In the last twenty years, Maceió city has faced an unordered urbanization process due to unplanned increasement of the city inhabitant number and lack of planning, this fact has transformed the city landscape. The Riacho do Silva river basin is located right in the middle of the city urban area, this watershed has an area around 10 km2, it presents several social and environmental problems due to irregular housing occupation, especially in areas of acute slope and on the Riacho do Silva riverbanks. Human activities like untreated wastewater releasing in the water coarse and solids waste inappropriate disposal are the main causes to water quality degradation occurred in that river basin. In this work the goal is to study the main human activities (e.g. wastewater releasing, solid waste disposal, illegal deforestation and economic river sand exploitation) and their effects on the Riacho do Silva watershed water quality, during this work period was studied the local human activities considered social, environmental and economic important to the river basin, when were collected and analyzed the main parameters related to the quality and quantity of that river basin water. The study results allowed concluding that human activities in the river basin area lead to a deterioration of the watershed water quality along the time. Social and economic aspects reveal the local population picture, those people have no governmental and public assistance, this lack of public action indicates to be the main cause of the actual Riacho do Silva water quality. / Nos últimos vinte anos, a cidade de Maceió-AL passou por um processo de urbanização desordenada, como conseqüência do aumento populacional e da falta de planejamento, com significativa transformação em sua paisagem. A bacia hidrográfica do Riacho do Silva, totalmente inserida na área urbana desta cidade, com área aproximada de 10km2, apresenta sérios problemas sócio-ambientais em decorrência principalmente de ocupações irregulares, notadamente nas encostas íngremes e nas margens do Riacho do Silva. Ações antrópicas como o lançamento de esgoto in natura no curso d água e a disposição inadequada de resíduos sólidos são as principais das prováveis causas do processo de degradação da qualidade da água desta bacia. Com o objetivo de estudar as principais ações antrópicas (e.g. lançamento de esgotos, disposição inadequada de resíduos sólidos, desmatamento em APP e extração de areia do leito do curso d água) e seus efeitos na qualidade da água da bacia do Riacho do Silva, procedeu-se a um levantamento dessas ações antrópicas, de indicadores sócio-econômicos e ambientais bem como coleta e análise de dados referentes aos aspectos de quantidade e qualidade da água da bacia do Riacho do Silva. Os resultados obtidos permitiram concluir que as atividades antrópicas promovem alterações na qualidade da água da bacia no que se refere às escalas espacial e temporal. Indicadores sócio-econômicos e ambientais revelaram uma população carente de assistência e de conhecimento e que praticamente inexistem ações do poder Público que favoreçam a mudança do estado atual da qualidade da água do Riacho do Silva.

Submitted by Ana Hilda Fonseca (anahilda@ufba.br) on 2014-09-22T13:33:26Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese_Giovaniversãofinal colegiado.pdf: 1930170 bytes, checksum: be7849a358b3e395e267c3ac4395b3d0 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Fatima Cleômenis Botelho Maria (botelho@ufba.br) on 2014-09-23T13:22:34Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese_Giovaniversãofinal colegiado.pdf: 1930170 bytes, checksum: be7849a358b3e395e267c3ac4395b3d0 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2014-09-23T13:22:34Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese_Giovaniversãofinal colegiado.pdf: 1930170 bytes, checksum: be7849a358b3e395e267c3ac4395b3d0 (MD5) / A poluição de sistemas aquáticos e solo por metais pesados é fator que afeta a qualidade do meio ambiente e constitui risco iminente de intoxicação ao homem. Nos últimos anos, foram realizadas inúmeras pesquisas com a finalidade de avaliar os possíveis impactos ambientais relacionados ao aumento da concentração de metais traço no meio ambiente. Esses metais são originários de processos litogênicos e/ou atividades antrópicas, como a utilização de fertilizantes em zonas agrícolas e a atividade mineradora. Neste trabalho realizado na Lagoa Encantada em Ilhéus - Bahia foram realizadas várias coletas de água em diferentes pontos com o objetivo de avaliar as concentrações de metais e metalóides dissolvidos. Foi utilizada a espectroscopia de massa com fonte de Plasma, (ICP-MS) para determinar o teor dos elementos Pb, Ni, Co, Zn, Cu, As, Sr, Pb, Mo, Cd, Sb e U. Esta avaliação servirá de parâmetro para conhecer o impacto ambiental futuro, uma vez que próximo a esta biota, passará uma ferrovia que transportará minérios oriundos do oeste da Bahia. Foi realizado estudo hidroquímico, observando-se a comparação de distintos grupos de águas quanto a cátions e ânions predominantes, os quais demonstraram que as concentrações dos metais e metalóides estão abaixo dos limites estabelecidos pela Resolução CONAMA 357/2005, o