Repositório RCAAP

The growth of the elderly population is a transversal phenomenon to almost all the countries in the world. In recent years we have seen a growing elderly desire to improve their quality of life and well-being, while increasing interest in this segment of life by governments and, especially, by tourism companies [15]. Studies developed by [9,10,19,27,34] show, in European continent, the will of each of the parts to participate in social tourism. Portugal and Spain follow the global trend and, to mitigate the constraints inherent to advanced age, and others related to health, social and economic difficulties, promote, respectively, the social tourism programs by INATEL and IMSERSO.

The city of Oporto assumes a decisive role in the North region of Portugal, as a tourism destination. In addition to the recognized material and intangible heritage, the city has been developing strategies to create partnerships with regional and national stakeholders in order to program events of different typologies, throughout the year, with benefits for the city and the region. The music festivals are one of the activities programmed with the greatest expression in the city, nowadays. The present research, integrated in a broader project, aims to highlight the importance of the programming of events. In view of this purpose, this article will discuss the need to adapt music festivals to the target audience, in order to adjust the offer with positive results at the level of behavioural attitudes of tourists, regarding the intention to repeat and recommend the event (and destination).

This article aims to emphasize the importance and function of the landscape as a tourism resource, increasingly valued in tourism destinations. The landscapes are the subject of discussion and the object of sensitization to the valorisation and preservation in recent years. Nowadays, the landscape has acquired a greater appreciation on the part of society, because it is often assigned values representative by one or more sets of individuals. The valuation of the landscape allowed to create regulations and legislation related to its preservation and maintenance. In this sense, this research focuses on the importance of the landscape as a tourism resource and its impact on the motivation and preferences of the tourist in the northern region of Portugal as a tourism destination. Results demonstrate the preference about “coastal landscape”, followed by “mountain landscape”; also, Porto Metropolitan Area is notably the most visited region in the North of Portugal, followed by the Douro region. Most respondents agree that they usually include viewpoint in their journey plans, emphasizing “natural viewpoints”.

In competitive electricity markets with deep concerns for the efficiency level, demand response programs gain considerable significance. As demand response levels have decreased after the introduction of competition in the power industry, new approaches are required to take full advantage of demand response opportunities. Grid operators and utilities are taking new initiatives, recognizing the value of demand response for grid reliability and for the enhancement of organized spot markets’ efficiency. This paper proposes a methodology for the selection of the consumers that participate in an event, which is the responsibility of the Portuguese transmission network operator. The proposed method is intended to be applied in the interruptibility service implemented in Portugal, in convergence with Spain, in the context of the Iberian electricity market. This method is based on the calculation of locational marginal prices (LMP) which are used to support the decision concerning the consumers to be schedule for participation. The proposed method has been computationally implemented and its application is illustrated in this paper using a 937 bus distribution network with more than 20,000 consumers.

The Eurocity Chaves-Verín, as an European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation (EGTC), will be the central region to address in this work, focusing particularly on the issue of good practices taken into account in the existing cooperation link in these two cross-border regions, regarding the Thermal and Water Route Verín-Chaves-Vidago, as a leading proposal that fits and complements other offerings, creating competitiveness prospects for the destination, based on the quality offer, solely in endogenous resources, diversity of complementary tourism products, resulting in advantages for the stakeholders of the destination by extending the average stay and reducing seasonality. The results of the research show that the appreciation of the complementarity of the products made available to tourists, can effectively culminate in the increasing competitiveness of the destination, if the partnerships are valued and concretized, and if the stakeholders demonstrate openness regarding the proposals of the EGTC, concerning the valorisation, planning and promotion of tourism products arising from both regions.

The Paiva Walkways, in Portugal, opened in 2015, gave an important impulse to the tourism dynamic of Arouca municipality. This tourist attraction lacks scientific studies, in the context of tourism. Thus, it was developed a study about the tourist motivation of international visitors of this infrastructure, in the year 2018. The main goal of this research is to understand if the sources of information available (distribution channels) on the Paiva Walkways influence the motivation of the visit, concerning international demand. It was used a quantitative methodology through survey by questionnaire, sent via e-mail to 3639 contacts contained in the database relating to the reservations that were made online. The results of the hypothesis show the relation between the Push dimension and: official website of Paiva Walkways, websites with information about Paiva walkways, family and friends’ recommendation, Tourist office in Arouca, brochures about Paiva Walkways, guides (on paper), and blogs, forums or social networks. Also, a statistically significant positive relationship between the Pull dimension and official website of Paiva Walkways, websites with information about Paiva Walkways, family and friends’ recommendation, travel agency and/or tour operator, tourism office (outside of Arouca), tourism office in Arouca, brochures about Paiva Walkways, guides (on paper), blogs, forums or social networks, radio and television, tourism fair and previous experience. On average, the importance is higher for “Official website of Paiva walkways”, followed by “Websites with information about Paiva walkways”, items with a mean value much higher than the intermediate point of the measurement scale.

