Osvaldo Luiz Gonçalves Quelhas

Despite the growing importance of community resilience, there remains a lack of integrated and data-driven frameworks capable of assessing resilience from a sustainable development perspective and supporting decision-making at the municipal level. To address the challenge of evaluating community resilience through an integrated framework grounded in sustainable development dimensions, this study proposes a framework for assessing community resilience through a multicriteria decision-making approach. The methodology integrates economic, environmental, social, and institutional indicators, entropy weighting, the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), and gap analysis to generate community resilience indices and identify priority areas for intervention. The framework was applied to municipalities in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, a region recently affected by large-scale climate-related disasters. The results revealed significant disparities in resilience levels among the municipalities analyzed while gap analysis enabled the identification of critical weaknesses and development priorities for each municipality. The study contributes to the resilience assessment literature by integrating sustainability dimensions, objective weighting through entropy, TOPSIS, and diagnostic gap analysis into a unified decision-support framework that provides a replicable and data-driven tool for evaluating community resilience, supporting public policy formulation, investment prioritization, and strategies aimed at strengthening sustainable and resilient communities.

This study compares two AHP-based approaches for defining criteria weights in occupational hearing risk assessment: Gaussian AHP, which incorporates statistical variability into the weighting process, and the AHP with objective weights, which reduces subjective judgment by deriving weights from observable quantitative data. The study evaluates the consistency and applicability of both methods in a real decision-making scenario involving combined occupational exposures. The methods were applied to real data from a maintenance workshop, considering six risk criteria: noise, heat, vibration, ototoxic solvents, heavy metals, and asphyxiating substances. The weights calculated by each approach were applied to a decision matrix composed of four Similar Exposure Groups (SEGs), allowing comparison of the resulting rankings and consistency. The results showed that both methods produced consistent rankings and demonstrated strengths in terms of simplicity, reproducibility, and reduced dependence on subjective judgments. The study contributes to the literature by empirically comparing objective AHP-based approaches in the context of occupational hearing health and by supporting the prioritization of workers exposed to combined risk factors in industrial environments.

This paper assessed the maturity of Lean Construction (LC) in a Brazilian affordable housing company, focusing on two main objectives: to identify the strengths and weaknesses in adopting LC concepts and to analyse the practical implications of this diagnosis to support a performance-oriented development program. The research design included a literature review and contextual analysis to select an appropriate maturity assessment model, followed by empirical data collection and content analysis grounded in established LC theory. The results indicate the company's current level of LC maturity, with main weaknesses in product design flexibility and understanding customer requirements, as well as notable strengths in reducing process variability. These results highlight how maturity assessment can expose critical factors that influence the effectiveness of Lean practices, particularly when aligned with performance measurement perspectives. The insights derived from this analysis are expected to inform the planning and implementation of Fábrica Azul's development program, guiding strategic improvements and aligning operational practices with Lean principles. This study's originality lies in applying a maturity model in the context of Brazilian affordable housing, combined with stakeholder value considerations and a literature-based interpretation of the results. Overall, this work contributed to the field by demonstrating how maturity assessment, when integrated with performance evaluation, can serve as a powerful diagnostic and planning tool to enhance the sustainable adoption of Lean Construction.

Work-related hearing loss resulting from combined exposure to noise and ototoxic solvents remains underestimated in occupational prevention practices. Substances such as toluene, xylene, and styrene, which are widely present in industrial environments, potentiate auditory damage even at levels below the tolerance limits considered safe. By conditioning the implementation of the Hearing Conservation Program solely on the action level for isolated noise exposure, Brazilian legislation proves insufficient in addressing the complexity of contemporary occupational risks. This opinion article proposes a critical reflection on the current regulatory limits and advocates for the revision of occupational hearing health prevention policies. Integrated strategies are discussed, including the simultaneous monitoring of exposure to noise and ototoxic chemical agents, the revision of occupational exposure limits, the continuous training of professionals in the field, and the adoption of hierarchical control measures. Protecting workers’ hearing health requires more comprehensive approaches capable of recognizing the interaction among different risk agents and promoting truly safe work environments.

This study aimed to analyze the adaptations in the corporate governance practices of a Brazilian support foundation, in the context of the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Support foundations act as pillars of support for research and innovation, ensuring the continuity of strategic activities in teaching, research, and outreach. This research adopted the Value-Focused Thinking (VFT) methodology to identify the organization’s core values and objectives, assessing their influence on decision making. Through the application of the VFT method, decision-making alternatives were structured based on the sessions conducted with the foundation’s employees. Among the adaptations made were the implementation of health protocols, the adoption of technologies for risk monitoring, and the restructuring of workflows, with a focus on financial support and process optimization. The results indicated that governance practices were strengthened, with an emphasis on transparency and cost reduction. This study contributes to good governance practices by integrating organizational strategy into the digital transformation process. As a suggestion for future research, it is proposed to investigate the impact of these adaptations in the post-pandemic period, as well as to conduct comparative studies with other institutions to deepen the understanding of the effectiveness of corporate governance practices in different contexts.

This study ranks and discusses the 7 dimensions of the circular economy in the context of Industry 5.0 proposed by Payer et al. (2024): Energy Circularity, Circularity of Inputs, Investments in circularity, Establishment of new circular businesses, Circular and non-circular supply chain integration, Circularity of product components, and Compliance and governance for circularity. The Hierarchical ordering (ranking) between these dimensions is done using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method based on the opinion of 7 experts consulted (one expert for each dimension). These experts also discussed the main issues in evidence within these 7 dimensions. Organizations that aim to move towards the circular economy in the context of Industry 5.0 often need to prioritize efforts and start by treating some aspects, so this ranking can be a proposal of which dimensions can be prioritized in this scenario