Resumo em Inglês:

ABSTRACT There has been an increasing public demand for passenger rail service in the recent times leading to a strong focus on the need for effective and efficient use of resources and managing the increasing passenger requirements, service reliability and variability by the railway management. Whilst shortening the passengers’ waiting and travelling time is important for commuter satisfaction, lowering operational costs is equally important for railway management. Hence, effective and cost optimised train scheduling based on the dynamic passenger demand is one of the main issues for passenger railway management. Although the passenger railway scheduling problem has received attention in operations research in recent years, there is limited literature investigating the adoption of practical approaches that capitalize on the merits of mathematical modeling and search algorithms for effective cost optimization. This paper develops a hybrid fuzzy logic based genetic algorithm model to solve the multi-objective passenger railway scheduling problem aiming to optimize total operational costs at a satisfactory level of customer service. This hybrid approach integrates genetic algorithm with the fuzzy logic approach which uses the fuzzy controller to determine the crossover rate and mutation rate in genetic algorithm approach in the optimization process. The numerical study demonstrates the improvement of the proposed hybrid approach, and the fuzzy genetic algorithm has demonstrated its effectiveness to generate better results than standard genetic algorithm and other traditional heuristic approaches, such as simulated annealing.

Resumo em Inglês:

ABSTRACT Considering that SMEs need to embrace the drivers of resilience and that a well-defined and readily available Enterprise Architecture (EA) supports enterprise integration by enabling the common view of business processes, data and systems across the enterprise and its partners, we can say that EA is one of the tracks making resilience predictable and it should support and collaborate with other resilience tracks. However, the EA frameworks do not give relevance to the activities that contribute most to business resilience, so this paper aims to clarify the dimensions and the activities related to the development of an EA and the touching points with other enterprise wide processes in order to guarantee that resilience requirements are met in SMEs. For this I propose an approach of ecological adaptation, and four architectures: business, organizational, information, and technological, although this paper only presents the Business and Organizational Architectures.

Resumo em Inglês:

ABSTRACT The concept of Smart Sustainable Cities (SSC) is gaining increasing attention by the countries around the globe, particularly in response to potential future environmental challenges and increased proportion of populations living in cities. Several countries claim to have implemented or in the process of implementing SSCs, and there are many models that can be used to measure how ‘smart’ the initiatives and cities are. This paper critically evaluates the main models to measure city smartness and identifies deficiencies, namely that they are not sensitive to the needs, resources, priorities and wider context for individual cities. The paper suggests a multidimensional methodological model that assists in evaluating the smartness level of a city while being sensitive to its context. It provides further contribution by combining sustainable and smart attributes of a city.

Resumo em Inglês:

ABSTRACT Rapid urbanization and globalization make the move toward Smart Sustainable Cities (SSC) a must. Achieving successful transformation towards SSCs constitutes a significant challenge for policy makers. One area that is not well covered in the literature is the application of SSCs in specific regions, such as the Arab region. This paper draws upon examples of SSCs initiatives and existing SSC transformation frameworks to more fully articulate the challenges of achieving successful SSC projects across the Arab region. One of the interesting emergent themes is the emergence of two main approaches to SSCs transformation, Brownfield and Greenfield approaches.

Resumo em Português:

RESUMO Os processos da formação psíquica sofrem influências de diversas variáveis que se interrelacionam num sistema aberto, confluindo sobre fatores antropológicos, ambientais, genéticos, psicológicos e histórico-sociais que determinam os comportamentos nas interações relacionais. Entretanto, nas cidades virtuais onde imperam, a imagem-fluxo, a atemporalidade e o não-lugar permitem novos arranjos psíquicos e uma maior plasticidade e velocidade em processar informações e gerar conhecimentos. Neste ponto conjuntural, onde a tecnologia é um fator primordial que permeia as interações e oferecem incógnitas na construção de identidades, uma nova ordem se estabelece, porém sem um parâmetro ético de normas e regras. Os resultados catalisados pela velocidade das trocas de informação caracterizam comportamentos desviantes e anti-sociais que podem trazer danos incalculáveis aos direitos básicos de todo ser humano.

Resumo em Inglês:

ABSTRACT The media relations make possible new structural arrangements regarding the constructions of identities and new paradigms relating to ethical and moral assumptions. Psychic formation processes are influenced by several variables that are interrelated in an open system, converging in anthropological, environmental, genetic, psychological, historical and social factors that determine relational interaction behaviors. However, in virtual cities where flow-image, timelessness and non-place reign, they enable new psychic arrangements and a greater plasticity and speed in processing information and generating knowledge. At this conjectural point, where technology is a key factor that permeates the interactions and offers unknowns in the construction of identities, a new order without standards is established, which rules ethical parameters. The results catalyzed by the speed of exchanges of information characterize deviant and antisocial behaviors that can bring uncountable damage to every human being basic rights.

Resumo em Inglês:

ABSTRACT The increased interdependence and complexity of modern societies have increased the need to involve all members of a community into solving problems. In times of great uncertainty, when communities face threats of different kinds and magnitudes, the traditional top-down approach where government provides solely for community wellbeing is no longer plausible. Crowdsourcing has emerged as an effective means of empowering communities with the potential to engage individuals in innovation, self-organization activities, informal learning, mutual support, and political action that can all lead to resilience. However, there remains limited resource on the topic. In this paper, we outline the various forms of crowdsourcing, economic and community resilience, crowdsourcing and economic resilience, and a case study of the Nepal earthquake. his article presents an exploratory perspective on the link can be found between crowdsourcing and economic resilience. It introduces and describes a framework that can be used to study the impact of crowdsourcing initiatives for economic resilience by future research. An initial a set of indicators to be used to measure the change in the level of resilience is presented.

