Porto Metropolitan Area Research Articles

Quantification of health benefits related with reduction of atmospheric PM10 levels: implementation of population mobility approach

This study is focused on the assessment of potential health benefits by meeting the air quality limit values (2008/50/CE) for short-term PM10 exposure. For this purpose, the methodology of the WHO for Health Impact Assessment and APHEIS guidelines for data collection were applied to Porto Metropolitan Area, Portugal. Additionally, an improved methodology using population mobility data is proposed in this work to analyse number of persons exposed. In order to obtain representative background concentrations, an innovative approach to process air quality time series was implemented. The results provide the number of attributable cases prevented annually by reducing PM10 concentration. An intercomparison of two approaches to process input data for the health risk analysis provides information on sensitivity of the applied methodology. The findings highlight the importance of taking into account spatial variability of the air pollution levels and population mobility in the health impact assessment.

Adição ao trabalho e relação com fatores de risco sociodemográficos, laborais e psicossociais

O estudo buscou identificar a prevalência e os fatores de risco sociodemográficos, laborais e psicossociais da adição ao trabalho em 471 trabalhadores de Porto Alegre e região metropolitana. Como instrumento, foi utilizado o "Dutch Work Addiction Scale" (DUWAS), versão reduzida. A escala avalia a adição ao trabalho em suas duas dimensões, o trabalho compulsivo e trabalho excessivo. Os resultados revelam que, dentre as variáveis sociodemográficas, somente a variável sexo assinalou diferença significativa, tendo as mulheres apresentado índices mais elevados em trabalho excessivo. Quanto às variáveis laborais, verificou-se associação positiva entre trabalho excessivo e carga horária contratual, e trabalho excessivo e carga horária efetivamente realizada. Houve associação negativa entre trabalho excessivo e percepção de estar saudável. O trabalho compulsivo se associou negativamente ao tempo de exercício profissional e de trabalho na empresa atual, bem como à percepção de estar saudável e à satisfação com a vida em geral.

Lifespan Snapshot of Physical Activity Assessed by Accelerometry in Porto

The purpose of the study is to evaluate age and gender differences in objectively measured levels of physical activity (PA) in a large and diverse sample of residents from an urban area in Porto, Portugal. Participants included 822 residents, 334 males (41%), and 488 females (59%), aged 6 to 90 years. GT1M accelerometer was used to assess daily PA over 7 consecutive days, and the measurement was from October (2007) to June (2008). Males were more active than females. This difference was attenuated in the 2 oldest age groups (40-59 and 60+ yrs). An accentuated declined in all PA variables occurred between the youngster group (6-11 yrs) and adolescents group (12-19 yrs). Surprisingly, young adults (20-39 yrs) engaged in more moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) than adolescents. Further, females also had higher MVPA in the fourth group (40-59 yrs) compared with the second group (12-19 yrs). Males had higher compliance rates of PA guidelines than females regardless the age group considered. Adolescents had very low compliance rates (females = 18.18%; males = 33.50%). Porto metropolitan area residents had low rates of compliance with current PA guidelines. A low level of PA in Porto adolescents is a matter of concern and suggests that interventions are needed.

Estabilidade e mudança nas práticas educativas maternas e paternas ao longo dos anos pré-escolares da criança

O presente estudo teve como objetivo examinar a estabilidade e mudança nas práticas educativas maternas e paternas, em particular o uso de práticas indutivas, coercitivas e de não interferência aos 24, 36 e 72 meses de vida da criança. Participaram 24 mães e pais que tinham um único filho e residiam na região metropolitana de Porto Alegre. Quando as crianças completaram 24 e 72 meses de vida, os participantes responderam a uma entrevista para a avaliação das práticas educativas. Já aos 36 meses, as famílias foram observadas durante o almoço, quando as práticas educativas também foram investigadas. ANOVAs de medidas repetidas indicaram diferenças quanto às práticas indutivas maternas entre os 24 e 36 meses, bem como entre as práticas de não interferência entre os 24 e 36 meses e também entre os 36 e 72 meses. Quanto aos pais, as diferenças foram encontradas entre as práticas indutivas aos 24 e 72 meses e entre as práticas de não interferência aos 24 e 36 meses e aos 36 e 72 meses. Os resultados sugerem que tanto estabilidade quanto mudanças estão presentes nas práticas educativas parentais ao longo do desenvolvimento da criança. Isto pode estar associado ao fato de que à medida que ela cresce, expectativas e comportamentos parentais acabam sendo adaptados às novas habilidades e demandas infantis.

