LDA in scenic criticism: thematic trends of the Curitiba Festival through topic modeling

doi:10.22167/2675-6528-202602696

Article

September 30, 2026

LDA in scenic criticism: thematic trends of the Curitiba Festival through topic modeling

Lda in Scenic Criticism: Thematic Trends of the Curitiba Festival through Topic Modeling

Audrey Lopes Fontana; Evandro Marcos Saidel Ribeiro

DOI: 10.22167/2675-6528-202602696

Article derived from a Course Conclusion Work (TCC), with content based on the student’s original work and adapted to the editorial format of the E&S Magazine with the support of the ResumeAI tool, an artificial intelligence solution developed by Instituto Pecege for textual synthesis and organization.

Summary

The Curitiba Festival has established itself as a landmark of performing arts in Brazil, but its vast production lacked quantitative analyses to systematize thematic trends. The objective was to apply the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) algorithm to the synopses of the 2024, 2025, and 2026 editions of the Curitiba Festival to identify and analyze its main thematic trends. The methodology followed the CRISP-DM framework, employing the Gensim library for modeling, Coherence Score to define the ideal number of topics, and sensitivity tests to refine hyperparameters. With the selection of five thematic axes per year, the results revealed a multifaceted structure, ranging from the celebration of the trajectory of groups to productions focused on popular entertainment. The analysis demonstrated the effectiveness of Natural Language Processing techniques in transforming unstructured data into strategic knowledge, allowing for the identification of curatorial priorities and discursive macro-trends. It was concluded that the systematization of historical data through Natural Language Processing is a valuable tool for cultural management and strategic planning of large-scale events.

Keywords: CRISP-DM; Natural Language Processing; Theatrical Synopses.

1. Introduction

Established in 1992, the Curitiba Festival has solidified itself as one of the most significant landmarks of the performing arts in Brazil. Annually, the event brings together artists and audiences in the capital of Paraná, offering hundreds of performances in various cultural venues and streets of the city and metropolitan region, with both paid and free presentations. This characteristic positions the Curitiba Festival as one of the largest cultural events in the country (Curitiba Festival, 2025), promoting democratic access to culture and contributing to the formation of collective memories through the circulation of artistic knowledge and reflections on cultural practices (Government of Paraná, 2025).

Beyond its social and artistic impact, the festival plays a crucial role in boosting the local economy. The influx of artists, tourists, and professionals employed during the weeks of the event generates tens of millions of reais (Exame, 2025). The 33rd edition, held between March and April 2025, attracted over 200,000 spectators, a number that was maintained in the following edition, in 2026, with an estimated financial impact of 50 million reais (Bem Paraná, 2026).

Despite the well-documented historical and economic importance of the Curitiba Festival, the vast content production generated by the event lacked structured quantitative analyses that could systematize its thematic trends. There was no evidence of documentation linking the thematic evolution and representation of subjects in the performing arts throughout the decades of the festival’s existence, resulting in the absence of a clear vision of the thematic macro-trends in the collection of plays.

Faced with this challenge, data science offers tools to investigate the thematic trajectories of the plays presented at the Curitiba Festival, especially through Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques. NLP is an interdisciplinary area that integrates computing and linguistics, allowing machines to identify and interpret human language (Caseli et al., 2022). The advancement of these techniques has transformed NLP into an essential tool for analyzing large volumes of unstructured textual data, facilitating access to knowledge and insights that would be less accessible in manual analyses (Falcão et al., 2022).

Within the field of NLP, Topic Modeling is a technique that aims to identify and classify the abstract themes present in a collection of textual documents. For this purpose, the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) model is widely used. LDA is a generative statistical model that assumes that each textual document is composed of a mixture of diverse topics, and each topic is characterized by a distribution of semantically related words, revealing the complexity and overlap of subjects (Faleiros and Lopes, 2016). The effectiveness of Topic Modeling techniques and the LDA model has been demonstrated in cultural and humanities collections for mapping discursive macro-trends (Silva et al., 2021).

This quantitative approach is valuable for transforming the unstructured synopses of the plays presented at the Curitiba Festival into structured data, enabling the study of thematic prevalence and the identification of patterns of cultural and social change reflected in the performing arts over time. Thus, the present work is justified by the need to fill the gap in the systematic analysis of the festival’s thematic trends, offering a tool for cultural management and strategic planning of large-scale events. The objective of the work was to apply LDA topic modeling to the synopses of the shows from the 2024, 2025, and 2026 editions of the Curitiba Festival to identify and analyze the main thematic trends present in the programming.

