou como um sill alongado em forma de barco. A saturação de sulfetos no magma é entendida como sendo decorrente da diminuição da temperatura, sem assimilação de rocha ou enxofre de origem crustal. Resultados das análises de isótopos de enxofre indicam composição isotópica para os sulfetos disseminados compatível com a composição isotópica do manto. Adicionalmente, o intervalo restrito dos valores da composição isotópica das amostras não sugere diferenças na composição isotópica relacionada a diferentes rochas (i.e., wehrlito ou clinopiroxenito) de diferentes locais da intrusão ultramáfica. O conteúdo depletado de elementos do grupo da platina na composição dos sulfetos, provenientes de magma parental primitivo, é sugestivo que tenha ocorrido segregação prévia de sulfetos em profundidade. Eventos tectônicos e metamorfismo em fácies xisto verde afetaram o sill fracionado e suas rochas crustais encaixantes. Apesar da tectônica, a estrutura magmática primária se manteve preservada. Devido à falta de idades absolutas para as rochas ultramáficas, o posicionamento do depósito Caboclo dos Mangueiros na evolução tectônica do cráton do São Francisco permanece incerto.Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES).The Caboclo dos Mangueiros magmatic Ni-Cu sulfide deposit represents a recent discovery in the northern Brazil made by Companhia Baiana de Pesquisa Mineral (CBPM) in 2012 by means of greenfield exploration works at the northwestern portion of the Bahia state, close to the limit with the Piauí state. The deposit is situated in the northwestern edge of the São Francisco craton, close to the contact with the Rio Preto Neoproterozoic fold belt, where a cluster of mineralized mafic-ultramafic complexes are found, as exemplified by the Fe-Ti-V Campo Alegre de Lourdes mafic-ultramafic complex. Fifteen drill holes were performed, totalizing 2,670 meters, and indicate preliminary resource of ~ [email protected]%Ni and 0.13%Cu. The Ni-Cu sulfides comprise an orebody hosted in an ultramafic intrusion with ~2 km long WNW-ESE trending, ~500 m wide, reaching ~270 m depth in central portions and ~100 m in the extremities, resembling an elongated boat-shaped sill. The composition of the ultramafic rocks is controlled by the type and modal proportion of cumulus minerals. The plots of selected major and minor element oxides versus MgO indicate the predominance of olivine and clinopyroxene cumulates. It follows a crystallization sequence consisting of Ol => Ol + Cpx => Cpx, which indicate a silica undersaturated composition for the parental magma. The intrusion is fractionated from the northern portion, where dunite and wehrlite prevail, to the southern where clinopyroxenite is abundant. The fractionating also is observed in the progressively decrease of cationic Mg# values (i.e., Mg/[Mg+Fe2+]) in cumulus clinopyroxene crystals toward the southern portion of the intrusion, as indicated by the variation in cationic Mg# in clinopyroxene from clinopyroxenites and wehrlite from bore holes located across a NE-SW section of the intrusion. The compositional range of cationic Mg# of cumulus clinopyroxene from 0.78 to 0.94 supports a moderate to primitive composition for the parental magma. Primitive mantle-normalized REE and primitive mantle-normalized alteration-resistant trace element profiles for the cumulate ultramafic rocks show enrichment in LREE with significant negative Nb and Ta anomalies. This enrichment is also showed in mantle-normalized alteration-resistant trace element profiles estimated to the parental melt, although negative Nb-Ta anomalies are not observed. The data reveal that LREE patterns are dependent of the modal proportion of clinopyroxene in the cumulate rocks, as indicated by progressively lower La/SmPM from dunite, werhlite, olivine-clinopyroxenite and clinopyroxenite. Significant assimilation of crustal rocks during ascent and emplacement of the magma is not supported by the crystallization sequence typical of silica undersaturated magmas, as well as by the absence of Nb-Ta anomalies. The mineralization of the deposit is mainly (i.e., ~99 vol.%) primary nature and disseminated as interstitial blebs, comprising pyrrhotite, pentlandite, chalcopyrite and minor pyrite. The secondary mineralization consists of remobilization and recrystallization of the primary one and represent about 1 vol.% of the deposit. It occurs in irregular veinlets and breccia, as well as sulfide aggregates or stringers concordant with the foliation in discrete shear zones. The primary textures and the amount of sulfides, well above the cotectic proportion for a mineralized intrusion, suggest emplacement of sulfide droplets-charged magma through a conduit structure that later solidified as an elongated boat-shaped sill. The sulfide saturation of the magma is understood due to the decrease of temperature, with no significant assimilation of crustal-derived rock or sulfur. Results for sulfur isotope indicate isotopic compositions for disseminated sulfides that mainly fit into the mantle range. Additionally, the narrow compositional range of isotopic compositions in our samples does not suggest differences in isotopic compositions related to different host rocks (i.e., wehrlite or clinopyroxenite) of different location in the ultramafic intrusion. The depletion of PGE in the sulfide composition from a moderate to primitive magma is suggestive that has been occurred previous sulfide segregation at depth. Tectonic events and greenschist facies metamorphism may have affected the fractionated ultramafic sill and its sedimentary country rocks. Despite the tectonics the primary magmatic structure remains well preserved. Due to the lack of an absolute age for the ultramafic rocks the positioning of the Caboclo dos Mangueiros deposit in the tectonic evolution of the São Francisco craton remains uncertain

