Seismic behaviour of vernacular architecture

Vernacular buildings are in several seismic prone regions a relevant part of the building stock. They represent an important part of the of the cultural legacy, and of the technological and heritage context of the society. The present paper presents a revision of the effect of recent earthquake disasters in old buildings, and discusses the influence of the main structural elements in the vulnerability of these buildings, as well as the more common failure mechanisms. Finally, it is presented a review on the elements that more contribute to the seismic behaviour and performance of vernacular buildings.Project ‘SEISMIC-V –Vernacular Seismic Culture in Portugal’ (PTDC/ATP-AQI/3934/2012), from the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT

Structural conservation and vernacular construction

Modern societies understand built cultural heritage, including vernacular construction, as a landmark of culture and diversity, which needs to be protected and brought to the next generations in suitable condition. Still, a large part of this heritage is affected by structural problems that menace the safety of buildings and people. In the case of vernacular construction, deterioration due to abandonment is often present, making the phenomena of urbanization one of the most important menaces to this built heritage. The developments in the areas of inspection, non-destructive testing, monitoring and structural analysis of historical constructions, together with recent guidelines for reuse and conservation, allow for safer, economical and adequate remedial measures, as discussed in this paperProject ‘SEISMIC - V – Vernacular Seismic Culture in Portugal’ (PTDC/ATP - AQI/ 3934/2012) , from the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT

Lateral Casimir force beyond the Proximity Force Approximation

We argue that the appropriate variable to study a non trivial geometry dependence of the Casimir force is the lateral component of the Casimir force, which we evaluate between two corrugated metallic plates outside the validity of the Proximity Force Approximation (PFA). The metallic plates are described by the plasma model, with arbitrary values for the plasma wavelength, the plate separation and the corrugation period, the corrugation amplitude remaining the smallest length scale. Our analysis shows that in realistic experimental situations the Proximity Force Approximation overestimates the force by up to 30%.Comment: 4 pages. Identical to v1, which was accidentally replaced by a different paper (quant-ph/0610026

Seismic behaviour analysis and retrofitting of a row building

Rammed earth is one of the oldest building materials in the world and is present in Portugal with a particular focus in the South of the country. The mechanical properties and the structural behavior of rammed earth constructions have been the subject of study of many researchers in the recent years. This study is part of a broader research on vernacular seismic culture in Portugal. Numerical analyzes were carried out to assess the influence of different retrofitting solutions in the behavior and seismic performance of an rammed earth building representative of the vernacular heritage of Alentejo region. Understating the structural fragilities of this type of constructions allowed determining the most appropriate retrofitting solutions.Project ‘SEISMIC-V –Vernacular Seismic Culture in Portugal’ (PTDC/ATP-AQI/3934/2012), from the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT

Complex Network Tools to Understand the Behavior of Criminality in Urban Areas

Complex networks are nowadays employed in several applications. Modeling urban street networks is one of them, and in particular to analyze criminal aspects of a city. Several research groups have focused on such application, but until now, there is a lack of a well-defined methodology for employing complex networks in a whole crime analysis process, i.e. from data preparation to a deep analysis of criminal communities. Furthermore, the "toolset" available for those works is not complete enough, also lacking techniques to maintain up-to-date, complete crime datasets and proper assessment measures. In this sense, we propose a threefold methodology for employing complex networks in the detection of highly criminal areas within a city. Our methodology comprises three tasks: (i) Mapping of Urban Crimes; (ii) Criminal Community Identification; and (iii) Crime Analysis. Moreover, it provides a proper set of assessment measures for analyzing intrinsic criminality of communities, especially when considering different crime types. We show our methodology by applying it to a real crime dataset from the city of San Francisco - CA, USA. The results confirm its effectiveness to identify and analyze high criminality areas within a city. Hence, our contributions provide a basis for further developments on complex networks applied to crime analysis.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, 14th International Conference on Information Technology : New Generation

Design of a collaborative virtual environment for training security agents in big events

This paper describes a design of a collaborative virtual environment (CVE) for training security agents in big events. The CVE was modelled with Autodesk 3ds Max, while Unity 3D was used to create the terrain and implement the features that make up a virtual environment. The Brazilian soccer stadium known as Maracana˜ and its surroundings were chosen as the real counterparts of the CVE. The usability of the CVE was evaluated through simulations involving security agents dealing with threats related to suspects carrying radioactive material in big events. In order to perform these simulations, we use the same procedures used during 2014 FIFA World Cup and planned to be used in Rio 2016 Olympic Games. The main objective of this work is to verify the feasibility of designing a CVE and its usability for training security agents involved in big events issues. Results indicated that the proposed CVE has been successful concerning both, design and usability, besides of helping to improve the ability of each member of the security team on performing his duty

Um método proativo para gerenciamento da segurança em instalações nucleares

Em razão da abordagem moderna para tratar a segurança em instalações nucleares que destaca que estas organizações devem ser capazes de avaliar e gerenciar de forma proativa suas atividades torna-se cada vez mais importante a necessidade de instrumentos de avaliação das condições de trabalho. Nesse contexto, este trabalho apresenta um método proativo de gerenciamento da segurança organizacional, o qual apresenta três características inovadoras: 1) a utilização de indicadores preditivos que fornecem informações atuais sobre o desempenho das atividades, permitindo ações preventivas e não somente reativas na gestão da segurança, diferente dos indicadores de segurança tradicionalmente utilizados (indicadores reativos) que são obtidos após a ocorrência de eventos indesejados; 2) a adoção do enfoque da engenharia de resiliência no desenvolvimento dos indicadores – os indicadores são baseados em seis princípios da engenharia de resiliência: comprometimento da alta direção, aprendizagem, flexibilidade, consciência, cultura de justiça e preparação para os problemas; 3) a adoção dos conceitos e propriedades da teoria dos conjuntos fuzzy para lidar com a subjetividade e a consistência dos julgamentos humanos na avaliação dos indicadores. A teoria fuzzy é usada essencialmente para mapear modelos qualitativos de tomada de decisão, e para métodos de representação imprecisa. Os resultados deste trabalho objetivam uma melhoria no desempenho e na segurança nas organizações. O método foi aplicado no setor de expedição de radiofármacos de uma instalação nuclear. Os resultados mostraram que o método é uma boa ferramenta de monitoramento de forma objetiva e proativa das condições de trabalho de um domínio organizacional