CEG-IST

Sustainability assessment (SA) is a holistic and long-range strategic instrument capable of assisting policy-making in electing, and deciding upon, future development priorities. The outcomes of an SA process become more relevant and strengthened when conducted with multi-stakeholder engagement, which provides for multiple dialogues and perspectives. This was the object of research of the SA team in the context of BioScene (Scenarios for Reconciling Biodiversity Conservation with Declining Agriculture Use in Mountain Areas in Europe), a three-year project (2002–2005) funded by the European Union 5th Framework Program, which aimed to investigate the implications of agricultural restructuring and decline for biodiversity conservation in the mountain areas of Europe, using three distinct methodological streams: the ecological, the socio-economic, and the SA approaches. The SA approach drew on the previous two to assess the importance for biodiversity management of different scenarios of agri-environmental change and rural policy in six countries (France, Greece, Norway, Slovakia, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom), develop causal chains, include stakeholder views, and identify potential contributions for, or conflicts with, sustainability. This article tells how SA was used, what sustainability meant in each study area through different objectives of sustainability considered, discusses the methods used in SA, and the benefits arising. The SA was conducted by a team independent of any study area, who developed and oversaw the application of the SA methodology, assisting national teams, and developing a cross-country understanding of the sustainability of proposed scenarios in the different geographical and social contexts, and their implications for policy-making. Finally, it reflects on the persistent challenges of interdisciplinary research, compounded by multi-cultural teams, and concludes on the BioScene’s lessons for the further development and application of SA.

Resumo A importância do alojamento operário na transição do século XIX para o século XX, nomeadamente da Vila Operária – estilo que proliferou e assumiu alguma diversidade tipo-morfológica na cidade de Lisboa – prende-se com o testemunho histórico, político e urbanístico que este representa no processo evolutivo da cidade. Essa tipologia, frequentemente considerada como um exemplo de proto-habitação social, que viu reconhecido o interesse patrimonial, em 1990, pelo Grupo de Trabalho e Estudo dos Pátios e Vilas da Cidade de Lisboa e, em 1993, pelo Plano de Pormenor de Salvaguarda dos Pátios e Vilas, tem sido sujeita a medidas de proteção isoladas ou fragmentadas que não têm permitido a efetiva salvaguarda dos imóveis. O presente trabalho contextualiza o início da habitação operária na cidade de Lisboa nos âmbitos social, econômico e político, realça a sua importância na evolução do modo de habitar a cidade e identifica e cruza as diversas medidas legais de proteção a que essa tipolog...

Irrigation can be responsible for salt accumulation in the root zone of grapevines when late autumn and winter precipitation is not enough to leach salts from the soil upper horizons, turning the soil unsuitable for grape production. The aim of this work is to present a novel methodology to outline areas, within a drip-irrigated vineyard, with a low soil moisture content (SMC) during, and after, an 11-month agricultural drought. Soil moisture (SM) field measurements were performed in two plots at the vineyard, followed by a geostatistical method (indicator kriging) to estimate the SM class probabilities according to a threshold value, enlarging the training set for the classification algorithms. The logistic regression (LR) and Random Forest (RF) methods used the features of the Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 images and terrain parameters to classify the SMC probabilities at the vineyard. Both methods classified the highest SMC probabilities above 14% that is located close to the stream ...

Building information modelling (BIM) has demonstrated its potential as a solution providing support to a series of operations related to facility management (FM) through building data retrieval, analysis, and processing. However, some challenges to the effective adoption of BIM-centred FM information systems occur in their design and implementation, causing obstacles to usability. Among these challenges are the customization of the information structure for each application case, the dynamic character of data supporting building maintenance, and the range of FM specialities involved, frequently including persons who are not BIM experts. This paper presents a BIM–FM prototype to support operations and access updated environmental data for a university building. The two contributions of the developed prototype are its ability to register two types of dynamic data, namely, the regularly acquired environmental sensor information and the sporadic building intervention records, and the au...