Estado da arte do social: uma perscrutação às práticas de responsabilidade social empresarial

Inventariar as práticas de natureza social empreendidas pelo empresariado brasileiro é o objetivo deste ensaio, que tem como fonte empírica o relatório social de uma empresa de grande porte, situada na região metropolitana de Porto Alegre (RS). A hipótese central e transversal da análise é a de que a responsabilidade social empresarial não se reveste de uma "nova" lógica e prática, mas apenas reedita antigas práticas assistencialistas, tanto como estratégia para cooptar a força de trabalho, como para disseminar e legitimar, mercadologicamente, a marca da empresa.

Does Urban Concentration/Dispersion Affect Immigrants' Professional Opportunities? The case of the Porto Metropolitan Area

AbstractThis article aims to test the hypothesis that urban concentration/dispersion characteristics exert an influence on the social and professional attainment levels reached by different immigrant groups in northern Portugal. I propose a theoretical and empirical methodology for analysing the impact that concentrated or dispersed neighbourhoods exert on immigrants' social and professional opportunities. The latter are assessed in terms of professional success, and a relationship is established between the professional levels reached by different immigrant groups and the territorial characteristics inherent to each group, as well as current concentration/dispersion patterns of land use. I also design an integrated information system to monitor the access of different population groups to professional opportunities, and to support municipal decisions in matters of immigrants' social, economic and cultural integration. Then I discuss how joint territorial planning policies, urbanization processes, ethnic features, the labour and housing markets and sociological assimilation networks have performed in Portugal's northern region in general, and the Porto metropolitan area in particular, both in launching local strategic economic development and in successfully integrating immigrants within the professional socio‐economic fabric.Résumé Cet article teste l'hypothèse selon laquelle les caractéristiques de la concentration‐dispersion urbaine exercent une influence sur les niveaux sociaux et professionnels atteints par différents groupes d'immigrants dans le nord du Portugal. Une méthodologie théorique et empirique est proposée pour analyser l'impact des quartiers, selon leur concentration ou dispersion, sur les opportunités sociales et professionnelles des immigrants. Ces dernières sont évaluées en termes de réussite professionnelle, et un lien est établi entre les niveaux professionnels atteints par différents groupes d'immigrants et les caractéristiques territoriales propres à chaque groupe, ainsi que les schémas d'occupation des sols en termes de concentration‐dispersion. De plus, un système d'information intégré est créé pour suivre l'accès des différents groupes de population aux opportunités professionnelles, et accompagner les décisions municipales en matière d'intégration sociale, économique et culturelle des immigrants. Est ensuite analysée la manière dont les politiques conjointes d'aménagement territorial, les processus d'urbanisation, les caractères ethniques, les marchés du travail et du logement, et les réseaux d'assimilation sociologique ont fonctionné dans la région nord du Portugal en général, et dans la zone métropolitaine de Porto en particulier, à la fois en insufflant un développement économique stratégique local et en réussissant à intégrer les immigrants dans le tissu socio‐économique professionnel.

La piattaforma logistica di Leixões,Portogallo, e il suo territorio

Within the global scenario, where the production has been fragmented in very distant locations, the attention has been placed on logistics and intermodality. The increasing flow of goods needs, indeed, a more efficient and effective logistics system, which requires logistics platforms located in strategic areas. These platforms, nevertheless, produce negative impacts on the areas where they are settled. Within this context, the present paper aims at critically analyzing the preliminary plan of the Leixoes logistics platform, specifically the Gatoes Guifoes logistics node, in the Porto metropolitan area, in order to investigate how the following issues have been tackled: mobility, the relationship of the area with the patterns of the location system, the relationships with the environmental protection zones bordering the southern part of the logistics node. On the basis of this close scrutiny, some planning hypotheses have been put forward. These hypotheses aim to modify some patterns of the planning settlement layout, leaving the overall layout as it is. The Gatoes Guifoes logistics node represents an interesting case study because it is located in an area hosting scattered and medium sized settlements, which are typical of the “urbanized countryside”, with a dense network of different routes and with environmental protection areas. This paper underlines that the logistics platforms’ topic can/may become a planning, urban design and architecture topic. The logistics platforms are “mega-facilities” with functional peculiarities, which generate negative effects (social, economic, environmental) on the territory. The mitigation of such negative externalities, and the related compensation measures might be studied by the territorial scientists, the planners and become a relevant subject for the policy makers, too. Specifically, the so-called “sustainable integration” of the logistics structures is a topic involving both architectural and urban design expertise. The paper is structured into five sections. The introduction is followed by a short description of the logistics system in Portugal and of the National Logistics Plan. Section 3 is dedicated to the description of the Leixoes platform preliminary project and Section 4 focuses on the critical analysis of such a project and on the planning alternatives. Conclusions follow.