Um modelo para o planejamento anual da operação energética considerando técnicas avaçadas de otimização estocástica

Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnológico. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia Elétrica.O problema do planejamento da operação energética do Sistema Interligado Nacional (SIN) é bastante peculiar devido, especialmente, à sua dimensionalidade e a grande participação de geração hidrelétrica. A participação majoritária de recursos hídricos exige um planejamento bastante minucioso, uma vez que a capacidade de armazenamento dos reservatórios é limitada e, portanto, a disponibilidade futura de energia dependerá da operação dos reservatórios e das vazões afluentes futuras. Devido às complexidades do problema, no Brasil optou-se por separar os estudos de planejamento da operação energética em etapas de médio prazo, curto prazo e programação diária. O foco deste trabalho é o modelo computacional utilizado no médio prazo - Planejamento Anual da Operação Energética (PEN), cujo objetivo consiste em estabelecer estratégias de médio prazo para a operação, por meio da análise das condições de atendimento a demanda no horizonte de estudo. Este trabalho objetiva aplicar técnicas avançadas de otimização estocástica no problema do PEN, de maneira a produzir políticas de operação de melhor qualidade considerando os principais aspectos de um problema como o PEN. Dentre as técnicas de otimização estocástica que são analisadas neste trabalho destacam-se: (i) técnicas de amostragem com redução da variância (Latin Hypercube Sampling e Quasi Monte Carlo Aleatório); (ii) estratégia de solução e seleção de cortes para melhorar o desempenho da Programação Dinâmica Dual Estocástica (PDDE); (iii) metodologia para avaliação da qualidade da política de operação e (iv) metodologias para construir uma política de operação com aversão a risco. Além disso, este documento apresenta uma descrição detalhada da modelagem utilizada no modelo computacional do PEN, como por exemplo, a representação por Reservatório Equivalente de Energia (REE), o modelo AutoRregressivo Periódico (ARP) e o algoritmo da PDDE. As técnicas de otimização estocástica são avaliadas em estudos de casos que consideram o SIN com dados para estudos que se iniciam em Janeiro de 2009 e Janeiro de 2012. Destacam-se nos resultados as políticas com aversão a risco que mantém um armazenamento maior à medida que se aumenta o nível de aversão a risco.The Interconnected Brazilian Power System's operation planning problem is very unique, due to its dimension and high participation of hydroelectric power plants. As a consequence of the latter, it is necessary to perform a very precise hydrothermal scheduling because the reservoirs capacity are limited and, therefore, the energy availability depends on future inflows and how the reservoirs are operated. Due to the problem's complexity, the Brazilian hydrothermal scheduling is divided into three stages: long-term, short-term and daily operation programming. This work is focused on the Long-Term Hydrothermal Scheduling (LTHS) problem, which aims to determine an optimal operational strategy through the analysis of the energy market and load supply conditions over the planning period. The objective of this work is to apply advanced stochastic programming techniques to the LTHS problem, in order to compute an enhanced operation policy considering the main aspects of a problem such as the LTHS. We analyze four stochastic programming techniques: (i) variance reduction sampling strategies (Latin Hypercube Sampling and Randomized Quasi-Monte Carlo); (ii) tree traversing strategies and cut selection to improve the Stochastic Dual Dynamic Programming (SDDP) algorithm; (iii) assessing the operation policy quality and (iv) risk aversion. In addition to that, this document presents a detailed description of the modeling used for the LTHS problem, such as, the Equivalent Energy Reservoir (EER) representation, the Periodic Autoregressive model and the SDDP algorithm. The stochastic programming techniques are evaluated in case study considering the Interconnected Brazilian Power System with data from January 2009 and January 2012. From the results we can point out the risk aversion policies which store more energy (water) in the reservoirs as we increase the level of risk aversion