que evidencia a não poluição da Lagoa por espécies inorgânicas. Parâmetros físico-químicos ambientais também foram determinados tais como: pH, oxigênio dissolvido (OD), demanda bioquímica de oxigênio (DBO), temperatura, condutividade elétrica (CE), os quais também estão de acordo com a Resolução CONAMA 357/2005. Conclui-se, que apesar de sofrer atividades antrópica a Lagoa Encantada é um sistema aquático que apresenta uma boa qualidade de seus indicadores. / The pollution of aquatic systems and soil by heavy metals is a factor that affects quality of the environment and constitutes imminent risk of poisoning to man. In recent years, numerous studies were conducted in order to assess the potential environmental impacts associated with increased concentrations of trace metals in the environment. These metals originate from lithogenic processes and/or human activities such as fertilizers in agricultural and mining activity. Work carried out in the Lagoa Encantada in Ilheus - Bahia was water sampling at different points in order to evaluate the concentrations of dissolved metals and metalloids. Was used Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS) to determine content of the elements Pb, Ni, Co, Zn, Cu, As, Sr, Pb, Mo, Cd, Sb and U. This avaliation will serve as a parameter to knowledge future environmental impact since close to this biota pass a railroad that will transport ore coming from western Bahia. Hydrochemical study was conducted by observing the comparison of different groups of water as the predominant cations and anions which showed that the concentrations of metals and metalloids are below the limits established by CONAMA Resolution 357/2005, that highlights the non-pollution Lagoon by inorganic species. Environmental Physical Chemical parameters were determined such as: pH, dissolved oxygen (DO), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), temperature, electrical conductivity (EC), which are also in accordance with the Resolution CONAMA 357/2005. It is concluded that despite suffering the anthropic activities Enchanted Lagoon is a water system that provides a good quality of its indicators.

Dans le but de mieux comprendre les facteurs agissant sur le milieu fluvial à l’échelle plurimillénaire, ainsi que les effets de la dynamique alluviale sur la préservation de l’information archéologique, une étude géoarchéologique a été menée sur quatre fenêtres des vallées de la Loire, de la Saône et du Doubs en Bourgogne (France). À partir de sites de franchissement romains et d’un pont médiéval, retrouvés dans le chenal actuel, puis en étendant les recherches à d’autres secteurs, l’évolution des lits mineur et majeur au cours de l’Holocène a été reconstituée. Des informations de natures diverses, datées et spatialisées, ont été croisées : pour les deux derniers siècles, principalement les plans et vues aériennes contemporains, tandis que les périodes plus anciennes sont abordées grâce aux indices archéologiques, à l’analyse géomorphologique du lit majeur et, principalement, aux archives sédimentaires. Ces dernières ont été analysées du point de vue de la sédimentologie de faciès afin d’identifier les processus à l’origine des dépôts. Les grandes étapes de l’évolution des trois grands cours d’eau étudiés, une fois identifiées et datées, ont été confrontées aux données existantes afin d’interroger l’influence qu’ont pu avoir les fluctuations climatiques et les activités humaines sur la dynamique alluviale. La reconstitution de l’évolution du milieu au cours de l’Holocène permet enfin d’aborder la question de la conservation des données archéologiques en domaine alluvial, propice à l’implantation humaine, mais où l’information est la plupart du temps masquée par une succession de processus taphonomiques. / A geoarchaeological study was led on four sections of the valleys of the Loire, Saône and Doubs rivers (Burgundy, France) in order to point out the factors influencing the alluvial dynamics on a multimillennial scale, and their effects on the preservation of archaeological information. Investigations started by roman and medieval remains of bridges discovered in active channels, were then carried out on larger parts of alluvial plains, and altogether allowed the evolutions of the channels during the Holocene period to be deducted. Various types of information on alluvial characteristics were crossed through time and space: ancient maps and XXth century or aerial photographs for centennial scale, archaeological data, geomorphological analysis, but mostly alluvial deposits for older periods. Facies analyses on fluvial sediments led to the identification and the reconstitution of successive sedimentary environments through time. The main steps of the evolution of the three rivers, after being identified and dated, were compared to previous studies in order to estimate the respective roles of climatic changes and anthropic influence on alluvial dynamics, on this regional scale, during the Holocene. Preservation of archaeological information in fluvial deposits is therefore discussed here, to reach a better understanding of taphonomic issues in such environmennts, which are potentially rich in archaeological remains.

