Section: Partnerships and Cooperations

European Initiatives

Collaborations in European Programs, Except FP7 & H2020

• Program: COST

• Project acronym: TD1207

• Project title: Mathematical Optimization in the Decision Support Systems for Efficient and Robust Energy Networks

• Duration: 04/2014 - 04/2017

• Coordinator: Thorsten Koch (ZIB, Germany)

• INOCS partners: Bernard Fortz, Martine Labbé

• Abstract: Energy Production and Distribution (EP&D) is among the biggest challenges of our time, since energy is a scarce resource whose efficient production and fair distribution is associated with many technical, economical, political and ethical issues like environmental protection and people health. EP&D networks have rapidly increased their size and complexity, e.g. with the introduction and interconnection of markets within the EU. Thus, there is an increasing need of systems supporting the operational, regulatory and design decisions through a highly inter-disciplinary approach, where experts of all the concerned fields contribute to the definition of appropriate mathematical models. This is particularly challenging because these models require the simultaneous use of many different mathematical optimization tools and the verification by experts of the underlying engineering and financial issues. The COST framework is instrumental for this Action to be able to coordinate the inter-disciplinary efforts of scientists and industrial players at the European level.

• Program: JPI Urban Europe

• Project acronym: e4-share

• Project title: Models for Ecological, Economical, Efficient, Electric Car-Sharing

• Duration: 10/2014 - 09/2017

• Coordinator: Markus Leitner (University of Vienna, Austria)

• Other partners:

  • Austrian Institute of Technology, Austria

  • Université Libre de Bruxelles (INOCS), Belgium

  • University of Bologna, Italy

  • tbw research GesmbH, Austria

• Abstract: Car-sharing systems and the usage of electric cars become increasingly popular among urban citizens. Thus, providing vast opportunities to meet today’s challenges in terms of environmental objectives, sustainability and living quality. Our society needs to manage a transformation process that ultimately shall lead to fewer emissions and less energy consumption while increasing the quality of public space available. In e4-share, the team will lay the foundations for efficient and economically viable electric car-sharing systems by studying and solving the optimization problems arising in their design and operations. A main goal is to derive generic methods and strategies for optimized planning and operating in particular for flexible variants which best meet preferences of customers but impose nontrivial challenges to operators. This project will develop novel, exact and heuristic, numerical methods for finding suitable solutions to the optimization problems arising at the various planning levels as well as new, innovative approaches considering these levels simultaneously.