Análise comparativa entre as modelagens de reservatório equivalente de energia agregado por subsistema e por cascata no problema do planejamento anual da operação energética

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnológico. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia Elétrica.O problema do planejamento da operação energética do Sistema Interligado Nacional (SIN) é bastante peculiar devido, especialmente, à sua dimensionalidade e a grande participação de geração hidrelétrica. A participação majoritária de recursos hídricos exige um planejamento bastante minucioso, uma vez que a capacidade de armazenamento dos reservatórios é limitada e, portanto, a disponibilidade futura de energia dependerá da operação dos reservatórios e das vazões afluentes futuras. Devido às complexidades do problema, no Brasil optou-se por separar os estudos de planejamento da operação energética em etapas de médio prazo, curto prazo e programação diária. O foco deste trabalho é o médio prazo # Planejamento Anual da Operação Energética (PAOE), cujo objetivo consiste em estabelecer estratégias de médio prazo para a operação, por meio da análise das condições de atendimento a demanda no horizonte de estudo. Este trabalho apresenta, então, as metodologias utilizadas no estudo do PAOE realizado no Brasil, como por exemplo, a representação por Reservatório Equivalente de Energia (REE), o modelo AutoRegressivo Periódico (ARP) e a Programação Dinâmica Dual Estocástica (PDDE). Com essas metodologias desenvolveu-se uma plataforma computacional que permite alterar algumas configurações adotadas no Brasil e, assim, analisar as conseqüências nos resultados do PAOE. O principal objetivo deste trabalho é avaliar o efeito no PAOE da representação por REE, quando agregado por Subsistema ou por Cascata; adicionalmente, são analisadas alterações no modelo ARP, na árvore de cenários e no horizonte de estudo. Dessa forma, a partir dos estudos de casos pôde-se concluir que os resultados do REE por Cascata apresentaram maior consistência nos estudos de casos, e que a redução no horizonte de estudo não compromete a política de operação, entre outros aspectos importantes do PAOE. Destaca-se que os casos em que o REE foi agregado por Cascata exigiu um tempo de processamento três vezes maior que o caso equivalente com REE por Subsistema. The Interconnected Brazilian Power System#s operation planning problem is very unique, due to its dimension and high participation of hydroelectric power plants. As a consequence of the latter, it is necessary to perform a very precise hydrothermal scheduling because the reservoirs capacity are limited and, therefore, the energy availability depends on how the reservoirs are operated and the future inflows. Due to the problem#s complexity, the Brazilian hydrothermal scheduling is divided into three stages: long-term, short-term and daily operation programming. This work is focused on the Long-Term Operation Planning (LTOP), which aims to determine an optimal operational strategy through the analysis of the energy market and load supply conditions over the planning period. This work presents the methodologies used in the Brazilian LTOP problem, such as: Energy Equivalent Reservoir (EER), Periodic AutoRegressive (PAR) model and the Stochastic Dual Dynamic Programming (SDDP). In this work, it was implemented a computational platform using the methodologies listed above, in which the user is able to set up different configurations in order to analyze the impact on the LTOP results. This dissertation aims to evaluate de consequences on the LTOP results when the EER is aggregated per Subsystem and per Cascade. Additionally, different configurations for the PAR model, scenario tree and planning horizon are studied. The results obtained in this work indicate that the EER per Cascade presents a more consistent result in the study cases and reducing the planning horizon does not compromise the operational policy, in addition to other important aspects. It is important to point out that the EER per Cascade configuration required three times more running time than when the EER were aggregated per Subsystem

Determinants of water loss in Portuguese utilities

This research aims to evaluate the main determinants of real water loss per unit length of the network in the Portuguese water sector, using data covering a 10-year period. The governance model, typology of the area, type of service, management model, total water conveyed, and total network length were found to be statistically significant determinants. The methodology employed Generalized Linear Models and Artificial Neural Networks, confirming the existence of interactions and non-linearity. From a public policy perspective, setting water loss targets based only on two variables - area typology and type of service – is not a robust approach.publishe