CASADOMO: Innovative and sustainable housing in modular superadobe for informal neighborhoods in Praia—Cape Vert

Felisberto Cortês — 2025-03-24

The city of Praia, like other cities in developing countries, lacks adequate housing that allows families to develop with dignity. The increase in the resident population, social inequalities, poverty, the proliferation of informal neighborhoods, urban and housing difficulties, demand a better response from the city of Praia in terms of social housing. CASADOMO is a solution created from a doctoral thesis carried out at IST (University of Lisbon), which reinforces the idea of social housing for informal neighborhoods in the city of Praia. CASADOMO adopts an innovative concept that combines the traditional Cape Verdean habitat associated with the earth construction technique, namely superadobe, with the idea of the African “cubata” and Cape Verdean “funku” and modular construction technology. This article also includes the construction of a CASADOMO model that proves its viability.

Qualitative Risk Criticality Matrix (QRCM) applied in a biodegradable packaging production line

Carlos Parra — 2025-05-20

The criticality analysis techniques that consider the Risk factor are tools that, first, allow, to identify the importance of assets in an industrial facility, and second, enable the efficient allocation of resources: human, financial, and technological. In the following technical article, are explained, the basic theoretical aspects of a Qualitative Risk Analysis model used to determine the criticality of equipment. This process involves the evaluation of two key factors: reliability (failure frequency) and consequences (impact that failures have on safety, the environment, and production). Additionally, a case study is presented, which includes the development of a model based on a Qualitative Risk Criticality Matrix (QRCM), applied in a biodegradable packaging manufacturing plant in the agro-industrial sector of Panamá.

The following describes some of the most important keys to be developed in the article:

The correct application of Qualitative Criticality Analysis methods will help management and technical levels make decisions with a lower level of uncertainty in processes related to the operation and maintenance of industrial assets. Specifically, regarding maintenance management, the results of a Risk-based criticality analysis process will allow the development of maintenance strategies with a Cost-Risk-Benefit optimization approach.
It is important that the maintenance management understands that the criticality models to be designed must align with the business objectives and not make the mistake of developing criticality tools where only specific factors of the maintenance process are included. In this regard, using risk-based criticality models creates a favorable scenario for evaluating the impact of factors inherent to the maintenance process and also facilitates the process of adding factors such as production, quality, production loss costs, safety, environment, etc., which are related to a comprehensive asset management process.

Finally, the correct application and implementation of recommendations obtained from the analysis of the results of the QRCM (Qualitative Risk Criticality Matrix), will optimize the technical processes of maintenance management and improve the profitability of manufactured products at the Biodegradable Packaging Plant MOLPASA throughout its entire industrial life cycle.

RAE—Journal of Engineering Assets

CASADOMO: Innovative and sustainable housing in modular superadobe for informal neighborhoods in Praia—Cape Vert

Qualitative Risk Criticality Matrix (QRCM) applied in a biodegradable packaging production line