No description available.

In this dissertation, we address the problem of understanding human activities in videos by developing a two-pronged approach: coarse level modeling of scene activities and fine level modeling of individual activities. At the coarse level, where the resolution of the video is low, we rely on person tracks. At the fine level, richer features are available to identify different parts of the human body, therefore we rely on the body joint tracks. There are three main goals of this dissertation: (1) identify unusual activities at the coarse level, (2) recognize different activities at the fine level, and (3) predict the behavior for synthesizing and tracking activities at the fine level. The first goal is addressed by modeling activities at the coarse level through two novel and complementing approaches. The first approach learns the behavior of individuals by capturing the patterns of motion and size of objects in a compact model. Probability density function (pdf) at each pixel is modeled as a multivariate Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM), which is learnt using unsupervised expectation maximization (EM). In contrast, the second approach learns the interaction of object pairs concurrently present in the scene. This can be useful in detecting more complex activities than those modeled by the first approach. We use a 14-dimensional Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) that captures motion and size of concurrently tracked objects. The proposed models have been successfully used to automatically detect activities like unusual person drop-off and pickup, jaywalking, etc. The second and third goals of modeling human activities at the fine level are addressed by employing concepts from theory of chaos and non-linear dynamical systems. We show that the proposed model is useful for recognition and prediction of the underlying dynamics of human activities. We treat the trajectories of human body joints as the observed time series generated from an underlying dynamical system. The observed data is used to reconstruct a phase (or state) space of appropriate dimension by employing the delay-embedding technique. This transformation is performed without assuming an exact model of the underlying dynamics and provides a characteristic representation that will prove to be vital for recognition and prediction tasks. For recognition, properties of phase space are captured in terms of dynamical and metric invariants, which include the Lyapunov exponent, correlation integral, and correlation dimension. A composite feature vector containing these invariants represents the action and will be used for classification. For prediction, kernel regression is used in the phase space to compute predictions with a specified initial condition. This approach has the advantage of modeling dynamics without making any assumptions about the exact form (polynomial, radial basis, etc.) of the mapping function. We demonstrate the utility of these predictions for human activity synthesis and tracking.

The Red River is strongly affected by climate and human activities, especially in the downstream area concentrating industrial zones, large urbans and powerful agricultural activities. The surface water is progressively susceptible to anthropogenic pollution. The physicochemical variables of surface water were determined at 5 sampling sites (Quyet Chien, Truc Phuong, Ba Lat, Nam Dinh and Gian Khau). At each site, water samples were taken monthly during the period from January to December 2015 to assess the effect of human activities on the surface water quality. The actual survey results showed that almost analyzed variables of the Red River water quality at the downstream were under the permitting limit values of the National technical regulation on surface water quality (QCVN 08:2015, column B1). The quality of water downstream of the Red River reaches the permissible value in surface water for the irrigation purposes, waterway and other purposes with low quality water requirements. The results provide dataset for subsequent studies on the annual variation of physical and chemical variables of Red River downstream water, as well as the scientific basis for the effective protection and management of water resources in Vietnam. / Sông Hồng bị ảnh hưởng mạnh mẽ bởi khí hậu và các hoạt động của con người, đặc biệt là ở khu vực hạ lưu, nơi tập trung nhiều khu công nghiệp, nhiều đô thị lớn và các hoạt động nông nghiệp. Nước mặt đang dần bị ô nhiễm do con người. Các thông số hóa lý của nước mặt được xác định tại 5 trạm (Quyết Chiến, Trúc Phương, Ba Lạt, Nam Định và Gián Khẩu). Tại mỗi trạm, mẫu nước được lấy hàng tháng trong khoảng thời gian từ tháng 1 đến tháng 12 năm 2015 để đánh giá tác động của các hoạt động của con người đến chất lượng nước mặt. Kết quả khảo sát cho thấy, hầu hết các chỉ tiêu chất lượng nước ở hạ lưu của sông Hồng đều nằm trong giá trị giới hạn cho phép theo quy chuẩn kỹ thuật quốc gia về chất lượng nước mặt (QCVN 08: 2015, cột B1). Chất lượng nước ở hạ lưu của sông Hồng nằm trong giới hạn cho phép đối với mục đích tưới tiêu thủy lợi hoặc các mục đích sử dụng khác có yêu cầu nước chất lượng thấp. Kết quả thu được sẽ là cơ sở dữ liệu cho các nghiên cứu tiếp theo về sự thay đổi hàng năm của chất lượng nước hạ lưu sông Hồng, và cũng sẽ là cơ sở khoa học cho việc bảo vệ và quản lý tài nguyên nước một cách có hiệu quả tại Việt Nam.

