Portugal: Undiscovered destination for tourists from GCC countries

This report results from a three months’ internship in DMC – the incoming department at INATEL foundation in Lisbon, Portugal. The main objective of this internship was to assess the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries as a tourism source market for Portugal and specifically for INATEL, and to develop a marketing strategy to address the eventual marketing opportunity. The study was comprised of four stages. At the first stage, a characterization of GCC states concerning its geography, policies, economy, languages, culture and religion, was done. At the second stage the GCC outbound tourism market was characterized, namely tourist’s motivations to travel, and the GCC’s traveller profile was elaborated based on the main tourism destinations, sources of information, booking behaviour, spending behaviour, eating habits, preferred travel seasons, and accommodation and transportation preferences. At the third stage, the ten strategic touristic products of Portugal were described according to the national strategic tourism plan of Portugal (PENT), specifically in what refers to its adequacy for the GCC source market. Based in the information collected at the previous stages, at the fourth stage, a marketing strategy for INATEL Turismo was developed targeting the GCC countries. The conclusion of this work done during the internship was that the studied market is a viable opportunity for the Portuguese tourism industry and for INATEL Turismo in particular, as long as the marketing strategy is well suited considering the specificities of GCC societies.Este relatório resulta de um estágio de três meses no departamento de DMC na Fundação INATEL em Lisboa, Portugal. O principal objetivo deste estágio era o de avaliar o potencial dos países do Conselho de Cooperação do Golfo (GCC) como um mercado emissor turístico para Portugal e para a INATEL em particular, e desenvolver uma estratégia de marketing para tirar partido da eventual oportunidade associada a este mercado. O estudo compreendeu quatro etapas. Na primeira etapa, foi realizada uma caracterização dos estados do GCC em relação à sua geografia, políticas, economia, idiomas, cultura e religião. Na segunda etapa, caracterizou-se o mercado emissor turístico GCC, no que respeita às motivações do turista para viajar, e o perfil do viajante do GCC foi elaborado com base nos principais destinos turísticos escolhidos, as fontes de informação utilizadas, o comportamento de reserva, o comportamento de compra, os hábitos alimentares, as épocas preferidas de viagem e as preferências em termos de alojamento e transporte. Na terceira etapa, descreveram-se os dez produtos turísticos estratégicos de Portugal de acordo com o Plano Estratégico Nacional do Turismo de Portugal (PENT), especificamente no que se refere à sua adequação ao mercado emissor GCC. Com base na informação recolhida nas etapas anteriores, na quarta etapa, foi desenvolvida uma estratégia de marketing para o INATEL Turismo orientada para os países do GCC. A conclusão do trabalho realizado durante o estágio é que o mercado estudado constitui uma oportunidade viável para a indústria do turismo portuguesa e para o INATEL Turismo em particular, desde que a estratégia de marketing seja adaptada às especificidades das sociedades dos países do GCC

Numerical and experimental study of transient laminar natural convection of high prandtl number fluids in a cubical cavity

NUMERICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF TRANSIENT LAMINAR NATURAL CONVECTION OF HIGH PRANDTL NUMBER FLUIDS IN A CUBICAL CAVITYObai Younis Taha ElaminLa convección natural en espacios cerrados, se encuentra ampliamente en sistemas naturales e industriales. El objetivo general de este trabajo es desarrollar y validar una herramienta de simulación capaz de predecir las tasas de enfriamiento de aceite en un tanque. Esta herramienta ha de tener en cuenta la variación de la viscosidad del aceite para dar información detallada de las tasas de enfriamiento del aceite bajo diferentes condiciones de contorno térmicas realisticas. En primer lugar, la influencia de diferentes condiciones de contorno térmicas en las paredes, la variación de la viscosidad y la conductividad de la pared en la convección natural del flujo laminar transitorio en una cavidad cúbica con seis paredes térmicamente activo están analizadas.Para analizar el efecto individual de las paredes laterales de la cavidad en el proceso de enfriamiento, la segunda parte de este estudio considera que, tanto numéricamente como experimentalmente, la transición de la convección natural laminar en una cavidad cúbica con dos paredes opuestas frías y verticales.Nuevas relaciones de escala que tengan en cuenta la variación de la viscosidad con la temperatura, no publicadas anteriormente en la literatura, se derivan de las velocidades de la capa límite, por el tiempo necesario para la capa límite para alcanzar el estado estacionario y para la velocidad y el espesor de las intrusiones horizontales.NUMERICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF TRANSIENT LAMINAR NATURAL CONVECTION OF HIGH PRANDTL NUMBER FLUIDS IN A CUBICAL CAVITYObai Younis Taha ElaminFree convection in enclosed spaces is found widely in natural and industrial systems. The general objective of this work is to develop and validate a simulation tool able to predict the cooling rates of oil in a tank. This tool has to take into account the variation of the oil viscosity to give detailed information of the cooling rates of the oil under different realistic thermal boundary conditions. First, the influence of different thermal wall boundary conditions, the variation of the viscosity and the wall conductivity on the transient laminar natural convection flow in a cubical cavity with the six walls thermally active is studied numerically. To analyze the individual effect of the side walls of the cavity on the cooling process, the second part of this study considers, numerically and experimentally, the transient laminar natural convection in a cubical cavity with two cold opposite vertical walls. The shadowgraph technique is employed to visualize the development of the transient convective flow. New scaling relations that take into account the viscosity variation with temperature, not reported previously in the literature, are derived for the boundary layer velocities, for the time needed for the boundary layer to reach the steady state and for the velocity and thickness of the horizontal intrusions