Frequency analysis of air quality time series for traffic related pollutants

In the present work, annual time series of traffic related pollutants (CO and PM(10)) were considered for frequency analysis (Fourier series) with the aim to understand the underlying physical processes and the influence of emission sources on the variability of the air pollutant concentrations. Several urban traffic and suburban background air quality stations located in Porto metropolitan area (Portugal) were analysed. The results obtained for CO and PM(10) reveal the important contributions of short-term fluctuations (12 h and 24 h periods). However, the spectrum signals at low frequencies are significantly different between these pollutants thus stressing that temporal variations of CO and PM(10) are influenced by different processes. Cross-spectrum analysis of the air quality time series against wind measurements and traffic counts allowed us to identify the contribution of long-range transport over a period of about 21 days to the PM(10) fluctuations. Also, a correlation of over 80% between the pollution levels in the vicinity of traffic sources and suburban background levels are found for these harmonic components in the PM(10) spectrum, while correlations for CO is below a significant level. Thus, the spectrum and cross-spectrum analysis performed in this study reveal the distinct influence of local traffic emissions and long-range transport to CO and PM(10) fluctuations in the polluted urban area. The methodology shows to be a powerful tool for the analysis of the causes of air pollution.

Real-Time Management and Control of a Bus Public Transport Network: The STCP Experience

STCP is the main bus operator in the Porto Metropolitan Area. The experimental phase of using fleet tracking and management systems fitted on public transport vehicles began in the late eighties, but only in 2002 the current system (SAEI) covered all the buses of the company. Nowadays, these systems are integral company management systems. In this paper, the experience of the past six years or so is presented. The main reasons for the use of such systems are detailed, the architecture and functionalities are described and the importance of accessing real-time information together with subsequent analysis of the data obtained is underlined.

Forecasting human exposure to atmospheric pollutants in Portugal – A modelling approach

Air pollution has become one main environmental concern because of its known impact on human health. Aiming to inform the population about the air they are breathing, several air quality modelling systems have been developed and tested allowing the assessment and forecast of air pollution ambient levels in many countries. However, every day, an individual is exposed to different concentrations of atmospheric pollutants as he/she moves from and to different outdoor and indoor places (the so-called microenvironments). Therefore, a more efficient way to prevent the population from the health risks caused by air pollution should be based on exposure rather than air concentrations estimations. The objective of the present study is to develop a methodology to forecast the human exposure of the Portuguese population based on the air quality forecasting system available and validated for Portugal since 2005. Besides that, a long-term evaluation of human exposure estimates aims to be obtained using one-year of this forecasting system application. Additionally, a hypothetical 50% emission reduction scenario has been designed and studied as a contribution to study emission reduction strategies impact on human exposure. To estimate the population exposure the forecasting results of the air quality modelling system MM5-CHIMERE have been combined with the population spatial distribution over Portugal and their time-activity patterns, i.e. the fraction of the day time spent in specific indoor and outdoor places. The population characterization concerning age, work, type of occupation and related time spent was obtained from national census and available enquiries performed by the National Institute of Statistics. A daily exposure estimation module has been developed gathering all these data and considering empirical indoor/outdoor relations from literature to calculate the indoor concentrations in each one of the microenvironments considered, namely home, office/school, and other indoors (leisure activities like shopping areas, gym, theatre/cinema and restaurants). The results show how this developed modelling system can be useful to anticipate air pollution episodes and to estimate their effects on human health on a long-term basis. The two metropolitan areas of Porto and Lisbon are identified as the most critical ones in terms of air pollution effects on human health over Portugal in a long-term as well as in a short-term perspective. The coexistence of high concentration values and high population density is the key factor for these stressed areas. Regarding the 50% emission reduction scenario, the model results are significantly different for both pollutants: there is a small overall reduction in the individual exposure values of PM 10 (<10 μg m −3 h), but for O 3, in contrast, there is an extended area where exposure values increase with emission reduction. This detailed knowledge is a prerequisite for the development of effective policies to reduce the foreseen adverse impact of air pollution on human health and to act on time.

