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About Us

Short description

The Civil Research Group is part of the Faculty of Engineering of the Lusófona University in Lisbon, and is rooted in the civil engineering field for sustainable and resilient buildings and infrastructure. It is focused on five research topics:

Structural Health Monitoring
Circular Materials
Resilience and Sustainability in Built and Natural Environments

Our vision

Civil construction faces a series of challenges and trends that will fundamentally transform the way we conceive, design, and (re) construct buildings and infrastructure. The fourth industrial revolution, namely the use of intelligent robots and autonomous vehicles, sustainability, and energy efficiency are leading civil construction to a different orbit than the one we have known for several decades.

Sustainable Development Goals

This group contributes to the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 9 and related SDGs 12 and 13, by promoting sustainable and resilient infrastructure through the introduction of new technologies, materials, and innovation intended to facilitate efficient use of resources and guarantee the safety and comfort of people.

Specifically, this group contributes to the:

SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure) by developing sustainable and resilient infrastructures and promoting an efficient use of resources;
SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production) in order to do more and better with less materials, by promoting the circular economy of materials and the repeated use of the same material without downgrading its functionality which increases resource efficiency and leads to low-carbon and green economies; and
SDG 13 (Climate Action) in order to take action to combat climate change and its impacts, by mitigating the carbon dioxide emissions through the production of new materials with less footprint in carbon emissions and adapting the existing structures.

Research

IP3 – Development of solution to be adopted in the expansion of the IP3 rigid pavement

Funding Institution IP – Infraestruturas de Portugal
Coordinator Luís Quaresma (ULHT)
Period of funding 2021

BuildingAdapt – Pioneer study to analyze the resilience of university buildings to climate change: ULHT campus

Funding Institution COFAC
Coordinator Guilherme Coelho (ULHT)
Period of funding March 2021 to March 2023

Human beings spend more than 90% of their time inside buildings. Therefore, the characteristics of the indoor climate of these spaces have a substantial influence on the health and comfort of its occupants. Taking into account the expected changes in the outdoor climate in the near future, which invariably will affect the quality of the indoor climate, timely and considerate preparation of our buildings is necessary to minimize the consequences of climate change to our everyday life.

In order to anticipate the problems arising from this situation and since these changes can jeopardize the health and comfort of the occupants of the buildings, this project aims to study a set of measures that can be adapted by the ULHT buildings in order to be more resilient to climate change and, therefore, ensure an adequate indoor climate.

To this end, a non-destructive methodology will be used based on a two phased approach:

Monitoring campaigns to determine the indoor temperature and relative humidity of the case studies, which will feed phase 2 with real-life measurements;
Computational modelling of the case-studies and development of hygrothermal analyses, which take into account measurements from phase 1 and that will allow to thoroughly analyse the proposed measures, thus choosing the most appropriate ones to minimize the effects of climate change in the indoor climate of the case studies.”

QUANTI – Damage quantification in composite structures using artificial intelligence and numerical simulations

Promoter Entity IST-UL, ULHT, UC, UNESP, UFMG and UFPA
Coordinator Nuno Maia (IST-UL) and Samuel da Silva (UNESP)
Funding Institution FCT/CAPES (2019.00164.CBM)
Coordinators per institution involved Nuno Maia (IST-UL), Elói Figueiredo (ULHT), João Pedro Martins (UC), Samuel da Silva (UNESP), Carlos Cimini Junior (UFMG), João Weyl (UFPA).
Period of funding March 2021 to March 2023

App4SHM – Smartphone application for structural health monitoring

Period of funding 2021

Development of a smartphone application to monitor the structural health of buildings and special structures (like bridges) after catastrophic events.

This application will be able to interrogate the phone’s internal sensors, or other paired devices via Bluetooth or USB, and to analyze and compare the data collected through intelligent algorithms properly trained in order to detect damage and quantify the structural risk in real time. As it is a mobile application with access to a server, it is possible to create a networked system of several nodes through the simultaneous use of several smartphones.

This is a R&D project funded by COFAC and involving students and professors from ULHT’s civil engineering and computer science courses: Eloi Figueiredo, Hugo Rebelo, Ionut Moldovan, Luís Silva, Nuno Penim, Paulo Oliveira, Pedro Alves.