The northern region of Portugal, in the last years, has experienced the enhancement of tourism demand, which may induce the emergence of an over tourism phenomenon in some particular subregions of the North of Portugal. This phenomenon may cause significant destruction of the living conditions of residents, landscapes, seascapes, air and water quality, causing economic inequalities and social exclusion. The aim of this research paper is to understand if the phenomena of over tourism is present in the North of Portugal and if it changed overtime. The concentration of tourism activity in different municipality subregions can be measured with the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index a well know economic concentration measure. Using as variables the number guest and their expenditure in accommodation, to measure the demand, and the number of establishments, bedrooms and lodging capacity to measure the supply was possible to follow the concentration of tourism demand and supply in the 8 NUTIII regions located in the North of Portugal. The results showed that a specific subregion–Area Metropolitan do Porto–concentrates both the tourism demand and supply in the years 2014 and 2017, despite the increasing values found for all the variables in the 8 subregions. When it is observed a decrease in the levels of concentration are the subregions near by the most concentrate one that increase the share of tourism demand and supply. More rural and less populated areas need more targeted and specific policies measures to attract even more visitors.

This paper considers a price-set competition between a nonprofit hotel and a for-profit hotel, in a differentiated service market, with uncertain demand. We compute the Bayesian-Nash equilibrium, and we analyse the effects of the degree of altruistic preference on market equilibrium outcomes. As a result, we get that as the nonprofit hotel values more the consumer surplus, both hotels set higher (resp., lower) prices, if the probability of higher demand is high (resp., low). Furthermore, the expected profit of the for-profit hotel decreases (resp., increases) with the degree of altruistic preference, for either low or high (resp., intermediate) values of this degree. The expectation of the objective function of the nonprofit hotel increases with the degree of altruistic preference.

In this age of globalized medicine, when international travel and access to online health information is easily accessible, medical tourism (MT) gains an important global perspective on health. Patients, in most countries around the world, are exercising crescent degrees of autonomy in their health care options, obtaining information from different sources from their regular health care providers and, in some cases, choosing to seek care alternatives outside of national health service. In Portugal MT, is still only in the early stages but is considered one of the strategic products for tourism development. This study aims to explore the existing information on MT in Portugal. Information plays a very important role in attracting medical tourism and Portugal’s ability to design and implement information networks is largely known. Proper medical information systems are one of the most important tools for attracting medical tourists. The analysis in this paper reveals that Portugal presents the necessary conditions to be a destination of MT, due to the infrastructures and the human resources that it has, but currently few people know this country for the practice of medical treatments. Although the MT is in the introductory phase of the market, already has mechanisms to meet demand, it is still necessary to position itself in the international market. It will be necessary to create an image of Portugal associated with tourism linked to health care, creating a branding and slogans to promote the MT.

Apesar de já existirem vários estudos relacionados à implementação da pedagogia da gamificação em ambientes nad educativos (Cruz & Orange, 2016), a verdade é que estudos relacionados à implementação da abordagem 'Escape Room' (Guigon, 2018) são ainda bastante escassos, no que concerne aos contextos de ensino. No entanto, têm-se realizado algumas experiências pelo que se torna necessário reetir sobre sua relevância na educação, com o fim de aprender sobre o seu desenho e os principais resultados e, ao mesmo tempo, orientar os professores para uma implementação adequada e bem-sucedida.