2. Material and Methods

This work was characterized as a quantitative research, focused on the application of Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques for textual data analysis. The study was developed based on public information referring to the 32nd, 33rd, and 34th editions of the Festival de Curitiba, held in the years 2024, 2025, and 2026, respectively. The editions took place in the cities of Curitiba and its metropolitan region, in the state of Paraná, Brazil.

The adopted methodology followed the guidelines of the “Cross Industry Standard Process for Data Mining” (CRISP-DM), a widely recognized framework for data science projects. This process structured the research into sequential steps, which included business understanding, data understanding, data preparation, and modeling. This approach ensured a systematic organization of activities, from initial conception to the analysis phase (Gonzalez, 2019).

The unit of empirical analysis consisted of the synopses of the shows that comprised the programming of the Curitiba Festival in the 2024, 2025, and 2026 editions. Data collection was carried out by extracting information available on the event’s official online portal. The data were organized in an electronic spreadsheet format, containing the title of each work, its technical sheet, and the descriptive text corresponding to the synopsis.

For the data preparation stage, the synopsis texts were submitted to a cleaning and normalization process, implemented in Python language. The “Natural Language Toolkit” (NLTK) library was used to perform the procedures. Initially, characters were converted to lowercase, and punctuation, numbers, and special characters were removed from the texts.

Next, the “stopwords” removal technique was applied, which consisted of eliminating semantically irrelevant words for theme identification, such as prepositions and articles. Additionally, terms specific to the theatrical domain were removed that, despite their high frequency, had low informative content, such as “show”, “play”, “theater”, “festival”, and “Curitiba”. Proper names of theatrical groups and linguistic variations, such as “traz” and “nesta”, were also excluded. The resulting texts were then tokenized, transforming the sentences into lists of individual terms.

The analysis of themes was conducted using the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) algorithm, a generative probabilistic method used to discover latent structures in large text collections (Blei et al., 2003). The model implementation was carried out using the Gensim library. The processed textual data were converted into a term dictionary and, subsequently, into a “Bag-of-Words” (BoW) representation matrix, which mapped the frequency of each word in relation to the synopses.

The definition of the ideal number of topics (K) was established empirically through the calculation of the Coherence Score, seeking to maximize the semantic interpretability of the generated clusters. Sensitivity tests were performed for the fine-tuning of the hyperparameters of topic distribution per document (α) and word distribution per topic (β). The values of α analyzed included 0.01, 0.1, “asymmetric”, and “auto”, while the values of β analyzed were 0.01, 0.05, 0.1, and “auto”. The model was trained with a parameter of passes equal to 30 to ensure the convergence of the probability distributions (Castro, 2020).

For the interpretation and visualization of the modeling results, the pyLDAvis library was used. This tool allowed for interactive visualization of intertopic distance and the relevance of keywords for each thematic category identified. The qualitative interpretation of the semantic groupings of words contained in the synopses was aided by the relevance metric (λ) equal to 0.6, a value considered efficient for human interpretation, as it balances the probability of the term’s occurrence in the topic with its exclusivity (Sievert and Shirley, 2014). Additionally, each topic underwent a contributory analysis, with a λ value of 0.2, to ascertain the most specific terms and corroborate the interpretations of the proposed themes.

3. Results and Discussion

The application of the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) algorithm to the synopses of the 2024, 2025, and 2026 editions of the Curitiba Festival allowed for the identification and analysis of the main thematic trends that permeate the event’s programming. The methodology employed the CRISP-DM framework, using the Gensim library for modeling and the Coherence Score for defining the ideal number of topics. The results revealed a multifaceted structure of thematic axes, ranging from the celebration of the trajectory of groups to productions focused on popular entertainment, demonstrating the effectiveness of Natural Language Processing techniques for transforming unstructured data into strategic knowledge.

Coherence analysis and sensitivity tests were crucial in determining the optimal configuration of the LDA model. For the 2024 data, the model exhibited continuous coherence growth up to K equal to nine, achieving a Coherence Score of 0.4697. However, to maintain longitudinal comparability between years and avoid excessive topic fragmentation, K was chosen to be five, resulting in a Coherence Score of 0.4223, according to the elbow method. This methodological choice aimed for a balance between interpretability and model moderation, ensuring that the topics were sufficiently broad for future comparative analysis.

