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Since the 1990s, several policy instruments have been produced in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, to improve accessibility to urban mobility systems, especially for people with disabilities. However, the city still faces important shortcomings in understanding the demands of the population with disabilities and in implementing an appropriate urban structure. The present work identifies mobility practices and demands for accessibility of this population based on a descriptive analysis of the city’s origin/destination survey (2012) and results of a focus group with representatives of the population with disabilities and public authorities. The analysis demonstrates that the demands of persons with reduced mobility are characterised first by a high level of immobility, comparing to people without disabilities, which has important consequences on access to urban goods, especially jobs and health and educational services. Second, mobility has a relevant role in producing forms of discrimination and exclusion. Third, in addition to the problems faced by the general population, people with reduced mobility also face greater challenges in using transport systems. Ultimately, this analysis points out that the main needs for people with disabilities are related to the problems of articulation between public places and transportation systems, both in terms of infrastructure and in terms of attitude and behaviour of service providers and other citizens.

This article aims to analyze the incorporation of harm reduction health workers with lived experience in all services focused on the care for drug users in Belo Horizonte’s mental health network, one of the largest Brazilian Psychosocial Care Networks (Rede de Atenção Psicossocial [RAPS]), and reports the findings of a qualitative study on the life stories, recovery journeys and the professional practice of harm reducers in Belo Horizonte.

For the development of this research, the authors chose the following methodological tools: documentary research; follow-up of harm reduction interventions; access to harm reducers’ field diaries; joint writing of the life stories of the harm reducers.

It indicates that these professionals, as harm reducers empowered by their life experience, have developed various elements and active ingredients of peer support. Their practices and the results of their actions have consolidated their inclusion as Belo Horizonte RAPS’ health workers and highlight that recovery-oriented care and peer support are a real possibility in Brazil.

In this research, harm reducers are coauthors and report their own life experience. In this article, they also talk about the impact of this experience on their work and on the lives of users of mental health services, emphasizing the protagonism and exercise of citizenship by harm reducers.

Since the late 1980s, the Brazilian Psychiatric Reform, alongside the anti-asylum movement, has promoted a change in the way of treating people with mental suffering in the country. This process produced transformations in the flows and forms in which individuals with mental illnesses use the city, intending to make the city itself less unequal.

Taking into account that accessibility measures must consider individual, temporal, transportation and land-use elements as relevant, this study will focus on the relation between mobility and access, looking at subjects who were submitted to prolonged psychiatric hospitalisation and got discharged to live in the Residential Therapeutic Services – RTS, in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. In order to do that, the study used focus groups, observation, shadowing and in-depth interviews as methodologies strategies.

The results of the study demonstrate that: (a) there are a variety of ways of accessing the city; (b) displacements outside the facilities are characterised by the proximity of the destinations and by being made, mostly, on foot; (c) there is a restriction regarding the use of public transport system; and (d) access to money is a determinant factor for the accomplishment of mobility practices in city spaces. However, it is also observed that the mobility and access to the city can exert an effect of autonomy by allowing governance of the subjects’ own time and destination.

The intention of this work is to generate a tool to facilitate the visualization of urban parameters, critically discussing the current form of urban planning in Brazil and thus facilitate popular participation in decisions, considering that since 2001, it is foreseen by law that the elaboration processes of municipal urban plans in Brazil must have popular participation in order to be legitimized.

The method consists of three-dimensionally modeling the constructive potential within the lots, using the parameters of the Ribeirão das Neves city master plan (State of Minas Gerais, Brazil), using computer software, to predict the impact on landscape that the parameters generate and comparing different software programs.

With the proposed tool, it became clear that many of the city's parameters alone cannot reach the guidelines of the master plan, and the comparison of two software programs generated options for different local realities. It is a methodology that is able to provide excellent support for urban planning laws in Brazil to be more effective and less delayed.

The software was configured with a script developed by the Geoprocessing Laboratory of a university in Brazil and was used for the first time to completely analyze a municipal master plan for the metropolitan region of Belo Horizonte, generating a tool able to be used in master plans' review.

This paper seeks to develop experimental laboratory biological techniques for approximation of existing road networks, optimizing transport links, and designing alternative optimal solutions to current transport problems. It studies how slime mould of Physarum polycephalum approximate highway networks of Brazil.

The 21 most populous urban areas in Brazil are considered and represented with source of nutrients placed in the positions of slime mould growing substrate corresponding to the areas. At the beginning of each experiment slime mould is inoculated in São Paulo area. Slime mould exhibits foraging behavior and spans sources of nutrients (which represent urban areas) with a network of protoplasmic tubes (which approximate vehicular transport networks). The structure of transport networks developed by slime mould are analyzed and compared with families of known proximity graphs. The paper also imitates slime‐mould response to simulated disaster.

It was found that the plasmodium of P. polycephalum develops a minimal approximation of a transport network spanning urban areas. Physarum‐developed network matches man‐made highway network very well. The high degree of similarity is preserved even when high‐demand constraints are placed on repeatability of links in the experiments. Physarum approximates almost all major transport links. In response to a sudden disaster, gradually spreading from its epicenter, the Physarum transport networks react by abandoning transport links affected by disaster zone, enhancement of those unaffected directly by the disaster, massive sprouting from the epicenter, and increase of scouting activity in the regions distant to the epicenter of the disaster.