Mercado y regulación del interés general en el sector del transporte vial de pasajeros: un debate renovado por la actividad de los conductores

This study analyses the working activity of drivers in the passenger land transport sector in the Metropolitan area of Porto. It considers the evolutions that follow a privatization policy and, namely, the changes at the level of work organization and the objectives which regulate this activity. Two cases have been object of a particular attention. In the first case, a bus route was selected on which three companies did business: a public company; another company which uses the route under analysis as a result of a concession attributed and controlled by the public company; and a third private company. In the second case, only one private bus company operated on the route. The final results of this research suggest that the companies’ policies are generally based, essentially, on market oriented options. On the other hand, the drivers try to balance these options with their own choices and solutions, which are based on values without dimension. The contribution of ergology enriched the reflexion on the strategies and renormalizations that workers make everyday, to establish operative trade-offs which make management of the activity’s objectives and the real needs of the users possible.

Calibration of the SLEUTH urban growth model for Lisbon and Porto, Portugal

The SLEUTH model (slope, landuse, exclusion, urban extent, transportation and hillshade), formerly called the Clarke Cellular Automaton Urban Growth Model, was developed for and tested on various cities in North America, including Washington, DC, and San Francisco. In contrast, this research calibrated the SLEUTH model for two European cities, the Portuguese metropolitan areas of Lisbon and Porto. The SLEUTH model is a cellular automaton model, developed with predefined growth rules applied spatially to gridded maps of the cities in a set of nested loops, and was designed to be both scaleable and universally applicable. Urban expansion is modeled in a modified two-dimensional regular grid. Maps of topographic slope, land use, exclusions, urban extents, road transportation, and a graphic hillshade layer form the model input. This paper examines differences in the model's behavior when the obviously different environment of a European city is captured in the data and modeled. Calibration results are included and interpreted in the context of the two cities, and an evaluation of the model's portability and universality of application is made. Questions such as scalability, sequential multistage optimization by automated exploration of model parameter space, the problem of equifinality, and parameter sensitivity to local conditions are explored. The metropolitan areas present very different spatial and developmental characteristics. The Lisbon Metropolitan Area (the capital of Portugal) has a mix of north Atlantic and south Mediterranean influences. Property is organized in large patches of extensive farmland comprised of olive and cork orchards. The urban pattern of Lisbon and its environs is characterized by rapid urban sprawl, focused in the urban centers of Lisbon, Oeiras, Cascais Setúbal, and Almada, and by intense urbanization along the main road and train lines radiating from the major urban centers. The Porto Metropolitan Area is characterized by a coastal Atlantic landscape. The urban pattern is concentrated among the main nuclei (Porto and Vila Nova de Gaia) and scattered among many small rural towns and villages. There are very small isolated patches of intensive agriculture and pine forests in a topography of steep slopes. These endogenous territorial characteristics go back in time to the formation of Portugal — with a “Roman-Visigod North” and an “Arabic South” [Firmino, 1999 (Firmino, A., 1999. Agriculture and landscape in portugal. Landscape and Urban planning, 46, 83–91); Ribeiro, Lautensach, & Daveau, 1991 (Ribeiro, O., Lautensach, H., & Daveau, S., 1991. Geografia de portugal (4 Vols., published between 1986 and 1991). Lisbon, Portugal: João Sá de Costa)]. The SLEUTH model calibration captured these city characteristics, and using the standard documented calibration procedures, seems to have adapted itself well to the European context. Useful predictions of growth to 2025, and investigation of the impact of planning and transportation construction can be investigated as a consequence of the successful calibration. Further application and testing of the SLEUTH model in non-Western environments may prove it to be the elusive universal model of urban growth, the antithesis of the special case urban models of the 1960s and 1970s.

THE SOUTH EXPANSION OF THE PORTO METROPOLITAN AREA LIGHT-METRO SYSTEM

This paper presents a study recently made to establish guidelines for the south expansion of the Porto Metropolitan Area light metro system in the short-, medium-, and the long-term. The Porto Metropolitan Area, in northern Portugal, has approximately 1,200,000 inhabitants and is one of the fastest growing regions in the country. The initial solution adopted for the light metro system will properly serve the north part of the area, but it is far from matching the transportation needs of people living in the southern part.