The sensitivity tests for the year 2024 indicated that the best performance was obtained with alpha parameters at 0.01 and beta at 0.01. These values suggested that the synopses from that year showed a tendency to focus on specific and well-defined themes, with less mixing of multiple subjects in a single document. This hyperparameter configuration is indicative of thematic clarity in the productions, where each synopsis tended to address a more restricted and cohesive set of ideas, facilitating the distinction between the topics identified by the model.

For the year 2025, coherence analysis revealed a clear first peak at K equal to five, with a Coherence Score of 0.3386, maintaining consistency with the comparison structure established for the other years of the festival. Although a second peak at K equal to ten was observed, it did not justify further thematic fragmentation, as it did not represent a significant increase in coherence that would compensate for the extra complexity. The decision to keep K equal to five for all years was fundamental for the longitudinal comparative analysis, allowing for a consistent view of trends.

The hyperparameter optimization for 2025 resulted in the best combination of alpha and beta at 0.1 for both. This elevation in hyperparameter values, compared to the previous year, indicated that the pieces presented in 2025 possessed a richer thematic blend. This year’s synopses transitioned through more than one topic simultaneously, suggesting a more diversified topic word distribution. This reflects a programming with greater thematic intersection and a narrative complexity that integrates different approaches into the same show.

In the year 2026, the coherence graph demonstrated a steeper growth trend for larger quantities of topics, reaching a peak at K equal to nine with a Coherence Score of 0.4001. However, a plateau of stability was observed between K equal to four and five. Despite the model with K equal to five having a slightly lower theoretical coherence (Coherence Score of 0.3418) compared to the peak, the methodological strategy maintained this quantity of topics to avoid excessive semantic fragmentation of the corpus, which would hinder the interpretation of the central axes of the pieces of the Curitiba Festival.

The hyperparameter optimization for 2026 revealed a relevant structural shift, with the best coherence performance obtained with alpha “asymmetric” and beta “auto”. This configuration reflected a reality where synopses were not homogeneously distributed, indicating the existence of themes that concentrated most of the productions. This behavior suggested a festival with more centralized thematic axes than in the years 2024 and 2025, pointing to a curation that perhaps focused on some major narratives or predominant styles.

Intertopic distance map and semantic interpretation of the clusters

In the three years analyzed, the spatial visualization of topics demonstrated an efficient distribution, where the five selected topics occupied distinct quadrants in the Cartesian plane, without overlap. This indicates that the applied LDA model was capable of isolating the different curatorial dimensions of the Curitiba Festival clearly and distinctly. The absence of overlap reinforces the validity of the thematic categorization, allowing for a clearer understanding of the focus areas of each edition of the festival.

2024 – Topic 1 – theatrical practice and representativeness

The first topic of 2024 revealed a mix of words related to the practice of theater and representativeness. Terms such as “workshop”, “practice”, and “actor” reflect a pedagogical and artistic training aspect, while “women” and “indigenous” point to the importance of representing minority groups. When analyzing the terms with the highest exclusivity, with a reduction in lambda from 0.6 to 0.2, the relevance of minority groups became even more evident, with the appearance of words referring to indigenous ethnicities, such as “yepá”, “mahsã”, and “tukano”, indicating a curatorial focus on diversity and inclusion.

2024 – Topic 2 – metalanguage and existentialism

This thematic grouping for 2024 focused on universal and subjective themes, encompassing terms such as “love”, “finding”, “search”, “secret”, and “world”. These words suggest plays with a strong dramatic and reflective charge. The analysis of the more specific terms from the axis corroborated this interpretation, including “politics” and “detective”, which add layers of narrative complexity. Furthermore, the presence of words like “dance” and, more exclusively, “Broadway”, demonstrated a musical and metalinguistic facet, indicating shows that explore theatrical language itself and its forms.

2024 – Topic 3 – performance, education, and accessibility

The third topic of 2024 was marked by the presence of terms such as “corporal”, “musical”, and “society”, evidencing a prioritization of body languages and their relationship with the social context. The inclusion of the word “workshops” and, with the reduction of lambda from 0.6 to 0.2, the emergence of terms such as “investigate”, “debate”, and “professionals”, suggested an educational and in-depth character. This topic also stood out for the presence of “surdas” and “surdo”, referring to the Surda Theatre Showcase, a facet of the Festival dedicated to the accessibility and inclusion of specific audiences.

