Suchergebnisse

Abstract The condition and performance of the land transport infrastructure have a big societal and economic relevance. The available budgets tend to be allocated to maintenance interventions for existing road and rail networks and not for its expansion. Besides that, the ageing condition of these networks will require more maintenance interventions, resulting in the need to optimise its performance. Considering this context, the INFRALERT project (Linear Infrastructure Efficiency Improvement by Automated Learning and Optimised Predictive Maintenance Techniques) is being developed by 7 different partners from 6 European countries. It aims the development of an expert-based information system to support and automate linear infrastructure management from measurement to maintenance, focusing on road and rail. This includes the collection, storage and analysis of inspection data, the determination of maintenance tasks necessary to keep the performance of the infrastructure system in optimal condition, and the optimal planning of interventions. The INFRALERT empirical developments and its demonstration are supported in two real-world pilots chosen for their potential for replication: a railway network in Sweden and a road network in Portugal. In both cases, extensive data from auscultation campaigns are available since several years ago. This paper describes in detail the objectives and the several project stages, as well as the presentation of the first achieved developments since its start in 2015. Acknowledgements The INFRALERT project received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Grant Agreement No 636496.

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Economics from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics ; Local elites in developing African countries, the so-called Traditional Authorities, still hold considerable power over rural communities, namely they are likely to have a decisive influence on their voting behavior. This study measures this influence using data collected through a field experiment for Aker, Collier and Vicente (2011) during the Mozambican elections of 2009 in 161 locations. The results obtained point to a positive correlation between a set of indicators of the power of Traditional Authorities and both voter turnout and the vote for Frelimo, the incumbent.

The poems and short stories here presented represent a tribute to David Sassoli and aim to reflect on the present and future time of Europe and on the European values defended by Sassoli.