Experimental methods and computer analysis techniques presented in the paper lay a foundation of novel biological laboratory approaches to imitation and prognostication of socio‐economical developments.

The purpose of this paper is to describe six recovery-oriented peer support experiences and strategies implemented in different regions of Brazil in the past 12 years, and explore challenges to their development and potential for empowerment and citizenship.

In this paper, a group of stakeholders in mental health services involving people with lived experience of severe mental illness describe their experiences with services of peer support. These were all conducted in Brazil and in partnership with the International Recovery and Citizenship Collective (IRCC) and The Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health. The authors met monthly to exchange experiences, studies and practices, and six experiences were selected, described, analyzed and compared. A discussion of these experiences, their challenges, impact and potential followed.

The explored experiences emphasize that peer support, lived experience leadership and advocacy are feasible in the Brazilian mental health system and can help advance the Brazilian Psychiatric Reform.

This paper is limited to the experience of researchers already engaged in peer support work in six cities in Brazil. Although they represent several different regions in Brazil, there are areas it has not reached. Further research should address and provide a broader view of peer support and recovery strategies spreading in the country.

These experiences demonstrate the feasibility and acceptability of the recovering citizenship approach to reduce stigma, promote empowerment, autonomy, activism and advocacy, and increase a sense of belonging for those in recovery and marginalized by society. The Brazilian psychiatric reform can benefit from including peer supporters as mental health treatment providers.

This paper provides a novel view of the state of the art of peer support initiatives in Brazil and can inspire individuals, government and communities as they see and understand the breadth, depth and meanings of these peer support experiences.

The purpose of this research is to determine the major environmental impacts and, especially, to evaluate the geochemical characteristics of water of the lakes formed in abandoned quarries of ornamental rock of the Campo Belo Metamorphic Complex.

To do so, 12 quarries were chosen to be studied. They were mapped in a detail scale and their rocks were described and sampled for petrography analysis. Whenever present, the lakes were evaluated too. In situ measurements included pH, Eh, conductivity, resistivity, total dissolved solids and temperature. Water samples were collected to determine alkalinity, sulfates, chlorates, turbidity, suspended sediments and the concentrations of major and trace elements using the ICP‐OES.

Abandoned open‐pit mining operations have resulted in the creation of numerous pit lakes. About 90 per cent of the quarries visited and studied were abandoned or interdicted by environmental organs, what will probably lead to its subsequent abandonment. The quarries Borges and Gêmeos were two quarries of the abandoned quarries in the region, which has a lake formed in its trench. Gêmeos and Borges pit lakes analytical data shows clear correlation between the chemical compositions of the solute and the geological characteristics of the quarries. In spite of the differences found, the results showed a relatively quality water according to Brazilian legislation control values.

This was the first study done of pit lakes formed in abandoned ornamental rock quarries of Campo Belo Metamorphic Complex/Minas Gerais – Brazil. This research provides a better understanding of the gneisses pit lakes hydrogeochemistry, a subject neglected in scientific literature.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the combined effects of customer aggression, job stress, and emotional intelligence (EI) on job satisfaction and organizational turnover among managers from a developing country, i.e. Pakistan.

Data are collected from 230 respondents working as bank managers in Pakistan by means of a cross-sectional survey. The collected data are analyzed by employing a structural equation modeling (SEM) technique.

The employees perceive that job stress positively influences emotional exhaustion among employees. Furthermore, EI negatively influences job exhaustion to minimize the potential to lead it through to organizational turnover.

The combined effects of customer- and organization-related elements have been scarcely investigated – the heart and soul of contribution regarding this research. The moderation of EI to lessen the emotional exhaustion is a significant contribution to this study. Finally, the context of Pakistan’s banking sector is also unique to this study.

This chapter discusses the DRENURBS initiative in Belo Horizonte, a program for urban water drainage using natural ecosystems, using the sociotechnical framework. DRENURBS transformed the logic of canalizing water streams into a new, nature-based solution with significant positive impacts on biodiversity and social benefits. Following a theoretical debate on sustainability transition and innovation concepts, this chapter seeks to map the essential elements for building a successful institutional framework in the public sector for urban biodiversity improvements.

This paper aims to propose an integrative and result-driven health-care knowledge management (HKM) model and discuss the findings of a research that examines how the KM initiatives of a major private Brazilian hospital system are linked to its health-care performance outcomes.

Data were collected from a top-level Brazilian private hospital system (Mater Dei Healthcare System – MDHS), which is composed of three large hospitals internationally accredited by ISO 9001/2000, NIAHO and JCI. Multiple qualitative approaches were used to collect data such as 16 in-depth interviews with health professionals and managers, document analysis, participatory observation and benchmarking interviews with two reference hospital networks in Brazil.

The proposed health-oriented KM model is an expansion of the organizational knowing cycle model (Choo, 1996), adding absorptive capacity (ACAP) as a new construct. The paper discusses how ACAP integrates with sense-making, knowledge creation and decision-making processes within the health-care context. Information technology and clinical governance were identified as support factors to the HKM processes.

The paper presents a pragmatic and result-driven knowledge management (KM) model using health-care-welfare key performance indicators, as well as the emergence of KM as an integrative and strategic approach to hospital management.

The present study presents a knowledge-based perspective to clinical staff management, demonstrating the tangible results of KM initiatives that contribute to health and management performance outcomes.