Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

Objective: To identify the perception of family and community doctors - as well as other professionals in 20 countries that make up the Ibero-American Confederation of Family Medicine (CIMF) - on the most prevalent forms of violence in their country and in the communities they attend. Also, to identify the perception about their own motivation and ability, as well as that of family physicians from their countries, to address violence and contribute to the culture of peace. Methods: Cross-sectional, exploratory study, descriptive and quantitative approach, carried out in the 20 member countries of CIMF, between the months of September 2017 to March 2018. A survey was designed based on a literature review of the study phenomenon, discussion and validation with different family medicine professionals considered to be experts in the subject. It was disseminated with the support of the different scientific societies of Family Medicine that make up the 20 countries of the CIMF, reaching 242 responses. Results: More than 92% of professionals consider that they lack sufficient training to deal with violence in their daily work and only 24% consider that they have received sufficient training in the Culture of Peace. On the other hand, the perception of prevalence of the different types of violence from the personal, family and community point of view in the region is alarming. Conclusions: It is necessary to integrate in the training of family doctors and primary care professionals, as well as in the undergraduate curricula of Medicine, contents related to the approach to violence and the contribution to the culture of peace to overcome violence. The knowledge gap on these issues is visible by family doctors and other professionals who work in Primary Care. On the other hand, the potential benefit of having these professionals acting in this serious and prevalent health problem is remarkable, especially considering their frequent and longitudinal contact with people, families and communities who have been victims of violence.

Introduction: The main field of training of the Family Doctor are Primary Health Care services as primary practice scenario. In addition to these, other stages are used to enhance the learning of specific competencies. Objective: To describe the profile of external internships performed by residents in the Residency Program in Family Medicine of the Medical School of the University of São Paulo. Results: External internships are held for 2 months in the second year of residency and are equally divided into elective internships (in which a bond with the institution is required) and optional (freely selectable). Most of these internships occur in Brazil and through informal ties, without a partnership or official arrangement between institutions and/or services. The main stages sought are in rural medicine and the National Health Service (UK). Conclusion: The external internships enriches the resident’s training and enable the improvement of the residency program. Most of the internships are requested through informal contact, which points to the challenge of establishing links between people, services and institutions to strengthen training in Family and Comunnity Medicine.

Environmental noise is a big problem related to the environmental pollution in cities, which affects the quality of people life. In this paper, a methodology that uses an approach based on Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) for the monitoring, analysis and prediction of environmental noise is proposed. It can be very useful to propose alternatives and initiatives that improve the life in a city. So, this work is composed of the following stages: data acquisition, analysis and, data processing, as well as the information visualization, considering the temporality of the same and taking into account macro and micro levels of analysis for the study surface. In addition, some details of the design and development of a geographic information system are presented, consisting of a web-mapping system, an application for mobile devices called “NoiseMonitor”, geospatial analysis and machine learning methods (support vector machines and artificial neural networks) for the prediction of environmental noise; by using contextual information; that is, some data related to the city. This kind of work seeks to take advantage of the willingness of citizens to participate collaboratively to sense their environment and be considered as human sensors, which unlike traditional approaches, the cost associated with the development and implementation of this project is much lower. Likewise, a case study based on the Mexico City is presented and discussed, particularly the fourth quadrant of the Historic Center of the City, which is very representative for the variety of environmental noise that is generated in that area. The application domain of this approach is oriented towards big data from a collaborative perspective, Internet of Things and smart cities.

The Vertical Reference Systems (VRSs) along with their national, regional and global materializations  in  frames,  have  been  in  a  significant  evolution  in  the  last  years  because they are fundamental for the monitoring of physical processes associated with changes  in  the  Earth  System.  The  endorsement  of  Earth  observation  systems  comes  from the Global Geodetic Observing System (GGOS) supported by the International Association  of  Geodesy  (IAG).  These organizations are based on standards and reference terms to generate accurate and reliable geospatial information. The SIRGAS (Sistema de Referencia Geocéntrico para las Américas), in the context of its Working Group III: Vertical Datum, aims to meet the requirements of GGOS/IAG to provide a modern SIRGAS Vertical Reference System (SVRS).  For this, it is necessary to homogenize and unify the National Vertical Reference Networks (NVRNs) considering the gravity field. This  research  presents  the  methodology  developed for an Ecuadorian NVRN  metadata  inventory  in  view  of  the SIRGAS/GGOS/IAG reference  terms.  The  achieved  results  can  serve  as  a  basis  for  the  development  strategies  for  the  integration  the  Vertical  Networks  in  South  America.  Also, this inventory contributes   for   building a future Spatial   Data   Infrastructure   for   the Americas according the objectives of the UN-GGIM: Americas.

Estimating the expected value of a function over geographic areas is problem with a long history. In the beginning of the XX-th century the most common method was just the arithmetic mean of the field measurements ignoring data location. In 1911, Thiessen introduced a new weighting procedure measuring influence through an area and thus indirectly considering closeness between them. In another context, Quenouville created in 1949 the jackknife method which is used to estimate the bias and the standard deviation. In 1979 Efron invented the bootstrap method which, among other things, is useful to estimate the expected value and the confidence interval (CI) from a population. Although the Thiessen’s method has been used for more than 100 years, we were unable to find systematic analysis comparing its efficiency against the simple mean, or even to more recent methods like jackknife or boostrap. In this work we compared four methods to estimate de expected value.  Sample mean, Thiessen, the so called here jackknifed Thiessen and bootstrap. All of them are feasible for routine use in a network of fixed locations. The comparison was made using the Friedman’s Test after a Monte Carlo simulation. Two cases were taken for study: one analytic with three arbitrary functions and the other using experimental data from daily rain measured with a satellite. The results show that Thiessen’s method is the best estimator in almost all the cases with a 95% of confidence interval. Unlike the others, the last two considered methods supply a suitable CI, but the one obtained through jackknifed Thiessen was even more accurate, opening the door for future work.