El español es un idioma plurinacional y multiénico que debe mucho de su éxito educativo tanto a la cohesión como a la diversidad de pautas pragmáticas de comunicación, sobretodo del español latinoamericano (Regueiro Rodríguez, 2016). Esta diversidad lingüística y cultural es resultado de los contactos históricos con las lenguas precolombinas, europeas y africanas, pero no impide la intercomprensión entre los distintos pueblos hispanohablantes. De hecho, nos parece pertinente trabajar las variedades lingüísticas y culturales del español latinoamericano (Moreno Fernández, 2000; Liceras, Carballo, y Droege, 1995; Beaven y Garrido, 2000), en la clase de español como lengua extranjera (ELE), teniendo en cuenta una pedagogía de los discursos, que involucra interactivamente a los sujetos en el análisis y producción de textos (Fonseca, 1992; Sueiro Justel, 2012). Asimismo, el principal objetivo de nuestro estudio es caracterizar lingüísticamente dichas variedades, que plasman el binomio cohesión-diversidad, recurriendo a discursos literarios e hipermedia con aportaciones de la sociolingüística histórica. Considerando esta heterogeneidad, plasmada en el binomio cohesión-diversidad, el principal objetivo de nuestro estudio es caracterizar lingüísticamente dichas variedades, recurriendo a discursos literarios e hipermedia con aportaciones de la sociolingüística histórica (Barros, 1997; Sueiro Justel, 2012). Nos proponemos además, a través de un estudio de caso (Benson, Chik, Gao, Huang, y Wang 2009) y con una perspectiva metodológica cualitativa, que incluye cuestionarios, notas de campo y pautas de evaluación de cursos de formación docente y manuales didácticos, concretar los siguientes propósitos: a) analizar las representaciones que los estudiantes y profesores tienen del estudio de estas variedades (Alvar, 2002) en instituciones de enseñanza superior en Portugal; b) evaluar su presencia en la formación de profesorado y en los manuales de ELE en Portugal; c) crear propuestas didácticas basadas en discursos literarios e hipermedia.

The wood behavior varies with temperature, which has a negative effect, be-ing verified by progressive properties degradation. After fire exposure, it is possible to measure the wood char layer and the remaining resistant cross-section area. Based on numerical models and analytical equations, it is pos-sible to study the protection level of wood connections, during fire exposure, and evaluate wood and steel dowels temperature fields in conjunction. The main objective of this work is to verify the fire resistance of unprotected (W-W-W) wood connections and compare the results with protected connections using gypsum plasterboard. According Eurocode 5, part 1-2 the connections could be protected by the addition of wood paneling, wood-based panels or gypsum plasterboard type A, H or F. To obtain conclusions according the application of different type of gypsum plasterboard in the designed W-W-W connections in different densities material, numerical models were building to verify the level of protection in fire action. Design methods require the use of analytical methodologies and computational modelling to predict the fire exposure and the components capacity to resist to this action. Results of the temperature field in the studied connections under fire will be presented, with the measured char layer in unprotected members and comparing the protected efficiency with different types of gypsum plasterboard.

With the restructuring of the energy sector in industrialized countries there is an increased complexity in market players’ interactions along with emerging problems and new issues to be addressed. Decision support tools that facilitate the study and understanding of these markets are extremely useful to provide players with competitive advantage. In this context arises MASCEM, a multi-agent simulator for competitive electricity markets. It is essential to reinforce MASCEM with the ability to recreate electricity markets reality in the fullest possible extent, making it able to simulate as many types of markets models and players as possible. This paper presents the development of the Balancing Market in MASCEM. A key module to the study of competitive electricity markets, as it has well defined and distinct characteristics previously implemented.

This paper provides an overview of the development of a solar dehydrator, a project undertaken by a team of six Erasmus students from different countries during the European Project Semester at the Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto in the spring of 2019. The main objective of the European Project Semester is to develop teamwork, communication and problem-solving skills through team work and project-based learning. The purpose of the project was to design a sustainable solution to dehydrate and preserve food, build and test the corresponding proof-of-concept prototype, while respecting requirements such as the budget, the use of reusable materials and components or European Union directives. To achieve this goal, the team considered the technological, ethical and deontological, economic and environmental perspectives in the design of the Dryfoo prototype. This paper describes, after a short introduction, the performed research, the development and the testing of the proof-of-concept prototype, as well as the personal outcomes of this learning experience.

This paper describes the journey of a multinational and multidisciplinary team enrolled in the European Project Semester (EPS) at the Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (ISEP) during the spring semester of 2019. The team embraced the idea of repurposing coffee leftovers to cultivate oyster mushrooms and benefited from the background diversity of the team members as well as from newly acquired marketing, sustainability and design ethics skills to consolidate and strengthen the overall feasibility of the project. The project was set to design, develop and test grey oyster mushroom growth kits with an automated monitoring system, using coffee grounds as growing substrate and complying with the applicable regulations and pre-defined requirements. The ulterior aims of the project were to reconnect people with the food they eat and to disseminate sustainable food production processes, which are not only healthy but environmentally friendly. To achieve these goals, the team developed a circular economy business model where grey oyster mushroom growth kits reuse coffee grounds as growing beds and food buckets as containers. The designed growth kits include a controlled fruiting chamber with an integrated monitoring system. This allows easy domestic cultivation, monitoring through a smart phone. Moreover, the proposed solution contemplates information sharing on the mushroom cultivation process, monitoring system and recipes as well as the maintenance of a dedicated discussion forum. Tests have been conducted to test the concept, cultivation process, monitoring system and fruiting chamber from the incubation of mycelium all the way to the harvesting. Results show the feasibility of creating a business based on the devised concept