ClimaBridge – Impact of climate change on the structural health of bridges

Promoter Entity COFAC – Lusófona University
Coordinator Eloi Figueiredo (ULHT)
Funding Institution EEA Grants
Partners Oslo Metropolitan University (OsloMet), Infraestruturas de Portugal (IP) and Laboratório Nacional de Engenharia Civil (LNEC)
Period of funding March 2021 to March 2023
Website climabridge.ulusofona.pt

Reconhecer Project

Coordenador Elói Figueiredo (ULHT) e Luís Oliveira Santos (LNEC)
Starting April 2019

A Câmara Municipal vai inventariar pontes, viadutos, túneis, passagens superiores, passagens inferiores e passagens hidráulicas existentes no concelho de Barcelos, e que estejam sob a sua responsabilidade direta, tendo em vista a realização de intervenções que se venham a mostrar necessárias à segurança de pessoas e bens. Para o efeito, o executivo municipal aprovou a implementação projeto “Reconhecer”, desenvolvido pela Universidade Lusófona (ULHT) e pelo Laboratório Nacional de Engenharia Civil (LNEC) de Lisboa, através de protocolo envolvendo as três entidades. Segundo o documento aprovado pelo executivo é possível não só potenciar a definição de uma estratégia de acompanhamento das condições das obras de arte mas, também, facilitar a orçamentação da sua manutenção e posicionar o Município de Barcelos como uma das autarquias a implementar um plano de inventariação das obras de arte sob a sua responsabilidade direta e, assim, promovendo uma maior proteção permanente de vidas humanas.

Projeto – Utilização de fibras INNOCELL FG3000 em misturas do tipo Stone Mastic Asphalt (SMA)

Coordenador Luís Quaresma (ULHT)
Starting October 2018

No âmbito do Mestrado em Engenharia Civil, da Faculdade de Engenharia, da Universidade Lusófona Humanidades e Tecnologias, e das atividades de investigação do DREAMS, está em desenvolvimento o projeto Utilização de fibras INNOCELL FG3000 em misturas do tipo Stone Mastic Asphalt (SMA).

Este trabalho visa a avaliação do comportamento de misturas do tipo Stone Mastic Asphalt (SMA) utilizando fibras de celulose com ceras poliolefínicas, incluindo a aplicação destas misturas em trecho experimental incluído na rede rodoviária nacional.

O trabalho é financiado pela empresa RAVAGO CHEMICALS SPAIN, S.A e inclui a cooperação com a Infraestruturas de Portugal.

PhD student

18 May 2016 (in Portuguese)

Adam Dreyton, aluno de doutoramento da Universidade Federal do Pará em Belém (UFPA), Brasil, estará no curso de Engenharia Civil durante um ano como Investigador Convidado. O Adam é especialista em monitorização da integridade estrutural, nomeadamente na aplicação de algoritmos inteligentes para detecção de danos estruturais em pontes. Estes algoritmos derivam da inteligência artificial e operam segundo os princípios do cérebro humano. Esta colaboração surge no seguimento do projeto conjunto entre a Universidade Lusófona e a UFPA, financiado pelo Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq), do Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação do Brasil – processo nº 402657/2014-4. Na Universidade Lusófona, para além de prosseguir os trabalhos do seu doutoramento, o Adam irá participar e apoiar os alunos de Engenharia Civil em projetos de monitorização de pontes e realizar conferências/palestras diversas sobre o tema em contexto de sala de aula e para o público em geral.

Videos and More

Events

30 Anos de Engenharia Civil da Universidade Lusófona (March, 2023)
Inundações em Lisboa: A Solução (March, 2023)

Climate Action

Climate action for buildings and infrastructure

Climate change has been posed as one of the greatest threats to the comfort and health of our buildings and infrastructure. Although the uncertainty associated with the magnitude of the change is large, the fact that our climate is changing is unequivocal. As a result, making buildings and infrastructure (and their surroundings) more resilient to climate change is a priority for owners and authorities. An early and planned climate adaptation action will increase the comfort, durability, and safety of our buildings and infrastructure and therefore save money and, ultimately, lives.

The Journey

Adaptation (and mitigation) is the pathway for new and existing buildings and infrastructure on their climate journey. This action brings together some answers to some unknowns.