In  order  to  identify  land  use  conflicts  in  Carayaca  located  in  Vargas  state,  in  the  following  research  the  LANDSAT  8-OLI  satellite  image  was  used  for  the  estimation,  analysis  and  quantification  of  conflicts  of  use.    The  methodological  process  used  integrates  techniques  of  digital  processing  of satellite  images  with  spatial  analysis of thematic information, which allowed to determine categories of land use and types of vegetation cover. The spatial analysis revealed that the space has particular  characteristics,  natural  aspects  that  give  it  some environmental  fragility,  anthropic  intervention  and  presence  of  Areas  Under  Special  Management  Regime,  which with the non-compliance of the current legal system have led to the existence of conflicts of use. Three types of conflicts were identified: normative, by slope and erosion, with an area of 43% of the total evaluated area. It concludes with use and  management  strategies  that  lead  to  solve  conflicts,  raise  the  quality  of  life  of  the   population, achieve sustainable economic development, and preserve natural resources and energy sources. It is recommended to use conservation practices that control  erosion,  implement  programs  and  actions  that  have  the  purpose  of  land-use planning,  by  coordinating,  applying  and  supervising  actions  that  contribute  to  the  regulation  of  land-use  occupation,  resource  utilization  and  recovery  of  degraded  areas  framed  in  a  process  of  participation  and  environmental  co-responsibility  in  order to ensure efficient land-use management

In recent decades, the growth of urbanization has caused great transformations in the social, economic and morphological aspects in the coastal areas. The urban beaches of Boa Viagem and Pina (Recife-PE) and the beach of Piedade (Jaboatão dos Guararapes-PE), have presented these aspects, where coastal vulnerability to erosion is observed. The objective of this work is to analyze the spatial and temporal displacement of the shoreline. For this, the several data obtained from the kinematic relative geodetic survey method was modeled, which allows the monitoring of the shoreline for the years 2007, 2009, 2010 and 2012. The method of transects was used, which is necessary to adopt a shoreline as base, year 2007. The study area was divided into 6 sectors to analyze the average displacement of the shoreline. Sectors 1 and 5 presented accretion in all periods analyzed (2007-2009, 2007-2010, and 2007-2012). Sector 2 presented erosion in all periods analyzed. The sectors 3 and 6 in the periods 2007-2009 and 2007-2010, presented erosion, while from 2007-2012 they presented the tended to accretion. Stand out that in sector 4 the calculation was not made due to the fact that it is the area that presents rockfill. This study tends to contribute to the analysis of temporal behavior in decision-making projects in coastal environments.

Current social networks provide information with high correlation with events that are occurring worldwide. Twitter is a microblogging network of real time messages in which people post about various classes of events. A relevant topic is traffic congestion; user-generated content is useful to assist drivers in avoiding crowded areas. This work proposes a model to predict traffic-related events, based on a set of machine learning methods, in which a spatio-temporal dataset is obtained from Twitter messages. The training stage uses geocoded traffic events, in order to generate possible sites with traffic congestion at a given time. As a case study, partial areas of the Mexico City were taking into consideration.

This article is a summary of the doctoral thesis developed about the current situation of SDI with respect to the third dimension, addressing future research lines and analyzing the needs and weaknesses showed. After deepening knowledge about SDI and, after checking both the need and the convergence of various technical-scientific branches in terms of three-dimensional geographic information (GI) management, it is decided, through this work, to develop a research project focused on 3D SDI. Following a qualitative approach in the development of the research methodology, the importance of what the third spatial dimension supposes for the performance of the daily activities of the human being in our times becomes clear. Finally, the necessary elements to be able to implement a three-dimensional SDI are defined, taking into account all the development parameters, both technical and legal, necessary to comply with the current technological, regulatory, hierarchical and legal frameworks. Through the work developed, it has been found that, in general, the adaptation of the third dimension by the SDI is in germinal phase, with many possibilities for advancement and contribution of scientific and technological contributions. This document tries to be one of those contributions.

The EPIC WebGIS is a spatial data infrastructure, which provides georeferenced cartography at a national scale. It can be seen as a tool to integrate landscape into planning policies, offering immediate access to several available themes concerning ecosystems, ecological network, and ecological land suitability. The information on this platform covers landscape sub-systems such as geology/lithology, soil, water, vegetation, climate and land morphology, considered essential to the ecosystem and natural resources management. It also integrates several themes regarding a Potential Land Use Plan for Portugal, taking into account the ecological land suitability for the establishment of different activities, such as nature conservation, agriculture and horticulture, forestry, leisure and recreational facilities and urban areas. The available data constitutes the outcome of the work carried out by a large team with different scientific backgrounds under two projects: project PTDC/AURURB/ 102578/2008 “National Ecological Network - a proposal of delimitation and regulation” and project PTDC/AUR-URB/119340/2010 “Potential Land-Use Ecological Plan. Application to Portugal”, both financed by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). Currently, the EPIC WebGIS is organized in 16 major themes and has 111 maps available for download. The EPIC WebGIS gives a significant contribution to spatial planning through the identification and quantification of strategic topics and in the implementation of development policies and strategies, from a sustainable development perspective. The EPIC WebGIS was created to work as a technical and scientific reference at all levels of Planning and related political decision-making. This platform is free of charge and open to new data, contributing to the implementation of Open Access policies.