Abstract
A benchmarking evaluation instrument was designed with a European Union country regulatory authority for water supply and wastewater treatment services to determine the efficient operating cost of its service providers that operated in the wholesale market segment in the 2017-2021 period. To this end, the non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis technique was adapted to a robust and conditional approach. The results point to similar mean efficiency scores between water supply and wastewater services in the five-year period, despite the greater heterogeneity in the latter. Furthermore, the estimated potential cost savings for both services ranged from about 2% to 3%.

Abstract
This research evaluates the performance of water supply utilities operating at the retail level in Portugal concerning asset management practices. The study's main innovative feature is identifying peers and targets to guide improvements in the sector. Reliable data collected by the regulatory authority for water and waste services in Portugal (ERSAR) are employed to design two composite indicators reflecting different dimensions of asset management: operational conditions and management systems. Based on the Data Envelopment Analysis technique, the Benefit-of-the-Doubt model is employed in robust and conditional formulations. The role of the context on utilities' performance is also investigated. The results show that the direct management model is unfavourable concerning developing structured management systems, whilst urban environments favour managerial advancement. Rural and semi-urban environments favour goodoperational results in infrastructures. The pool of peers obtained for each utility and the quantification of targets based on the observed achievements by those peers facilitates the search for industry best practices and promotes continuous improvement. Given the high heterogeneity in asset management performance within the sector, the utility-specific target-setting approach illustrated in this paper can support a regulatory policy review for determining more realistic goals.

Abstract
This study explores asset management performance of Portuguese water supply companies operating in the bulk market. The focus of the analysis are the managerial practices and the condition of infrastructures. This assessment is based on the information conveyed by the indicators collected by the Portuguese water and waste services' regulator authority (ERSAR) between 2016 and 2020. The main contribution of this research is to propose innovative methods to enhance the knowledge on asset management practices in the water sector. Two Benefit-of-the-Doubt (BoD) Composite Indicators are developed to highlight different aspects of asset management approaches. The first reflects organisations' performance in maintaining their infrastructures at acceptable operational levels, and the other reveals their maturity in asset management practices. Robust and conditional approaches for estimating the BoD indicators are applied, allowing to obtain results that account for the effect of contextual variables on companies' performance. Additionally, the performance of the companies is analysed over a 5-year period. The results show that there is significant room for improvement given the indicators' values estimated in the benchmarking analysis. The type of management systems and areas of intervention (urban, semi-urban or rural) are factors that present significant impact in asset management performance. The analysis of trends in the evolution of performance over time revealed improvements both in the companies' managerial practices and operational results.

Abstract
The recognition of Covid-19 as a global pandemic in March 2020 forced the closure of schools and universities around the world, raising the need to adopt emergency teaching methods. A year and a half later, the situation is still not resolved, but there is more data that allow us to understand the real impact. This study presents a comprehensive analysis of higher education students perceptions about courses and faculty during the last 5 years (2016-2021), with a special focus on the differences in perception between the pre-Covid-19 and the during Covid-19 phases. To this end, the pedagogical surveys that are answered by students from an engineering degree at a Portuguese university at the end of the first and second semester of the academic year are analyzed. The results allow us to identify two distinct moments in the Covid-19 phase: a first in which feelings of positivism and appreciation of students for the instructors and the courses they teach stand out, and a second moment in which students become more demanding and dissatisfied with the courses and with the instructors, leading to a lack of motivation and involvement of students. © 2023, Universidade do Porto - Faculdade de Engenharia. All rights reserved.

Abstract
A significant challenge in asset management is the selection of investment projects for infrastructures, which often relies on subjective judgement and lacks structured decision support methods. This challenge is particularly complex in water systems due to the diverse and heterogeneous nature of the components requiring investment. While the infrastructure value index (IVI) is widely used to characterise assets and support investment decisions in the water sector, its application in optimisation models for generating efficient project portfolios remains unexplored. To address this research gap, this study introduces optimisation models for generating investment portfolio plans in water systems' asset management. The proposed approach includes two mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) models that determine optimal solutions and an evolutionary algorithm that offers sub-optimal alternative investment selection plans to provide decision-makers with additional choices for balancing optimal outcomes. The primary contribution of this research is the combined utilisation of MILP and evolutionary algorithms, integrating the IVI into the decision-making process. These tools provide decision-makers with structured methods for defining investment plans and minimising the subjective elements typically associated with such processes. To illustrate the effectiveness of the models, a case study is presented involving a pumping station of a Portuguese water company. The results demonstrate the practical application and benefits of the proposed approach in optimising investment decisions. This research contributes to advancing asset management practices by integrating quantitative optimisation techniques and leveraging the IVI, thereby enhancing the objectivity and efficiency of investment planning in water systems' asset management.

Abstract
The Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) was implemented as a first step towards a Banking Union in November 2014. This paper investigates the impact of the SSM on Eurozone banks' efficiency and position of best-practice frontier. It is based on a balanced panel analysis of 931 European bank-year observations from 2011 to 2017 (133 banks, seven years). The study uses Data Envelopment Analysis and a difference-in-differences approach to explore the evolution of banking performance. We found that the SSM had a negative impact on the efficiency levels of Eurozone banks, particularly in the year after the introduction of the mechanism. Additionally, we observed that the frontier formed by non-Eurozone European Union banks is more productive than the frontier of Eurozone banks in all the years analysed. Both efficiency and frontier position show evidence of a recovery trend in more recent years for both groups. We also found that while Equity-to-Asset Ratio, Return on Average Assets and Gross Domestic Product per capita positively impacted banks' efficiency, domestic credit provided by banks expressed as %GDP had a negative impact on efficiency.