Expertise

We have already started to ground our expertise in several areas:

Impact of climate change in structural health monitoring of bridges
Bridge adaptation strategies
Physics-based modeling for climate change scenarios
Integrating modeling (hydrological, reservoir, and hydraulic models) to analyze impacts on downstream infrastructures, to create scenarios, and to study infrastructure vulnerability
Hydrological and hydraulic modeling of risk areas for different scenarios (e.g., flood risk areas)
Analysis of the water regime under different scenarios in hydraulic infrastructure
Analysis of indoor comfort conditions and health in new and existing buildings
Green solutions for buildings in urban areas
Assessment of nature-based solutions for urban climate adaptation
Eco-design of road pavement solutions to contribute to the decarbonization of the sector
Bio-based solutions for road infrastructure

Research Projects

Special Issues

SPECIAL ISSUE on the “Water Sustainability: River Basin Management, Water Quality and Quantity Monitoring – Second Edition”. Guest Editor: Carina Almeida (Lusófona University). For this Special Issue, studies on the latest knowledge in the field of sustainable water management will be especially welcome, with the aim of covering different methodologies in order to test different scenarios. Therefore, this Special Issue welcomes contributions such as original research articles, technical articles, or reviews, which may be related to water management in urban areas, agriculture, industry, water-use efficiency, etc. The deadline for submitting manuscripts is 17 January 2025. For more information

SPECIAL ISSUE on the “Climate Change Impacts on Bridges, Roads, and Buildings”. Guest Editors: Quoc Bao Pham (University of Silesia), Eloi Figueiredo (Lusófona University), Tu Dam Ngoc Le (Mientrung University of Civil Engineering). The primary goals of this collection are: understanding vulnerability and exploring adaptation strategies. The deadline for submitting manuscripts is 30th April 2024. For more information

SPECIAL ISSUE on the “Impact of climate change on the structural health monitoring of civil infrastructure”. Guest Editors: Eloi Figueiredo (Lusófona University), Ionut Moldovan (Lusófona University), and Luís Oliveira Santos (National Laboratory for Civil Engineering). For more information: https://journals.sagepub.com/home/shm.

Webinars

Spotlight

Have a look at ASCE’s support to the Sustainable Development Goals, in which our “Roadmap for an Integrated Assessment Approach to the Adaptation of Concrete Bridges to Climate Change” has been selected to inspire action – The video.

ASCE’s Special Collection for UN SDG Goal 13: Climate Action

Relevant Publications

Figueiredo, E., Peres, N., Moldovan, I., Nasr, A. (2024). Impact of climate change on long-term damage detection for structural health monitoring of bridges. Structural Health Monitoring. https://doi.org/10.1177/14759217231224254
Antunes, V., Dongmo-Engeland, B., Freire, A. C., & Neves, J. (2023, Maio 11). be-READY Workshop – REsilient roAD pavements for sustainabilitY (be-READY), Oslo, Norway. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10041913
Figueiredo, E., Peres, N., Moldovan, I., Nasr, A. (2023). Does Climate Change Impact Long-Term Damage Detection in Bridges?. In: Limongelli, M.P., Giordano, P.F., Quqa, S., Gentile, C., Cigada, A. (eds) Experimental Vibration Analysis for Civil Engineering Structures. EVACES 2023. Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering, vol 433. Springer, Cham.
Figueiredo, E.; Santos, L. O.; Moldovan, I.; Kraniotis, D.; Melo, J.; Dias, L.; Coelho, G. (2023). A roadmap for an integrated assessment approach for climate change adaptation of concrete bridges. Journal of Bridge Engineering, 28(6). DOI 10.1061/JBENF2/BEENG-5735.
Figueiredo, E.; Moldovan, I.; Santos, L.O.; Erduran, E.; Kraniotis, D.; Rebelo, H.; Antunes, V.; Rocha, C. (2022). A Road for Adaptation of Bridges to Climate Change: Conclusions. Seminar, ClimaBridge Project, September 27, 2022, Lusófona University, Lisbon. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.23011.63523.
Vandewalle, D.; Antunes, V.; Neves, J.; Freire, A.C. Assessment of Eco-Friendly Pavement Construction and Maintenance Using Multi-Recycled RAP Mixtures. Recycling 2020, 5, 17. https://doi.org/10.3390/recycling5030017.
Almeida C.; Ramos T.; Sobrinho J.; Neves R.; Proença de Oliveira R. (2019). An Integrated Modelling Approach to Study Future Water Demand Vulnerability in the Montargil Reservoir Basin, Portugal. Sustainability. 11. 206. 10.3390/su11010206.

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