Resumo em Inglês:

ABSTRACT In highly competitive technology markets, such as the market in which Enterprise Resource Management (ERP) service providers do business, it has become of fundamental importance to understand the factors that create competitive advantages. This paper presents the support from the theoretical frameworks offered by the Resource-based View (RBV) and the Market-based View (MBV) to attempt to explain the competitive advantage held by Totvs Curitiba, a franchise of Totvs, which in turn is a Brazilian company that is a market leader in ERP service provision. In methodological terms, this is a Case Study for which data was collected during interviews and by observation and review of secondary documentary sources. The results suggest that the franchise’s market-leading position was built on a relationship, which is identifiable in the results of this study, between the strategies adopted, resources controlled and competences developed.

Resumo em Inglês:

ABSTRACT The objective of this study is to analyze how relationships between individuals are structured in a virtual network, Twitter. The analysis is supported by theories of social capital. Twitter accounts of the candidates for São Paulo mayoral election, in the year 2012, were analyzed by using the NodeXL program. Quantitative validation by means of the clustering coefficient Clauset, Newman & Moore (2004) was applied. As a result, there were identified - through the topological/quantitative method - intersection points between the social capital and the relationships between individuals in virtual groups on Twitter, explained by reciprocal relations in each network.

Resumo em Português:

RESUMO Este trabalho teve como objetivo a realização de um levantamento sobre a situação do Gerenciamento de Serviços de Tecnologia da Informação (GSTI), na Administração Direta Federal (ADF), a partir da percepção dos gestores da área de TI de 12 Ministérios. A metodologia utilizada teve como base o Process Maturity Framework (PMF), modelo de maturidade cujos padrões encontram-se descritos no ITIL v3. O levantamento foi realizado por meio de entrevistas, com perguntas relacionadas a cinco níveis de maturidade: inicial, repetitivo, definido, gerenciado e otimizado, e foram levantadas informações sobre cinco processos básicos de GSTI. Além da classificação dos processos em níveis de maturidade, as entrevistas permitiram a coleta de informações sobre as possíveis causas impeditivas da melhoria da maturidade dos processos. Os resultados obtidos nos Ministérios pesquisados apontam baixa maturidade em todos os processos de GSTI avaliados. O processo de Gerenciamento de Incidente foi o que apresentou o melhor nível de maturidade, enquanto o Gerenciamento de Problema mostrou-se como o processo mais irregular em relação à maturidade. Os demais processos em níveis de maturidade, as entrevistas permitiram a coleta de informações avaliadas, Gerenciamento de Mudança, Gerenciamento de Configuração e de Ativo de Serviço; e Gerenciamento de Liberação e Implantação, apresentaram certa homogeneidade entre os Ministérios. No que se refere às causas apontadas, como prováveis obstáculos para a melhoria do nível maturidade dos processos de GSTI, destacaram-se: quadro de pessoal reduzido; insuficiência de recursos humanos e materiais; falta de vinculação entre as metas da organização e os objetivos dos processos; e falta de mão de obra especializada.

Resumo em Inglês:

ABSTRACT This work aims at the scrutiny of the current situation of the Information Technology Service Management practices within the Brazilian Federal Direct Administration, from the perceptions of the Information Technology Managers of twelve Ministries. The methodology used followed the Process Maturity Framework as a guideline, which is a maturity model whose patterns are described in ITIL v3. The work consists of interviews with questions related to the five maturity levels, as follows: initial, repetitive, defined, managed and optimized. Information on the five basic Information Technology Service Management processes was collected. Besides the classification of the maturity levels of the processes, the interviews allowed us to gather information about the possible causes that hinder the improvement of the maturity of the processes. The outcomes of the survey on the researched ministries showed low maturity level in all the assessed service management processes. The Incident Management Process presented the highest level of maturity, while Problem Management proved to be the most flawed one, in relation to maturity. The other assessed processes, like Change Management, Service Assets and Configuration Management and Release and Deployment Management presented some sort of homogeneity among the ministries. As for the probable causes that hinder the improvement of the maturity level of the Information Technology Service Management processes, pointed by the managers, the following one stand out: the reduced staff, the lack of resources, the gap between the organizational targets and their processes aims, and the lack of skilled labor.

Resumo em Português:

RESUMO O objetivo do estudo foi identificar os fatores determinantes da estrutura de capital de empresas brasileiras de tecnologia. A pesquisa caracterizou-se como descritiva, documental e quantitativa, composta por 21 empresas dos setores de comunicações, telecomunicações e indústria digital, conforme classificação da Revista Exame. A análise estabeleceu-se no período de 2009 a 2013 por meio de regressão de dados em painel. Os resultados indicam que a taxa de crescimento do capital e o tipo de controle apresentam uma relação positiva com o endividamento geral e de longo prazo. Entretanto, observou-se que o tamanho da empresa, a rentabilidade e o tipo de capital apontam uma relação negativa com a estrutura de capital.

Resumo em Inglês:

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to identify determinant factors of the capital structure of Brazilian technology companies. The research was characterized as descriptive, document and quantitative, consisting of 21 companies in the communications, telecommunications and digital industry, according to the Exame magazine ranking. The analysis was established from 2009 to 2013 using panel data regression. The results indicate that the growth rate of capital and control type have a positive relationship with the general and long-term debt. However, it was found that company size, profitability and type of capital point to a negative relationship with the capital structure.