An Adversarial Approach to Evaluating the Robustness of Event Identification Models

Intelligent machine learning approaches are finding active use for event detection and identification that allow real-time situational awareness. Yet, such machine learning algorithms have been shown to be susceptible to adversarial attacks on the incoming telemetry data. This paper considers a physics-based modal decomposition method to extract features for event classification and focuses on interpretable classifiers including logistic regression and gradient boosting to distinguish two types of events: load loss and generation loss. The resulting classifiers are then tested against an adversarial algorithm to evaluate their robustness. The adversarial attack is tested in two settings: the white box setting, wherein the attacker knows exactly the classification model; and the gray box setting, wherein the attacker has access to historical data from the same network as was used to train the classifier, but does not know the classification model. Thorough experiments on the synthetic South Carolina 500-bus system highlight that a relatively simpler model such as logistic regression is more susceptible to adversarial attacks than gradient boosting

The San Francisco Housing Crisis (1985–2015): How Policies Have Ignored the Human Right to Housing with Suggestions for a Remedy

Housing affordability and access is one of the most important social and political issues affecting America today. Many Americans are left with having to live with multiple roommates, move back home with family, or becoming homeless. Ground zero for America’s housing crisis is San Francisco, California. Located on the Northern California coastline, San Francisco is home to the nation’s highest rent and home prices with hardly any site of reversal. At its core, due to the rampant displacement, lack of housing security, and inability for many to obtain housing, the San Francisco housing crisis is a human rights issue that needs solving. Over the years, experts have discussed various ideas of how to address the crisis in the city. Some groups will advocate for YIMBY-ism (“Yes In My Backyard”) over NIMBY-ism (“No In My Backyard”) because they believe that in order to solve the crisis we need to build more housing of any type (luxury, market rate, and affordable) to meet the crisis head-on. Tenants unions are advocating for a proliferation of affordable housing. Policy makers are devising plans for reforming zoning laws, transit-oriented housing, and rethinking older policies that could lead to better housing access for all. This thesis will explore solutions to the human rights issue that is the San Francisco housing crisis. The topics that I will discuss in pursuit of finding the solution to the housing crisis facing San Francisco will include examining policies that have hindered or usurped the human right to housing, contemporary ideas from leaders in the field on how to address it, and international soft law on the human right to housing. This thesis will conclude that the solution to the state’s housing crisis will require a mixture of policy innovations, transit solutions, density and increase in housing stock, and a need for more mixed-income housing to address the city’s housing crisis. In short, I am focusing on housing as a human right because adequate shelter should not be considered a luxury

Modeling groundwater flow and transport of contaminants at a former manufactured gas plant in the midwestern USA

The processes used to produce manufactured gas for heating, cooking and lighting purposes in North America from the early 1800s to the mid-1900s have generated by- products such as coal tar containing Monocyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (MAHs) and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs), coke, light oil derivatives, and ammonia. Improper disposal of these wastes has resulted in contaminated soils, groundwater and sediments at these sites, potentially affecting human health and the environment. There is an increasing reliance on using numerical groundwater modeling to predict fate and transport of contaminants as well as employing predictive simulations to anticipate concentrations of contaminants in groundwater in order to evaluate a remedial action. To this end, developing a Visual MODFLOW-based model to simulate groundwater flow and transport of selected MAH and PAH compounds at a former MGP site located in the Midwestern U.S. is the main goal of this study. Available site data were compiled to develop the conceptual site model to assess contaminant fluxes and field-scale attenuation rates and to calibrate the groundwater flow model using WINPEST as a finishing step

Real-Time Well Log Prediction From Drilling Data Using Deep Learning

The objective is to study the feasibility of predicting subsurface rock properties in wells from real-time drilling data. Geophysical logs, namely, density, porosity and sonic logs are of paramount importance for subsurface resource estimation and exploitation. These wireline petro-physical measurements are selectively deployed as they are expensive to acquire; meanwhile, drilling information is recorded in every drilled well. Hence a predictive tool for wireline log prediction from drilling data can help management make decisions about data acquisition, especially for delineation and production wells. This problem is non-linear with strong ineractions between drilling parameters; hence the potential for deep learning to address this problem is explored. We present a workflow for data augmentation and feature engineering using Distance-based Global Sensitivity Analysis. We propose an Inception-based Convolutional Neural Network combined with a Temporal Convolutional Network as the deep learning model. The model is designed to learn both low and high frequency content of the data. 12 wells from the Equinor dataset for the Volve field in the North Sea are used for learning. The model predictions not only capture trends but are also physically consistent across density, porosity, and sonic logs. On the test data, the mean square error reaches a low value of 0.04 but the correlation coefficient plateaus around 0.6. The model is able however to differentiate between different types of rocks such as cemented sandstone, unconsolidated sands, and shale

