Abstract
The smart cities concept - use of connected services and intelligent systems to support decision making in cities governance - aims to build better sustainability and living conditions for urban spaces, which are more complex every day. This work expects to optimize the waste collection circuits for non-residential customers in a city in Portugal. It is developed through the implementation of a simple, low-cost methodology when compared to commercial-available sensor systems. The main goal is to build a classifier for each client, being able to forecast the presence or absence of containers and, in a second step, predict how many containers of glass, paper or plastic would be available to be collected. Data were acquired during the period of one year, from January to December 2017, from more than 100 customers, resulting in a 26.000+ records dataset. Due to its degree of interpretability, we use Decision trees, implemented with a sliding window, which ran through the months of the year, stacking it one-by-one and/or merging few groups aiming the best correct predictions score. This project results in more efficient waste-collection routes, increasing the operation profits and reducing both costs and fuel-consumption, therefore diminishing it environmental footprint.

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Civil society, business, and local authorities in Portugal have come together to seek solutions to the challenges posed by COVID-19. This study intends to explore the relevance of these initiatives for the implementation of the Human2Human paradigm through five case studies. This approach allows us to understand how these initiatives are organized, to identify the convergent and divergent points between them, and to explore the role of information and communication technologies in these projects. The results of this study enabled the identification of a set of diversified projects with high impact for professionals who are in the front line in the fight against COVID-19 and for the most vulnerable population, particularly the elderly. This study is especially relevant from a practical point of view by exploring the relevance of these initiatives, by highlighting the need for collaborative work and in multidisciplinary teams, and by encouraging their replication to other countries.

Abstract
Park visitors and tourists, in general, seek new experiences, leading to a growing search for ways to create more memorable experiences. Some technological solutions, such as Augmented Reality, have proved that they can be useful to create more immersive and interactive experiences, both in entertainment and education. An application with Augmented Reality, using location-based services in a gamified way, can create pleasant and entertaining outdoor experiences without losing its pedagogical ability, making it a promising fit for a nature park. We propose a conceptual framework for creating these mobile applications for nature parks. From which, a mobile application was prototyped with location-based services and augmented reality interactive experiences, with the purpose of disseminating scientific knowledge about the fauna and flora of a nature park. Gaming elements are also introduced in the application's design to try and improve the engagement and involvement in the various activities of the application and its contents. User tests were performed during the development of the prototype and with the final version. The results allow us to conclude that this type of applications can improve the visitors' experience while at the same time, improve the dissemination of scientific knowledge.

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Online masters’ program chairs need up-to-date information to monitor efficiently and effectively all the courses in the program for which they are responsible. Learning Management Systems supporting the operation of the online programme collect vast amounts of data about the learning process. These systems are geared to support individual teachers and students, not program chairs. This article presents the process that led to the development of a Dashboards for program chairs, based upon an analysis of their regular supervision tasks, decision-making information needs, and available data in the learning management system, Moodle. The information presented via the dashboard is aggregated and contextualised for all students enrolled in the program, in all its courses, contributing to improve decision-making in program chairing. The dashboard prototype is presented as a concrete outcome of this process, which can be replicated to achieve more advanced and updated versions, hopefully contributing to better program chairing. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

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