2024 – Topic 4 – comedy, nationality, and diversity

The words “comedy”, “music”, and “show” present in this 2024 topic suggest that it represents a popular programming axis, encompassing music and humor performances. These performances address urban life and Brazilian diversity, an interpretation reinforced by the presence of the term “Brasil”. With the reduction of the lambda from 0.6 to 0.2 and the consequent increase in term specificity, words such as “hilarious”, “troupe”, “travesti”, “pop”, and “vogue” emerged, indicating a selection of performances that mix “queer” aesthetics with the celebration of life through laughter and the representation of diverse identities.

2024 – Topic 5 – imagery and playful

The fifth topic of 2024 focused on aesthetics and the creation of imaginary worlds in productions. It encompassed terms such as “city”, “creation”, “dreams”, “fairy”, and “memory”, suggesting a theater aimed at children and young adults. The increased specificity of terms, by reducing the lambda, brought the words “toys” and “playful” to the analysis, corroborating the interpretation of a focus on narratives and aesthetics that stimulate imagination and the children’s universe. This topic highlights the importance of the festival in offering programming for all ages, with a special focus on the young audience.

2025 – Topic 1 – black memory and identity

The first topic of 2025 focused on time and human relationships, using terms such as “people,” “memories,” “past,” “time,” “father,” and “relationships.” These words indicate pieces of family dramas that explore ancestry and identity construction over time. Analyzing the most exclusive words, terms related to Black identity became evident, with the presence of “Black people,” “Black women,” and “exile,” underscoring a strong component of representation and discussion about racial and historical issues in the festival’s programming.

2025 – Topic 2 – existentialism, urbanity, and everyday dramaturgy

The second topic of 2025 covered words that combine deep feelings such as “fear”, “love”, and “desire” with elements of the urban scene, such as “streets” and “construction”. This combination indicates an approach to existential issues and the exploration of the city’s occupation and its dynamics. By decreasing the lambda value from 0.6 to 0.2, the presence of terms such as “machine”, “garbage”, and “question”, along with proper character names, confirmed the mix between urbanity and existential drama, reflecting a concern with contemporary life and its challenges.

2025 – Topic 3 – comedy and scenic exchange

This grouping of 2025 was marked by terms from popular comedy and circus techniques, such as “clown”, “clowning”, “comedy”, and “humor”. The presence of these words suggests a strong inclination towards shows focused on entertainment and laughter. Furthermore, the emergence of more specific words, such as “Irã” (reference to Iran), “Colômbia”, and “documentary”, indicated that this topic also encompasses shows from other nationalities and formats, promoting cultural exchange and diversity of scenic languages at the festival.

2025 – Topic 4 – multilingualism and urban culture

The present 2025 topic contained terms that suggest high specificity and are related to urban culture. The presence of words such as “hip hop”, “photography”, and “collages” indicates experimental or multilingual performances, with an intersection with visual arts and street culture. This thematic axis reflects a program that dialogues with contemporary artistic expressions and urban cultural manifestations, exploring new forms of communication and interaction with the public.

2025 – Topic 5 – playful universe and childhood

The fifth topic of 2025 was dedicated to imagination and the child audience, based on the terms “world”, “dream”, “toys”, “games”, “dolls”, and “mother”. This constellation of words points to a curation attentive to narratives and aesthetics aimed at children. The exclusivity of the words “hopscotch”, “hula hoop”, “puppets”, and “shuttlecock” reinforced this interpretation, indicating a focus on games, play, and elements that directly refer to the playful universe and childhood, consolidating the offering of shows for this segment.

2026 – Topic 1 – life narratives, cultural trajectories and ancestry

This topic was configured as the central axis of the 2026 database. Words like “trajectory”, “memory”, and “narrative” indicate a strong retrospective component, where “life” is read through the lens of “culture” and “city”. This topic contextualizes the artist’s figure in their social environment and, by decreasing the lambda from 0.6 to 0.2, the interpretation was confirmed as more political, adding black identity and ancestry from the appearance of words like “land”, “Brazilian” and “black”. This demonstrates a programming engaged with social and historical issues in Brazil.

2026 – Topic 2 – artistic investigation and academic experimentation

In contrast, this 2026 topic shifted the focus from “who does the theater” to “how to do it”. The terms “process”, “research”, “workshop”, and “investigate” point to practical artistic creation and the methodology behind it. This is corroborated by direct mentions of the Federal University of Technology of Paraná, “utfpr”, and the UTFPR Theater, “tut”. This topic represents the methodology and pedagogy of the arts, focused on artistic creation as a field of continuous experimentation and the relationship between academia and theatrical practice.