Hydrogen Gas Production from the Injection of Nanoscale Zero-Valent Iron and Sodium Borohydride Solutions: Potential Effects Near Injection Wells

The injection of nano-scale zero-valent iron (nZVI) is a remediation technique for the treatment of organic and metal contamination in soil and groundwater. The hydrogen gas (H2) produced during the reaction of nZVI and excess sodium borohydride (NaBH4) used in nZVI synthesis with water can inhibit nZVI transport in the subsurface, potentially limiting solution delivery to the target contaminant zone. Laboratory experiments were completed in a thin flow cell using NaBH4 and nZVI solutions injected into watersaturated medium sands, in which local gas saturations were quantified using a light transmission technique to calculate H2 gas volumes. Hydraulic conductivity, under water-saturated and quasi-saturated conditions, after gas exsolution and throughout gas dissolution, was measured. The results showed that H2 gas volume produced as a result of the reaction of nZVI with water was more than the H2 gas volume produced by the selfhydrolysis of NaBH4 solution regardless of similar NaBH4 concentration used as excess during nZVI synthesis. Pools of H2 gas were formed after injecting nZVI prepared with excess 5 g/L NaBH4 or after injecting 5 g/L NaBH4 without nZVI. Gas accumulated predominantly in a vertical layer of coarse sand, illustrative of a sand pack surrounding an injection well. Lower hydraulic conductivity measurements were linked to higher gas saturations and further reductions were evident as a result of gas pool accumulation at the top of the flow cell. These results show that gas production during the application of nZVI is an important process that must be considered during remediation design and operation to ensure effective delivery to target zones

CONVECTIVE FLOW AND HEAT TRANSFER OF NANO-ENCAPSULATED PHASE CHANGE MATERIAL (NEPCM) DISPERSIONS ALONG A VERTICAL SURFACE

Nano-encapsulated phase change suspension is a novel type of functional fluid in which the nanoparticles undergo phase change that contribute to heat transfer. Thus, the working fluid carries heat not only by sensible heat but also in the form of latent heat stored in the particles. The natural convection and heat transfer of Nano-Encapsulated Phase Change Materials (NEPCMs) suspensions within a boundary layer along a heated flat surface are theoretically investigated in this work. The nanoparticles are core-shell structured with the core fabricated from PCMs covered by a solid shell. A similarity solution approach along with the finite element method is employed to address the phenomena. The outcomes indicate that a decisive factor in boosting the heat transfer is the temperature at which NEPCM particles undergo the phase transition. The heat transfer parameter can be enhanced by about 25% by just adding 5% of NEPCM particles, compared to the case with no NEPCM particles

Ferro-hydrodynamic induced convection flow and heat transfer of nanofluids in a corrugated wall enclosure

This study aims to improve heat transfer by utilizing Kelvin forces and inducing magnetic-induced convection in ferro-hydrodynamic convection, in conjunction with nanoparticle migrations. The fundamental equations governing the conservation of mass, momentum, energy, and nanoparticle mass were formulated as partial differential equations. As primary terms, the model incorporated the buoyancy, Lorenz, and Kelvin forces. In this context, temperature variations in the presence of a variable magnetic field generate a temperature-dependent body force. This can induce fluid circulation. Thus, even without gravitational force, magnetic force can stimulate convection heat transfer flows. The study thoroughly examined the impact of magnetic source placement on heat transfer. An increase in Ha from 0 to 100 reduced the average Nusselt number (NuAvg) by approximately 60% in all cases, regardless of the magnetic source position. However, the magnetic field number (Mnf) and its effect on NuAvg are dependent on the magnetic source's position

Latent heat thermal storage of nano-enhanced phase change material filled by copper foam with linear porosity variation in vertical direction

The melting flow and heat transfer of copper-oxide coconut oil in thermal energy storage filled with a nonlinear copper metal foam are addressed. The porosity of the copper foam changes linearly from bottom to top. The phase change material (PCM) is filled into the metal foam pores, which form a composite PCM. The natural convection effect is also taken into account. The effect of average porosity; porosity distribution; pore size density; the inclination angle of enclosure; and nanoparticles’ concentration on the isotherms, melting maps, and the melting rate are investigated. The results show that the average porosity is the most important parameter on the melting behavior. The variation in porosity from 0.825 to 0.9 changes the melting time by about 116%. The natural convection flows are weak in the metal foam, and hence, the impact of each of the other parameters on the melting time is insignificant (less than 5%)