Crowdsourcing has become an essential source of information for tourists and tourism industry. Every day, large volumes of data are exchanged among stakeholders in the form of searches, posts, shares, reviews or ratings. Specifically, this paper explores inter-guest trust and similarity post-filtering, using crowdsourced ratings collected from the Expedia and TripAdvisor platforms, to improve hotel recommendations generated by incremental collaborative filtering. First, the profiles of hotels and guests are created using multi-criteria ratings and inter-guest trust and similarity. Next, incremental model-based collaborative filtering is adopted to predict unknown hotel ratings based on the multicriteria ratings and, finally, post-recommendation filtering sorts the generated predictions based on the inter-guest trust and similarity. The proposed method was tested both off-line (post-processing) and on-line (real time processing) for performance comparison. The results highlight: (i) the increase of the quality of recommendations with the inter-guest trust and similarity; and (ii) the decrease of the predictive errors with the online incremental collaborative filtering. Thus, this work contributes with a novel method, integrating incremental collaborative filtering and interguest trust and similarity post-filtering, for on-line hotel recommendation based on multi-criteria crowdsourced rating streams.

Esta dissertação visa o estudo da instalação de painéis fotovoltaicos, por forma a alimentar um ascensor de uma instalação. O estudo pretende promover a redução do consumo de energia elétrica paga do lado do consumidor, contribuindo para a diminuição da poluição do planeta, recorrendo à produção de energia elétrica proveniente de fontes renováveis. O ascensor em causa, encontra-se instalado nas instalações da sede da Schmitt + Sohn, sendo que, este documento pode ser aplicado analogamente em outras instalações. Pretende-se demonstrar a importância da pegada ecológica nos dias de hoje, a importância da redução dos consumos elétricos, a necessidade de melhorar os aparelhos existentes através da redução de consumo de energia provenientes de derivados de petróleo, por outras palavras, aumentar a eficiência energética, do ponto de vista de “energia elétrica consumida da rede”. O tema incide sobre autoconsumo, sendo considerado o armazenamento de energia elétrica produzida em excesso, posteriormente consumida, por forma a reduzir ou mesmo eliminar, o consumo de energia por parte da rede elétrica pública. Não é âmbito desta dissertação, a produção de energia elétrica para fornecimento da rede elétrica pública. O documento presente, aborda o cálculo da eficiência energética em ascensores, explanando o modo de cálculo com base na norma ISO25745:2012. Para auxílio do projeto e prevendo a sua comercialização foram desenvolvidos dois simuladores. Um, pretende facilitar e disponibilizar, o cálculo da classe de eficiência energética de um determinado ascensor, com base na ISO25745 [1] [2]; o outro simulador, pretende automatizar o processo de cálculo, da necessidade de implementação de um sistema análogo ao apresentado nesta dissertação em outra localização, facilitando a comercialização do produto. Este simulador será para uso exclusivo dos gabinetes de engenharia da Schmitt + Sohn.

No âmbito da unidade curricular Dissertação/Estágio (DISEST) do segundo ano do Mestrado em Engenharia Química, ramo de Energia e Biorrefinaria do Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (ISEP), com a parceria da empresa Monteiro, Ribas Indústrias S.A na unidade Monteiro Footwear, desenvolveu-se um trabalho onde se pretendeu avaliar a incorporação da casca de arroz e da raspa de couro wet-white em solas para sapatos, de forma a criar um produto de cariz sustentável, do ponto de vista da biodegradação e do seu desempenho mecânico. Nesse sentido, foi produzida uma matriz base para solas de sapatos (Base 180.000), onde foram adicionados casca de arroz e raspa de couro wet-white respetivamente, na proporção de 40 % (m/m). Estes três produtos foram sujeitos a um ensaio de biodegradação, pelo método da compostagem acelerada durante 42 dias, sendo depois efetuados ensaios mecânicos (dureza, resistência ao rasgamento, resistência à abrasão, tensão de rotura e alongamento na rotura), perda de massa, calorimetria diferencial de varrimento (DSC) e observação por microscopia ótica invertida, antes e após a biodegradação. Analisando os resultados obtidos, pôde-se constatar que a sola contendo couro wet-white foi aquela onde foi observada a maior perda de massa com 11%, face aos 5% da sola com casca de arroz e 3% da Base 180.000. No que respeita aos resultados em DSC, verificou-se que a adição de couro wetwhite apresentava uma variação significativa dos valores da temperatura de onset antes e após ensaio de biodegradação. Sobre a sola contendo a casca de arroz, não se observou uma alteração significativa. No que se refere aos ensaios mecânicos, após a biodegradação, observou-se em geral uma diminuição nos valores dos parâmetros mecânicos, desde logo na Base 180.000 onde se verificou uma diminuição significativa, em particular nos parâmetros do alongamento e da tensão de rutura, com uma diminuição superior a 40%. No caso da mistura com o couro wet-white, os valores aproximaram-se daqueles obtidos pela Base 180.000, ou seja, com a degradação do couro wet-white esta sola torna-se numa sola mais lisa e mais suave ao toque. No que toca à mistura com a casca de arroz, observou-se uma sola bastante abrasiva, desintegrável e sem capacidade de deformação antes e após o ensaio de biodegradação.