2026 – Topic 3 – character relationships

This 2026 topic presented an abstract and dialectical nature, focusing on the conditions of existence of the work and human interactions. Analyzing it from a perspective of lambda equal to 0.6, terms relating the dynamics of encounter, such as the words “encounter”, “together”, and “place”, suggest that the works are seen as a collective event and connection. By specifying the terms from the analysis of lambda equal to 0.2, character names, such as “Petra”, “Alberto”, and “Marlene”, became present, and associated with terms related to tensions and clashes such as “conflicts”, “dispute”, and “to care for”, suggest the in-depth exploration of human relationships and their complexities.

2026 – Topic 4 – sensory dimension

This grouping from 2026 possesses a lyrical and aesthetic dimension, approaching the subjectivity of sensations. The term “sea” gained prominence as symbolism and a possible metaphor for immensity and fluidity, evoking landscapes and states of mind. The words “love”, “poetic”, and “images” reinforce the emotional charge and beauty of the productions, while terms like “body”, “gestures”, and “songs” show that the joint performance between theater, dance, and music is the prevalent language, indicating shows that explore synesthesia and the audience’s sensory experience.

2026 – Topic 5 – daily life and popular culture

Very specific terms present in this 2026 topic, such as “clown”, “radio”, “instruments”, and “coffee”, suggest a description of the artist’s daily life and inspirations. By reducing the lambda from 0.6 to 0.2, the terms “novelas” and “rpg” were found, which are part of popular culture and the collective imagination. This topic reflects a programming that dialogues with daily life, media references, and elements of popular culture, bringing accessible narratives to the stage that resonate with the audience’s common experience.

The analysis of the 15 identified topics demonstrates the prevalence of recurring themes in the theatrical productions of the Curitiba Festival between 2024 and 2026. Themes such as the representativeness of minority groups, including Black people, Indigenous people, women, and people with disabilities, reinforce the festival’s commitment to diversity and the promotion of social reflections. The research also revealed the continuous occurrence of topics related to the theatrical craft, such as workshops, research, investigation, and education, which underscores the event’s importance in the circulation of artistic knowledge and the training of new talents. A trend was also observed in performances that use metalinguistics, multilingualism, and sensory dimensions, exploring the body through dance, music, and theater, alongside topics related to children’s audiences and comedy, which were present in all three years analyzed. This breadth suggests that the festival is a democratic event, designed for all audiences and consolidated as an important tool for creating collective memories and fostering cultural dialogue.

4. Conclusion

The study aimed to apply Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling to the synopses of the 2024, 2025, and 2026 editions of the Curitiba Festival to identify and analyze its main thematic trends. Through the systematic application of the CRISP-DM framework and Natural Language Processing techniques, a multifaceted structure of five thematic axes was verified in each year. The prevalence of themes such as the representativeness of minority groups, including Black people, Indigenous people, women, and people with disabilities, was identified, reinforcing the festival’s commitment to diversity and the promotion of social reflections. Recurrence of topics related to theatrical practice, such as workshops, research, and education, was also observed, underscoring the event’s role in the circulation of artistic knowledge. The programming also revealed a trend of performances that explore metalinguistics, multilingualism, and sensory dimensions, integrating dance, music, and theater, alongside themes focused on children’s audiences and comedy, which were present in all three years analyzed. The absence of overlap between topics demonstrated the model’s ability to isolate the festival’s distinct curatorial dimensions.

The analysis demonstrated the effectiveness of Natural Language Processing techniques for transforming unstructured textual data into strategic knowledge, enabling the identification of curatorial priorities and discursive macro-trends. This systematization of historical data constitutes a valuable tool for cultural management and strategic planning of large-scale events, validating qualitative perceptions and establishing a basis for future analyses. It is suggested that the continuous application of this approach, year after year, may identify patterns of cultural and social change reflected in the performing arts, contributing to the preservation of memory and to a more in-depth planning of cultural practices in Brazil.

Bibliographic References

Blei et al., 2003 [Referência completa não encontrada no documento original]

Caseli, H.; Freitas, C.; Viola, R. Processamento de Linguagem Natural. In: Short courses of the 37th Brazilian Symposium on Data Bases. Búzios, RJ, Brasil, 2022.

Castro, B. Y. S. 2020. Como modelar tópicos através de Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) através da biblioteca Gensim.

