Abstract
On the night of 4 March 2001, at Entre-os-Rios (Northern Portugal), the Hintze Ribeiro centennial bridge collapsed killing 59 people traveling in a bus and three cars that were crossing the Douro River. According to the national authorities, the collapse was due to two decades of uncontrolled sand extraction which compromised the stability of the bridge's pillars, together with underestimating the warnings from divers and technicians. In this work we do not intend to corroborate or contradict the official version of the accident's causes, but only demonstrate the potential of Multi-Temporal Interferometric techniques for detection and monitoring of deformations in structures such as bridges, and consequently the usefulness of the derived information in some type of early warning system to help prevent new catastrophic events. Based on the analysis of 52 ERS-1/2 covering the period from May 1995 to the fatal occurrence, we were able to detect significant movements, reaching rates of 20mmyr-1, in the section of the bridge that fell into the Douro River, which are obvious signs of the bridge's instability. These promising results demonstrate that with the new high-resolution synthetic aperture radar satellite scenes it is possible to develop interferometric based methodologies for structural health monitoring.

Abstract
In this paper it is proposed an indirect approach to the Dual Mode Adaptive Robust Controller (DMARC), which combines the typical transient and robustness properties of Variable Structure Systems, with a smooth control signal in steady-state, typical of conventional Adaptive Controllers, as Model Reference Adaptive Controller (MRAC). The aim of this indirect version, here named Indirect Dual Mode Adaptive Robust Controller (IDMARC), is to provide a more intuitive controller design, based on physical plant parameters, as resistances, inertia moments, capacitances, etc maintaining DMARC properties. In this paper, it will be presented a stability analysis for the proposed controller and simulations to an unstable second order plant.

Abstract

Abstract
The developments occurring in recent years in the Information and Communication Technologies led inevitably a great effect on the operation, structure and strategy of organizations around the world, and obviously also in the tourist sector organizations. Through the Information and Communication Technologies, it is possible to reduce communication costs and operation and may increase the flexibility, interactivity, efficiency, productivity and competitiveness. Information and Communication Technologies appear one of the area most critical to the success of tourism in the future and the way it will promote the tourist destinations. This paper aims to analyze the relevance given by the various Portuguese institutions of higher education to Information and Communication Technologies in their degrees. The analysis carried out was done in degree courses operating in this school year, 2012/2013, in Portuguese universities and polytechnics, public and private.

Abstract
The administration of systems and networks is a technical specialized complex task. If large organizations can have in their Information Technology (IT) departments systems and network security specialists, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) typically can't; they have only some computers science broadband IT collaborators that respond by the maintenance of the IT resources, and, in some cases, accumulate with some software development. We make of this view the start point of our research, allying the growing need of securing the IT resources and the information sources which are becoming more and more valuable for every single organization. For SMEs the solution for implement security is, many times, an outsourcing task. The problem is that implementing security is an exercise that overflows the common IT domain, but it starts by fully understanding the organization culture, policies and procedures. This knowledge is something that collaborators learn day by day and not something that we can put on paper easily and tell some outsourced specialists to secure. Even if that could be done, the daily maintenance of the security would be a very hard task. This paper makes considerations about security on SMEs reality and presents a framework that permit a high level approach for implement security, more focused on the organization vision of what we want to do than on a technical vision of how to implement it. The framework hard core is one abstraction layer focused on the organizations perspective and a translator layer of them into technical rules capable of been applied on the IT resources, like servers, computers and network equipments.

Abstract
The developments occurring in recent years in the Information and Communication Technologies led inevitably a great effect on the operation, structure and strategy of organizations around the world, and obviously also in the tourist sector organizations. Through the Information and Communication Technologies, it is possible to reduce communication costs and operation and may increase the flexibility, interactivity, efficiency, productivity and competitiveness. Information and Communication Technologies appear one of the area most critical to the success of tourism in the future and the way it will promote the tourist destinations. This paper aims to analyze the relevance given by the various Portuguese institutions of higher education to Information and Communication Technologies in their degrees. The analysis carried out was done in degree courses operating in this school year, 2012/2013, in Portuguese universities and polytechnics, public and private. © 2013 AISTI.