Abstract
This paper discusses the current Brazilian electricity market, brings out some dilemmas that should be examined in order to implement a more market-oriented approach, and describes a new market design to overcome these issues. The proposed market design is based on virtual reservoirs and aims at enhancing the flexibility to enable market participants to comply with their contracts, while still ensuring the efficient use of the water and maintaining the current level of the security of supply. In addition, to simulate the behavior of the market participants in this new framework, an Agent-Based Model ABM where agents use reinforcement Q-Learning - is developed and applied to a case study that includes a centralized dispatch as currently exists in Brazil. The results obtained so far show that this new design is suitable to allow hydros managing their commercial contract commitments with extra flexibility.

Abstract
During the last decades, the radioactive noble gas radon has found a variety of geoscientific applications, ranging from its utilization as a potential earthquake precursor and proxy of tectonic stress over its specific role in volcanic environments to a wide range of applications as a tracer in marine and hydrological settings. This topical issue summarizes the current state of research as exemplified by some original research articles covering the aforementioned as well as other closely related aspects and points to some important future directions of radon application in geosciences. This editorial provides a more detailed overview of the contents of this volume, a brief summary of the rationale underlying the diverse applications, and outlines some important perspectives.

Abstract
Driving simulators require extensive road environments, with roads correctly modeled and similar to those found in real world. The modeling of extensive road environments, with the specific characteristics required by driving simulators, may result in a long time consuming process. This paper presents a procedural method to the modeling of large road environments. The proposed method can produce a road network design to populate an empty terrain and produce all the related road environment models. The terrain model can also be edited to produce well-constructed road environments. The road and terrain models are optimized to interactive visualization in real time, applying all the stet-of-art techniques like the level of detail selection. The proposed method allows modeling large road environments, with the realism and quality required to the realization of experimental work in driving simulators.

Abstract
This paper proposes the development of biologically inspired robots as the capstone project of the European Project Semester (EPS) framework. EPS is a one semester student centred international programme offered by a group of European engineering schools (EPS Providers) as part of their student exchange programme portfolio. EPS is organized around a central module (the EPS project) and a set of complementary supportive modules. Project proposals refer to open multidisciplinary real world problems. Its purpose is to expose students to problems of a greater dimension and complexity than those faced throughout the degree programme as well as to put them in contact with the so-called real world, in opposition to the academic world. Students are organized in teams, grouping individuals from diverse academic backgrounds and nationalities, and each team is fully responsible for conducting its project. EPS provides an integrated framework for undertaking capstone projects, which is focused on multicultural and multidisciplinary teamwork, communication, problem-solving, creativity, leadership, entrepreneurship, ethical reasoning and global contextual analysis. The design and development of biologically inspired robots allows the students to fulfil the previously described requirements and objectives and, as a result, we recommend the adoption of these projects within the EPS project capstone module for the benefit of engineering students.

Abstract
The 2014 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report asserts that investment in low-carbon electricity production will need to rise by several hundred billion dollars annually, before 2030, in order to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere by 2100. In recognition of this urgent need to mitigate climate change, many governments have already established policies to spur renewable energy investment in the electricity sector. One such policy measure is a renewable energy target (RET), which sets a target percentage of electricity production to be generated from renewable sources by a specified date. Variations on this policy have been implemented around the world, from the EU 20-20-20 to diverse renewable portfolio standards in U.S. states and municipalities. This work analyzes economic, environmental and social aspects of a geographic attribution (i.e. Isolated, Regional or Country) of an RET to gain insights on the associated tradeoffs. In the case study of the Azores Islands, Portugal, the regional geographic attribution of an RET captures the best of all three tradeoffs.

Abstract
Decision making in companies requires an assessment of the efficiency and productivity of individual inputs to provide insights into the scope for improvement of inputs' use. This paper estimates an input-specific Luenberger productivity growth indicator that can be decomposed to identify the contributions of input-specific technological change, technical efficiency change and scale efficiency change. These components for a specific input sum up to the aggregated indicators which are then compared with the traditional Luenberger indicator. The application focuses on panel data of Spanish and Portuguese construction firms over the period 2002-2011, accounting for three inputs: materials, labor and capital. The results show that aggregated productivity change and its components computed from the input-specific productivity indicator are different from those obtained using a traditional approach. The results also indicate that productivity change is negative for labor and capital for construction firms in both Spain and Portugal, while productivity change of materials is positive for Portugal and negative for Spain. Productivity decline is worse for capital in the Spanish construction firms, and for labor in Portugal.