Ehlert, Ana. Festival de Curitiba 2026: R$ 50 mi e 200 mil pessoas. Bem Paraná, 14 abr 2026. Disponível em < https://www.bemparana.com.br/noticias/economia/festival-de-curitiba-2026-50-milhoes-economia/>. Acesso em: 19 abr. 2026.

Falcão, L. C. J.; Lopes, B; Souza, R. R. Absorção das tarefas de processamento de Linguagem Natural (NLP) pela Ciência da Informação (CI): uma revisão da literatura para tangibilização do uso de NLP pela CI. Em Questão, v. 28, n. 1, p. 283-305, 2021.

Faleiros, T. P.; Lopes, A. A. Modelos probabilísticos de tópicos: desvendando o latent Dirichlet allocation. Relatórios Técnicos ICMC-USP, n. 409, 2016.

Festival de Curitiba. 2025. Linha do Tempo História. Disponível em <https://festivaldecuritiba.com.br/historia/>. Acesso em: 16 out. 2025.

Garrett Jr., Gilson. R$ 50 mi de impacto e 200 mil espectadores: maior festival de teatro do país muda cidade brasileira. Exame, São Paulo, 26 mar. 2025. Disponível em: <https://exame.com/casual/r-50-milhoes-e-200-mil-espectadores-maior-festival-de-teatro-do-pais-transforma-cidade-brasileira/>. Acesso em: 14 out. 2025.

Gonzalez, Μ. 2019. CRISP-DM na prática. Disponível em: <https://medium.com/@mgonzaleze/crisp-dm-na-pr%C3%A1tica-65be0ee92ada>. Acesso em: 18 out. 2025.

Governo do Paraná. 2025. Maior do Brasil, Festival de Curitiba terá 350 espetáculos nas próximas semanas. Disponível em: <https://www.parana.pr.gov.br/aen/Noticia/Maior-do-Brasil-Festival-de-Curitiba-tera-350-espetaculos-nas-proximas-semanas>. Acesso em: 14 out. 2025.

Sievert, C; K. E. Shirley. 2024. LDAvis: A method for visualizing and interpreting topics. Proceedings of the Workshop on Interactive Language Learning, Visualization, and Interfaces. p. 63-70.

Silva, Nádia Felix Felipe da et al. Inferência de tópicos para identificação de subáreas temáticas de projetos culturais. Perspectivas em Ciência da Informação, Belo Horizonte, v. 26, n. 1, p. 57-79, jan./mar. 2021.

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October 22, 2026

Forecast of Aggregate Default in the Brazilian Financial System by Sarimax Model with Macroeconomic Variables

Aggregate non-payment in the Brazilian financial system is a crucial indicator of credit risk, the prediction of which is regulated by CMN Resolutions n.° 4.557/2017 and 4.966/2021 for the prospective measurement of expected losses. Aggregate non-payment was modeled and predicted using the SARIMAX model, projecting its trajectory until December 2026 under optimistic, base, and pessimistic scenarios. 164 monthly observations (July/2012 to February/2026) and macroeconomic variables such as unemployment, Selic, IPCA, IBC-Br, and household debt were used. The specification with contemporaneous variables was selected based on information criteria and coefficient stability, and residual diagnostics confirmed statistical adequacy, with a MAPE of 3.12%. Historical non-payment ranged between 4.33% and 7.64%. The estimation identified unemployment (β = 0.2534; p < 0.001) and Selic (β = 0.2128; p < 0.001) as the main positive determinants, with strong temporal persistence (AR(1) = 0.8965). Selic showed increasing correlation with non-payment (r = 0.62 at lag 12), while unemployment demonstrated a contemporaneous effect (r = 0.33). Projections indicated non-payment between 6.30% and 7.98% in December 2026, with a range of 1.68 percentage points, highlighting direct implications for provisioning in financial institutions.

Keywords: Unemployment; Predictive modeling; Monetary policy; Loss provisioning; Time series.

October 22, 2026

Stakeholder Engagement Factors in International Technology Transfer to a Public Hospital

This study described the critical factors perceived for stakeholder engagement in international technology transfer in a public hospital, with a focus on planning. The objective was to describe these conditioning factors, according to the perception of professionals. A single case study was conducted, applying a questionnaire to 25 professionals and using content analysis, complemented by descriptive tabulations. The main obstacles identified were resistance to change (72%), funding (64%), lack of communication (60%), and bureaucracy (40%). Only 28% of respondents recognized the existence of adequate tools for stakeholder management, while 48% denied it and 24% did not know. Exploratory cross-tabulations indicated variations in the assessment of influence according to time of practice, but did not establish causal relationships. Lack of engagement was associated with delays, low adherence, waste of resources, communication failures, compromised knowledge absorption, and risks to patient safety. The conclusions were limited to the perceptions of the researched group and supported preliminary recommendations for intersectoral communication and coordination.