Geographic space is not neutral or lifeless, but an intricate living structure composed of numerous small features and a few large ones across all scales. The living structure is crucial for comprehending how geographic space shapes human activities. With the emerging geospatial big data, researchers now have unprecedented opportunities to study the relationship between geographic space and human behaviour at a finer spatial resolution. This thesis leverages multisource geospatial big data, including Twitter check-in locations, street networks from OpenStreetMap, building footprints, and night-time light images, to explore the fundamental mechanisms of human activities that underlie geographic space. To overcome the limitations of conventional analytics in this era of big data, we propose the topological representation and living structure based on Christopher Alexander's conception of space. We utilize scaling and topological analyses to reveal the underlying living structure of geographic space with various big datasets. Our results demonstrate that tweet locations or human activities at different scales can be accurately predicted by the underlying living structure of street nodes. We also capture and characterize human activities using big data and find that building footprints and tweets show similar scaling patterns in terms of sizes of their spatial clusters. We also propose an improved spatial clustering method to increase the processing speed of geospatial big data. Finally, we adopt topological representation to identify urban centres by the fusion of multi-source geospatial big data. The living structure, together with its topological representation can help us better understand human activities patterns in the geographic space at both city and country levels.

The availability and scale of user generated data in online systems raises tremendous challenges and opportunities to analytic study of human activities. Effective modeling of online human activities is not only fundamental to the understanding of human behavior, but also important to the online industry. This thesis focuses on developing models and algorithms to predict human activities in online systems and to improve the algorithmic design of personalized/socialized systems (e.g., recommendation, advertising, Web search systems). We are particularly interested in three types of online user activities, i.e., decision making, social interactions and user-generated contents. Centered around these activities, the thesis focuses on three challenging topics: 1. Behavior prediction, i.e., predicting users' online decisions. We present Collaborative-Competitive Filtering, a novel game-theoretic framework for predicting users' online decision making behavior and leverage the knowledge to optimize the design of online systems (e.g., recommendation systems) in respect of certain strategic goals (e.g., sales revenue, consumption diversity). 2. Social contagion, i.e., modeling the interplay between social interactions and individual behavior of decision making. We establish the joint Friendship-Interest Propagation model and the Behavior-Relation Interplay model, a series of statistical approaches to characterize the behavior of individual user's decision making, the interactions among socially connected users, and the interplay between these two activities. These techniques are demonstrated by applications to social behavior targeting. 3. Content mining, i.e., understanding user generated contents. We propose the Topic-Adapted Latent Dirichlet Allocation model, a probabilistic model for identifying a user's hidden cognitive aspects (e.g., knowledgability) from the texts created by the user. The model is successfully applied to address the challenge of ``language gap" in medical information retrieval.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Ao longo dos anos, inúmeros estádios de futebol no Brasil têm sido projetados para suportar as cargas acidentais (carga de pessoas) como sendo do tipo estática (4kN/m2). Entretanto, ultimamente com base na mudança do comportamento do público, especialmente em jogos de futebol, através da ação de torcidas organizadas e, ainda, com o emprego desses estádios para shows de música, os sistemas estruturais passaram a sofrer um maior impacto pela natureza dinâmica dos carregamentos solicitantes. Assim sendo, alguns destes estádios passaram a apresentar problemas de vibrações excessivas e tornou-se necessária a consideração efetiva das cargas dinâmicas nos projetos estruturais. Deste modo, este trabalho de pesquisa objetiva o estudo do comportamento dinâmico e avaliação do desempenho