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Interorganizational cooperation in tourist destination: Building performance in the hotel industry
Publication . Wilke, Erick Pusck; Costa, Benny Kramer; Freire, Otávio Bandeira De Lamônica; Ferreira, Manuel Portugal
Although the importance of interorganizational relationships in the tourism industry has been recognized, it is unclear how cooperation influences firms' performance. We argue that interorganizational cooperation in tourist destinations nourishes firms’ internal capabilities - absorptive, innovative and adaptive capabilities - thus generating competitive advantage and superior performance. We conducted two studies. In the first, we have built and validated a survey-based instrument to empirically measure interorganizational cooperation. In the second, using a sample of 271 responses to a web-based survey with hotel managers, we tested hypotheses proposing a positive relationship between interorganizational cooperation, dynamic capabilities, competitive advantage and firm performance. Our findings support that by cooperating, firms develop a number of capabilities that sustains competitive advantage leading to superior performance. The implications of our results from a theoretical and managerial perspective are also discussed.
Downscaling climate change of water availability, sediment yield and extreme events: Application to a Mediterranean climate basin
Publication . Zhang, Rong; Corte‐Real, João; Moreira, Madalena; Kilsby, Chris; Birkinshaw, Stephen; Burton, Aidan; Fowler, Hayley J.; Forsythe, Nathan; Nunes, João Pedro; Sampaio, Elsa; Santos, Francisco Lúcio dos; Mourato, Sandra
A robust hydrological impact assessment is indispensable for mitigation and adaptation planning. This study presents an integrated modelling methodology for evaluating climate change impacts on water availability, sediment yield and extreme events at the catchment scale. We propose the use of the spatial–temporal Neyman–Scott Rectangular Pulses (STNSRP) model—RainSim V3 and the rainfall conditioned daily weather generator—ICAAM‐WG, as well as the physically based spatially distributed hydrological model—SHETRAN. The change factor approach was applied for obtaining unbiased rainfall and temperature statistics. The ICAAM‐WG was developed based on the modified Climate Research Unit daily Weather Generator (CRU‐WG). The methodology is proposed to generate synthetic series of hourly precipitation, daily temperature and potential evapotranspiration, hourly runoff and hourly sediment discharge. We demonstrated a possible application in a 705‐km2 Mediterranean climate basin in southern Portugal. The case study showed the evaluation of future climate change impacts on annual and monthly water balance components and sediment yield, annual and seasonal flow duration curves, empirical extreme value distributions and the theoretical fits. It did not consider the possible uncertainty due to the limit of computational resources.The methodology can be well justified as follows: (a) the use of synthetic hourly instead of daily precipitation enables SHETRAN to be more capable of reproducing reliable storm runoff processes and the consequent sediment transport processes; (b) the use of SHETRAN makes possible the impact assessment to be accessible for any model grid square within the study basin; (c) the use of a statistical–stochastic downscaling method facilitates the generation of the synthetic series with unlimited length. It makes possible robust hydrological impact assessments if uncertainties related to the global climate model, regional climate model, greenhouse gas emission scenario, downscaling method, hydrological model and observational data are considered.
Performance Evaluation of a Dual-Mode OFDM and SC-FDE System at mmWave Enabling Joint Radar and 5G Multi-Gigabit/s Wireless Communications
Publication . Gomes, Rodolfo; Sobaihi, Khaled; Hammoudeh, Akram; Caldeirinha, Rafael F. S.
In this paper we introduce a dual-mode OFDM/SC-FDE 60 GHz millimeter wave (mmWave) Physical (PHY) layer to provide both radar and transmission data rates over 10 Gbps, as known as radar type sensors and wireless communications (Rad-Com). Such feature goes towards one of the vertical requirements for future wireless communications, such as 5G. The system is evaluated and assessed through metrics of BER and required Eb/N0 for a target BER of 10-5, under both residential LOS and NLOS scenarios. In the simulation results, it is demonstrated that SC-FDE is more robust against RF impairments, and does not requires channel coding contrary to OFDM. In addition to this, the fact that it has lower peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR), makes such transmission scheme a very promising alternative to OFDM. For example, employing 256 QAM modulation, it has 6 dB of Eb/N0 gain in comparison with OFDM, under the same conditions.
Blue Accounting: Looking for a New Standard
Publication . Abreu, Rute; David, Fátima; Lima Santos, Luís; Segura, Liliane; Formigoni, Henrique
This research explores the framework of the marine knowledge, in general, and the blue accounting, in particular. On the one hand, the seabed, the ocean floor, and the subsoil allow to promote several activities to explore these resources. On the other hand, the pollution and degradation of the marine environment due to human intervention which damage and harm the marine life and produces strong risks and threats to this environment. In this context, marine resources are a public good which is available to everybody, at all time, but without payment or compensations to this collective pressure of human activity. In order to reinforce the marine knowledge, the blue accounting will provide to the citizen, to the organization and to the society valuable information based on accounting standards that identify, measure, value, and report this blue growth that is the ocean strategy with new opportunities for marine and maritime sustainability. The fast evolution of the marine knowledge demands profound accounting researches that will study the increasing impact on the use, the management, the associated costs, and the new report opportunities of these resources and its value. This research will reduce the negative effect of politics and Governments that forget the blue accounting as essential to support the blue economy and ocean strategy, because sciences are interdependent and scarcity of marine resources demands knowledge to emerge these first insights and then mitigate uncertainties and risks.
A study of the environmental impacts of intelligent automated vehicle control at intersections via V2V and V2I communications
Publication . Bento, Luís Conde; Parafita, Ricardo; Rakha, Hesham A.; Nunes, Urbano J.
This article presents a novel intersection traffic management system for automated vehicles and quantifies its impact on fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions of CO2 relative to traditional traffic signal and roundabout intersection control. The developed intelligent traffic management (ITM) techniques, which are based on a spatiotemporal reservation scheme, ensure that vehicles proceed through the intersection without colliding with other vehicles while at the same time reducing the intersection delay and environmental impacts. Specifically, the spatiotemporal reservation scheme provides each vehicle a collision-free path that is decomposed into a speed profile along with navigational instructions. The integration of the developed microscopic traffic simulator with instantaneous emission model, provides improved assessments of the environmental impact of traffic control strategies at intersections. The simulator architecture integrates several ITM algorithms, vehicle sensors, V2V/V2I communications, and emission and fuel consumption models. Each vehicle is modeled by an agent and each agent provides information depending on the specific vehicle sensors. The ITM system is supported by V2V and V2I communications, allowing the exchange of information among vehicles and infrastructure. The data include the estimated vehicle position and speed. Compared with traditional traffic management techniques, the simulation results prove that the proposed ITM system reduces CO2 emissions significantly. The research also shows that these reductions are more significant when the traffic flow increases.