Keywords: Case study; Project Management; Health innovation; Stakeholders; Public sector.

October 22, 2026

Combating Commercial Electric Energy Losses Using a Time Series Model

Commercial losses of electric energy represented one of the main challenges for distributors, directly impacting economic sustainability and supply quality. The efficiency of time series models, focusing on exponential smoothing techniques, was evaluated in forecasting billed consumption of consumer units, to support the identification of deviations associated with non-technical losses. Historical data of monthly consumption from an electric energy distributor in Brazil were used, segmented by behavior profiles (stationarity, trend, and seasonality). Simple exponential smoothing models, Holt, and Holt-Winters (additive and multiplicative) were applied, compared to a traditional moving average. The Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) was the evaluation criterion. Additionally, the ETS approach was employed for automatic model selection and residual diagnostic tests, such as Ljung-Box and autocorrelation function analysis. The results demonstrated that more robust models showed a greater capacity for adaptation to the series’ characteristics and lower error, with a highlight on superior performance in scenarios with trend. For seasonal series, the ETS model showed a greater capacity for adaptation to transitions. It was concluded that the use of more structured time series models contributed significantly to the improvement of forecast accuracy and offered relevant analytical support for the identification of commercial losses and the optimization of operational and commercial processes in the electric sector.

Keywords: Energy distribution; MAPE; Optimization; Consumption forecasting; Exponential smoothing.

Economy

October 19, 2026

End of the 6×1 scale: what do the numbers allow us to conclude?

Following the promulgation of the end of the 6×1 shift system, the debate on the shorter workday moves to implementation and requires distinguishing social benefits from economic costs. The end of the 6×1 shift system transitioned from legislative discussion to a constitutional change in Brazil. On October 16, 2026, the National Congress promulgated Constitutional Amendment No. 141/2026, originating from Proposal […]

Artificial Intelligence

October 16, 2026

Why study if AI exists?

When answers become easy, learning comes to mean more than just arriving at them. Why do I need to learn this if I can ask an artificial intelligence? This type of question has accompanied education for decades. Why learn an operation if a calculator exists? Why memorize information if it can be found […]

Tax Management

October 15, 2026

Pink tax and the gender of price

How different marketing treatments for men and women are incorporated by consumption taxation Imagine a shelf on which two razors of the same brand and intended for the same purpose are displayed side by side: one has dark packaging and promises strength, precision, and efficiency; the other comes in shades of pink or […]

Health

October 13, 2026

The missing link in health transformation

Why is innovation not enough to drive changes in organizations and health systems Digital transformation has become a strategic priority for health systems worldwide. Electronic health records, artificial intelligence, telemedicine, remote monitoring, and data analysis are now part of the strategic agenda of governments and health organizations. Paradoxically, […]

Marketing

October 09, 2026

Bitcoin or pets: what Artificial Intelligence would not see

A real-life consumer intelligence case shows what gets left out of the brief A few years ago, an American insurance company hired a specialized consumer intelligence firm to answer three questions: The insurer was also considering launching paid insurance in bitcoin. At the time, the consultancy’s workflow was as follows: the analyst created a query […]

School Management

October 06, 2026

The school is not a casino: when trading cards become currency in the playground

Why, for certain students, does school manage to offer so few experiences of achievement? The World Cup is over. Brazil left the competition, the school holidays came, the final was played and the football calendar moved on. It would be reasonable to imagine that, with the end of the tournament and the return to classes, […] would also begin

Energy Transition

September 30, 2026

Renewable energies: the Brazilian advantage

Brazil needs to invest in the capacity to transform natural resources into innovation, productivity, and development. Talking about energy is talking about development. Behind industry, transportation, services, cities, and increasingly artificial intelligence, there is an energy infrastructure that sustains the economy. Understanding a country’s energy matrix is understanding […]

Data Analysis

September 30, 2026

When the data changes, has reality changed?