do sistema estrutural das arquibancadas do Estádio Nacional de Brasília, no que diz respeito ao conforto humano. Cabe ressaltar que o referido estádio foi projetado e construído para ser utilizado na Copa do Mundo de 2014, realizada no Brasil. Os resultados alcançados ao longo do desenvolvimento deste estudo são confrontados com aqueles fornecidos por normas e recomendações internacionais de projeto. Os resultados revelam a importância da análise dinâmica para o projeto de estádios de futebol, no que tange a obtenção de dados relevantes para o conforto humano e, bem como, segurança dos usuários desse tipo de estrutura. / Over the years, many soccer stadiums in Brazil have been designed to withstand accidental loads (people loads) to be of static type (4kN/m2). However, based on the changes in the peoples behaviour, especially in soccer matches, through the action of groups of fans and also with the use of these structures for music shows, these structural systems have been subjected to dynamic impacts related to the dynamic nature of the applied loads. Therefore, some of these stadiums have presented excessive vibration problems and have required an effective consideration of the dynamic loadings in the structural design. This way, this research aims to study the dynamic behaviour and evaluate the structural system performance of the Brasilia National Stadium grandstands, when the human comfort is considered. It should be noted that the stadium was designed and constructed to be used at the World Cup 2014, held in Brazil. The results achieved during the development of this study are compared with those provided by design standards and international recommendations. The presented results show the relevance of the dynamic analysis in the structural design of soccer stadiums, with respect to obtaining relevant data for human comfort and as well safety of users of this type of structure.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Ao longo dos anos, inúmeros estádios de futebol no Brasil têm sido projetados para suportar as cargas acidentais (carga de pessoas) como sendo do tipo estática (4kN/m2). Entretanto, ultimamente com base na mudança do comportamento do público, especialmente em jogos de futebol, através da ação de torcidas organizadas e, ainda, com o emprego desses estádios para shows de música, os sistemas estruturais passaram a sofrer um maior impacto pela natureza dinâmica dos carregamentos solicitantes. Assim sendo, alguns destes estádios passaram a apresentar problemas de vibrações excessivas e tornou-se necessária a consideração efetiva das cargas dinâmicas nos projetos estruturais. Deste modo, este trabalho de pesquisa objetiva o estudo do comportamento dinâmico e avaliação do desempenho do sistema estrutural das arquibancadas do Estádio Nacional de Brasília, no que diz respeito ao conforto humano. Cabe ressaltar que o referido estádio foi projetado e construído para ser utilizado na Copa do Mundo de 2014, realizada no Brasil. Os resultados alcançados ao longo do desenvolvimento deste estudo são confrontados com aqueles fornecidos por normas e recomendações internacionais de projeto. Os resultados revelam a importância da análise dinâmica para o projeto de estádios de futebol, no que tange a obtenção de dados relevantes para o conforto humano e, bem como, segurança dos usuários desse tipo de estrutura. / Over the years, many soccer stadiums in Brazil have been designed to withstand accidental loads (people loads) to be of static type (4kN/m2). However, based on the changes in the peoples behaviour, especially in soccer matches, through the action of groups of fans and also with the use of these structures for music shows, these structural systems have been subjected to dynamic impacts related to the dynamic nature of the applied loads. Therefore, some of these stadiums have presented excessive vibration problems and have required an effective consideration of the dynamic loadings in the structural design. This way, this research aims to study the dynamic behaviour and evaluate the structural system performance of the Brasilia National Stadium grandstands, when the human comfort is considered. It should be noted that the stadium was designed and constructed to be used at the World Cup 2014, held in Brazil. The results achieved during the development of this study are compared with those provided by design standards and international recommendations. The presented results show the relevance of the dynamic analysis in the structural design of soccer stadiums, with respect to obtaining relevant data for human comfort and as well safety of users of this type of structure.