A nível mundial, o setor dos Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV’s) tem estado em constante crescimento. Associado a este crescimento está o aumento da competitividade do mercado. No que se refere ao mercado, a competitividade não é a nível nacional, mas sim mundial, o que eleva o patamar de desenvolvimento das aeronaves. Perante esta realidade, é imprescindível ser eficaz em todos os aspetos, não só no desenvolvimento do UAV, mas também na otimização dos processos e da documentação. Neste sentido, é crucial promover a normalização dos processos e da documentação. A dissertação aqui apresentada foi desenvolvida na empresa X Aerosystems, S.A. que, devido a sua juventude, é necessário implementar muitos processos e documentação que não existe e que obrigatoriamente tem de existir para preservar o futuro do projeto. Perante isto, foi estudada a otimização dos processos a realizar para os testes do avião, desde o transporte à organização de voos. A organização da manutenção do avião também foi um dos casos de estudo. Perante este estudo é de realçar que, todos os casos que foram estudados foram implementados devido à grande importância e influencia que tinham no projeto. No que respeita aos testes de voo, foi implementado um processo de transporte do avião muito eficaz, que envolveu a personalização de uma carrinha para o efeito. Relativamente à documentação dos testes de voo, foi desenvolvido um livro com várias checklists, desde a montagem do avião à conclusão dos testes, com as várias tarefas a realizar ao longo de todos os testes de voo. Foi criado também um programa de voos de teste com os testes e procedimentos a realizar, para com isto garantir que tudo será testado de forma lógica e eficaz. Por fim, foi criado um cartão de voos de teste, para registar tudo o que acontece e influencia estes voos. Na manutenção, foi criado um programa que nos indica o que há a fazer em cada momento; para realizar a manutenção no momento certo foi necessário criar um documento de registo de serviço do avião (Technical Log Book), que regista as horas e ciclos de funcionamento do mesmo e tudo o que acontece a nível funcional durante os testes. Por fim, no capítulo de manutenção, foi implementado um cartão de trabalhos do avião para registar todos os trabalhos efetuados.

A presente Tese foi desenvolvida no âmbito da unidade curricular Dissertação/Projeto/Estágio do 2ºano do Mestrado em Engenharia mecânica – Ramo Gestão Industrial do Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto. Foi efetuado num ambiente empresarial e tinha como principal desafio o enquadramento dos indicadores de desempenho com os desperdícios ao nível da fábrica, com o intuito de encontrar potenciais oportunidades de melhoria. O principal objetivo é auxiliar a tomada de decisão do gestor de fábrica, com evidências reais, identificando quais as áreas/desperdícios que devem ser alvos de melhoria. Para tal foi idealizado um modelo de gestão de desempenho capaz de identificar as diferenças entre o real e o planeado, e por fim interligar com os desperdícios. Os modelos de análise de desempenho são uma ferramenta bastante útil para análise e identificação dos pontos críticos nas operações de uma empresa, de certo modo ajudam a entender o que está a correr mal e onde, através da análise de um extensivo número de indicadores. Numa fase inicial foi efetuada uma pesquisa bibliográfica sobre os modelos de gestão de desempenho presentes na literatura, assim como os conceitos associados aos indicadores de desempenho e as formas de desperdício ao nível da fábrica. Após a integração na empresa, foi efetuado um levantamento da forma como a empresa atua ao nível da gestão das suas unidades assim como os vários indicadores disponíveis e qual a sua fonte. Por forma a idealizar o modelo no contexto da empresa, para que este se enquadre com as necessidades atuais. Por fim é efetuado um protótipo do modelo de gestão de desempenho, definindo a sua estrutura e modo de utilização. Em simultâneo é apresentado um caso de aplicação no contexto de uma das unidades da empresa.