An analysis of almost 20 million teaching positions-year between 2020 and 2025 shows how changes in population composition and record production can alter the interpretation of historical series Between 2020 and 2025, the number of formal teaching employment positions identified in RAIS (Annual Relation of Social Information), from the Ministry of Labor, […]

Artificial Intelligence

September 28, 2026

Artificial intelligence and the trends

Why do so many people join in on the fun with ChatGPT? I was never the trend person. I still am not. Some pass through my timeline, I see them, I find them interesting but not to the point of trying them out. This was the case, inclusive, with some recent waves of images made by artificial intelligence, like the 80s trend, the one that […]

Tax Management

September 01, 2026

Tax reform and estate planning in the countryside

Efficiency in managing taxes facilitates governance and allows for the organization of family succession. Rural wealth organization has become a strategic measure in light of the tax reform in Brazil, which came into effect this year. The planning of activities and rural wealth management, through tools such as the transition from an Individual to […]

Renata de Gaspari Valdejão Almeida

Artificial Intelligence

August 05, 2026

Inside the company and off the radar: the risks of Shadow AI

According to Microsoft, 75% of professionals already use artificial intelligence at work without company approval. The use of generative artificial intelligence is already part of the corporate routine. Tools like ChatGPT, Copilot, and other platforms help professionals produce texts, analyze data, create presentations, and accelerate tasks in practically all sectors. But this advance […]

Renata de Gaspari Valdejão Almeida

Strategy

July 02, 2026

The future as a competence

Academic interest reinforces the projection of scenarios as an essential tool for decision-making. While some companies are still trying to get the next step right, others are already working with multiple possible futures — and preparing for all of them. But after all, what does it mean to “think about the future”? Is it a trend, a strategy, or a new competence that […]

Renata de Gaspari Valdejão Almeida

Innovation

Technology

May 21, 2026

Agro SP Corridor: innovation, institutional articulation and future

Pecege commands the executive operation of the 400 km ecosystem activities that became known as the Brazilian agro Silicon Valley In 2025, in addition to taking over the management of the Piracicaba Technology Park, the Pecege Institute was also designated to command the executive operation of the State Agribusiness Innovation Corridor activities, the so-called […]

Education

April 27, 2026

How to turn a TCC into a business

New management of the Piracicaba Technology Park offers consulting to MBA graduates The new project director of the Piracicaba Technology Park (PTP), Alexandre Barreto, often says that one of the greatest rewards he has ever had in life was seeing his MBA USP/Esalq students structure companies from their final projects […]

Technology

March 20, 2026

The human repertoire in the age of AI

Critical thinking and creativity are irreplaceable in the work of a marketing professional Artificial Intelligence (AI) is capable of incredible feats, but it does not yet possess the judgment, empathy, intuition, and strategic creativity necessary to do the job of a good marketing professional. In this area, it is important to know how to use the tool to automate […]

Renata de Gaspari Valdejão Almeida

Agribusiness

Innovation

February 23, 2026

ESG as a growth strategy in a cooperative in RS

Santa Clara balances social and environmental responsibility with innovation Founded in 1911 by Italian immigrants in Carlos Barbosa, in the Serra Gaúcha region, Cooperativa Santa Clara is an example that it is possible to balance economic growth with social and environmental responsibility. From a small cheese production company, the organization has evolved into a […]

Renata de Gaspari Valdejão Almeida

Agribusiness

Innovation

January 22, 2026

Brazil free of Foot-and-Mouth Disease: what changes for Brazilian beef?

With a herd of over 200 million head of cattle, the country is currently the leader in exports. Brazil recently received, for the first time, the certification of country free of foot -and-mouth disease without vaccination, conferred by the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH). The seal strengthens the country’s position as a reliable supplier of meat for the […]

Renata de Gaspari Valdejão Almeida

Innovation

December 09, 2025

Innovation: the new cycle of the Piracicaba Technology Park

Instituto Pecege assumes management, betting on the creation of new businesses Starting in 2026, Instituto Pecege will assume the management of the Piracicaba Technology Park (PTP). Among its responsibilities will be the administration, operation, maintenance, and expansion of the park, in addition to fostering activities in innovation, entrepreneurship, and science and technology. The choice was made […]

Renata de Gaspari Valdejão Almeida

July 06, 2026

Large-Scale Architecture: DSR-SCRUM Change Management

Mônica Alessandra Guerios; Maria do Carmo Assis Todorov Abstract generated by ResumeAI, an artificial intelligence solution developed by Instituto Pecege focused on synthesis and writing. Architecture and urbanism are configured as essential bases in an increasingly complex and challenging urban space, where the intrinsic connection between social, environmental, and technological issues […]