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Publicações

2015

Surface geophysical methods in the assessment of environmental impacts of landfills: An overview

Autores
Ramalho, EC; Matias, MJS; Moura, RMM;

Publicação
Landfills and Recycling Centers: Processing Systems, Impact on the Environment and Adverse Health Effects

Abstract
The fast development of field, data processing equipment and software has allowed the use of geophysical methods to an ever increasing range of applications. Hence nowadays it is much easier to conduct massive field surveys combining different methods, to obtain more accurate and denser data, so that complex modeling and interpretation at limited costs can be carried out. Landfills have been targeted by geophysical methods in order to investigate their environmental impacts. In fact, landfills have been the classic way to deposit domestic and industrial waste and have generated a large range of negative environmental impacts in groundwater and soils. These problems often persist even after the effective use of the landfills and subsequent recovery processes. Owing to their characteristics, landfills are difficult to access and because of the general lack of accurate information regarding the shape, nature of the refuse, history and development of the landfill, non-invasive, nondestructive methods and sometimes autonomous data acquisition devices must be used to monitor impacts and to investigate and prevent groundwater and soil contamination. Geophysical methods can be applied to investigate a wide range of aspects related with the assessment of the environmental impact of landfills. Problems such as geometry definition, geological settings, contamination plume location and monitoring investigation of internal structure and refuse zoning, determination of fluid flow direction and paths or the determination of sealing conditions and leakage may be more successfully evaluated if a carefully chosen geophysical survey is part of any investigation program. Because of the nature and complexity of the problems to investigate, only multidisciplinary approaches, involving geophysics, hydrochemical, hydrogeological and geological information, can provide meaningful results for a thorough assessment of the landfills impact on the environment. This work intends to demonstrate the application of geophysical methods in the investigation of the environmental impacts, as described above, of industrial and domestic landfills during their life time and after closure. Thus, several examples will be discussed illustrating the use of 2D, 3D and time lapse resistivity, electromagnetic, ground probing radar, self-potential, magnetic, gravity surveys and airborne thermal mapping. Most of the geophysical data will be presented and shortly discussed together with information from boreholes, geology, hydrogeology and hydrochemical data. As it will be shown, it is clear that only a judicious combination of methods and information from different nature can provide tools for the diagnosis and assessment of the impact of landfills in the environment, for the investigation of the best engineering solutions to remediate them and for the possible recovery of refuse with economic interest.

2015

Application of Evolutionary Multiobjective Algorithms for Solving the Problem of Energy Dispatch in Hydroelectric Power Plants

Autores
Marcelino, CG; Carvalho, LM; Almeida, PEM; Wanner, EF; Miranda, V;

Publicação
EVOLUTIONARY MULTI-CRITERION OPTIMIZATION, PT II

Abstract
The Brazilian population increase and the purchase power growth have resulted in a widespread use of electric home appliances. Consequently, the demand for electricity has been growing steadily in an average of 5% a year. In this country, electric demand is supplied predominantly by hydro power. Many of the power plants installed do not operate efficiently from water consumption point of view. Energy Dispatch is defined as the allocation of operational values to each turbine inside a power plant to meet some criteria defined by the power plant owner. In this context, an optimal scheduling criterion could be the provision of the greatest amount of electricity with the lowest possible water consumption, i.e. maximization of water use efficiency. Some power plant operators rely on "Normal Mode of Operation" (NMO) as Energy Dispatch criterion. This criterion consists in equally dividing power demand between available turbines regardless whether the allocation represents an efficient good operation point for each turbine. This work proposes a multiobjective approach to solve electric dispatch problem in which the objective functions considered are maximization of hydroelectric productivity function and minimization of the distance between NMO and "Optimized Control Mode" (OCM). Two well-known Multiobjective Evolutionary Algorithms are used to solve this problem. Practical results have shown water savings in the order of million m(3)/s. In addition, statistical inference has revealed that SPEA2 algorithm is more robust than NSGA-II algorithm to solve this problem.

2015

How to predict journey destination for supporting contextual intelligent information services?

Autores
Costa, V; Fontes, T; Costa, PM; Dias, TG;

Publicação
2015 IEEE 18TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS

Abstract
The adoption of smart cards in urban public transport has fundamentally changed how transport providers manage and plan their networks. Traveller information services, in particular, have leveraged this contextual data for targeting passengers and providing relevant information. Thus, it becomes increasingly relevant for the next generation of services to obtain on-time contextual passenger information, to support the development of intelligent information services. In this paper an adaptation of the Top-K algorithm is proposed for predicting journey destination, applied to different scenarios in public transport. The performance and efficiency are analysed and compared to a decision tree classifier. Finally, the feasibility and potential of applying the proposed methods to large-scale systems in a real-world environment is discussed.

2015

Desenvolvimento motor e características empreendedoras em crianças. Que relação?

Autores
Silva, Inês Peixoto; Pereira, Beatriz Oliveira; Teixeira, Aurora;

Publicação

Abstract
O objetivo do estudo é verificar e compreender a relação entre o desenvolvimento motor da criança e suas características empreendedoras. A relevância do estudo resulta do carácter inovador devido à escassez de trabalhos científicos que relacionam, em crianças, o desenvolvimento motor e o empreendedorismo. Não será relevante compreender como ocorre o desenvolvimento de competências empreendedoras nas crianças e como promovê-las? Será possível, a longo prazo, melhorar a qualidade de vida dos cidadãos evitando comportamentos sedentários adquiridos na infância, bem como promover a autonomia e responsabilidade perante uma sociedade que se tornará mais sustentável do ponto de vista social, económica e financeira.;The aim of the study is to assess and understand the relationship between the child's motor development and their entrepreneurial characteristics. The relevance of the study results from the innovative character due to lack of scientific papers that associate motor development and entrepreneurship in children. Won't it be relevant to understand how the development of entrepreneurial skills occur in children and how to promote them? lf students with better motor development would present a greater number of entrepreneurial characteristics, it will be possible to describe indicators that show the importance of stimulating the motor and entrepreneurial skills at early ages and that will contribute to rethink the education of children and consequently the teacher training. lt will be possible, improve the quality of life avoiding sedentary behaviors acquired in childhood, as well as promoting autonomy and responsibility to a society that will become more sustainable in social, economic and financial point of view.

2015

Um Protocolo Genérico Eficiente de Energia para Aplicações em Redes de Sensores sem Fio sem Restrição de Tempo de Resposta

Autores
Costa, D; Guedes, L; Vasques, F; Portugal, P;

Publicação
Revista de Tecnologia da Informação e Comunicação - RTIC

Abstract

2015

Autonomous Robot Control by Neural Networks

Autores
Pinto, AB; Barbosa, RS; Silva, MF;

Publicação
CONTROLO'2014 - PROCEEDINGS OF THE 11TH PORTUGUESE CONFERENCE ON AUTOMATIC CONTROL

Abstract
This work aims to apply the concepts associated with neural networks in the control of an autonomous robot system. The robot was tested in several arbitrary paths in order to verify the effectiveness of the neural control. The results show that the robot performed the tasks with success. Moreover, in the case of arbitrary paths the neural control outperforms other methodologies, such as fuzzy logic control.

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