Polytechnic Institute of Viseu

About: Polytechnic Institute of Viseu is a education organization based out in Viseu, Portugal. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Agriculture. The organization has 392 authors who have published 989 publications receiving 14134 citations. The organization is also known as: IPV.

Analysis of the Relationship Between Agriculture, Economic Growth, and the Environment Through Keynesian Models

Abstract: An economic growth compatible with the environment will be a difficult challenge to overcome in the future, namely in developed countries and in emergent economies. The complex compromise between the need for an annual economic growth, of countries, around 2 %, to create employment, and the environmental problems related with the increase in the ecological footprint in many regions is well known. So, this study analyzed, over the period 2004–2011, the influence of the environmental variables of Portuguese economic growth in the manufacturing sector, including those with the agricultural sector as a base (food, wood, cork, paper, etc.), considering the Keynesian models, for the Portuguese regions (NUTs III), and the data (in panel) available in the Statistics of Portugal (INE, Several statistics available online. Statistics of Portugal; 2013). The Keynesian models are based upon the idea of increasing returns to scale and circular and cumulative processes. In these presuppositions the regions tend to diverge in their economic indicators, because more developed economies become richer over time and less developed regions become poorer. The most well-known Keynesian model is that where the growth rate for productivity is dependent upon the growth rate of the product. This relationship is known as the Verdoorn law and captures increasing returns to scale, dynamic economies, and aspects of learning by doing. This relationship has already been used by many authors for many countries, but few have been used for Portugal, namely at a regional level. The results obtained confirm the existence of large increasing returns to scale in the Portuguese manufacturing sector, with disaggregated data at a regional level.

Operational Issues in Symmetric Fuzzy Power Flow

Abstract: The symmetric/constrained fuzzy power flow (SFPF/CFPF) models are suitable to quantify the adequacy of transmission network in satisfying “reasonable demands for the transmission of electricity” as defined, in the European Directive 2009/72/EC. In this paper, SFPF/CFPF is mainly used to identify the basic repressions (inappropriate definition of reasonable demands) of fuzzy data (generation or load) when the adequacy of a transmission system is assessed. This situation arises essentially in cases where the network configuration does not fully support the requested power specifications. It means that these requests are inadequately formulated and lead to the creation of artificial repression in the results (artificial inadequacy of the transmission system). In this article, it is intended to show how these cases can be identified. For this purpose, the SFPF will be used, which does not consider branch limits. With this study, it is also shown how the reference power flows of the system are obtained in order to identify the congested branches.

Establishing a Link Between Lean Practices and Corporate Sustainability

Abstract: In this paper we describe how the concept mapping methodology, which combines a qualitative case study approach—based on interviews, focus groups and plant visits—and quantitative methods—using a software and data-driven mapping methods—was used to answer the following question: can lean manufacturing contribute to a company environmental and social sustainability? The conclusions of the research are empirically analysed. As expected the impact of lean on productivity and process efficiency was identified but the results also demonstrate that it has a positive effect on business sustainability.