Building information modelling (BIM) has demonstrated its potential as a solution providing support to a series of operations related to facility management (FM) through building data retrieval, analysis, and processing. However, some challenges to the effective adoption of BIM-centred FM information systems occur in their design and implementation, causing obstacles to usability. Among these challenges are the customization of the information structure for each application case, the dynamic character of data supporting building maintenance, and the range of FM specialities involved, frequently including persons who are not BIM experts. This paper presents a BIM–FM prototype to support operations and access updated environmental data for a university building. The two contributions of the developed prototype are its ability to register two types of dynamic data, namely, the regularly acquired environmental sensor information and the sporadic building intervention records, and the automation of the data feeding, updating, and retrieval processes, allowing a user-friendly environment for both BIM experts and non-BIM users. Exploring the BIM interoperability and the integration of plug-ins, the proposed solution enables the comprehensive registration of dynamic FM-related data in an updated model while being accessible to all the specialities involved in the building management operations, enhancing its usability as an integrated solution for data maintenance and retrieval.

More than 100 years ago, a moderate-size earthquake affected several towns within the Lower Tagus Valley with major destruction in the town of Benavente and two other villages (Fonseca and Vilanova 2010). The earthquake, known as the 1909 Benavente earthquake, was studied rigorously by both contemporaneous (Chofat and Bensaude 1912) and modern scientists (e.g., Stich et al. 2005). Other historical earthquakes that caused major damage within the Lower Tagus Valley include the poorly constrained 1344 M_w 6.7 earthquake, the 1531 M_w 6.9 earthquake, the 1755 M_w 8.5 earthquake, and the...

On 20 February 2010, an extreme rainfall episode occurred on Madeira Island, which caused an exceptionally strong flash flood and several soil slip-debris flows, producing 45 confirmed deaths and 6 persons declared missing, as well as extensive material damages. In order to understand and quantify the importance of landsliding in routing sediment through mountainous drainage, such as Madeira Island's landscape, it was essential to perform extensive landslide analysis. This study describes the methodology used to semi-automatically detect the landslides, produce the landslide inventory maps and estimate the sediment volume produced during this particular event which ranged from 217 000 m³ to 344 000 m³ and 605 000 m³ to 984 000 m³ for the Funchal and Ribeira Brava basins, respectively. These results contributed to the design and implementation of measures to prevent damages caused by landslides in Madeira Island.