2008 Projects

Title: iTEAM - integrated Transportation and Energy Activity-based Model

Starting Date: 1st April 2009

Expected Completion Date: 31st March 2012

Principal Investigator: Francisco Câmara Pereira

Institutions/Research Centers involved: FCTUC, IST, FEUP

Companies involved: ISA – Intelligent Sensing Anywhere, S. A.

URL: http://greenhomes.dei.uc.pt/

Keywords: Urban Modeling, Transports, Energy, Micro-simulation, Urban Metabolism

Abstract:

This research project proposes to develop an integrated model of land use, transportation, and energy for the evaluation of a range of "green policies" aiming at enhancing sustainability and well-being. The model will include both individual/household behavior components and organization/firm behavior components and is based in the simulation of agents' behavior at a micro level. The outputs of the model can be translated to aggregate energy and resource consumptions which can be translated and related to aggregate system dynamics approaches e.g. urban metabolism models. The proposed model will be calibrated for, at least, one Portuguese city and used to asses a range of "green policies" which would be of interest for this specific urban area, comparing, for this case study, the practical impact of considering or disregarding different modeling frameworks.

Title: Lean, Agile, Resilient and Green Supply Chain Management: LARG_SCM

Starting Date: 1 June 2009                                   

Expected Completion Date: 31 May 2012

PI: V. Cruz Machado

Institutions/Research Centers involved:

• Unidade de Investigação e Desenvolvimento em Engenharia Mecânica e Industrial (UNIDEMI) - Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa (FCT/UNL)
• Instituto de Desenvolvimento de Novas Tecnologias
• Universidade da Beira Interior

Companies involved: Volkswagen Autoeuropa, Delphi, Delta, Edia

URL: http://xenofonte.demi.fct.unl.pt/unidemi/

Keywords: Lean management, Supply Chain Management, Green production, Resilient systems 

Abstract:

A lean company means nearly zero inventories; a resilient company must have enough inventories to react to the effects of disruptions that may occur in a supply chain. These concepts seem to be contradictory. However, it would be ideal to have both systems working together in a company. These facts advice for further research in production and supply chain management; lean and resilient concepts require to be modelled on a compatibility basis.

The main objective of this research project is to develop a deep understanding of interrelationships (conflicts and trade-offs) across lean, agile, resilient and green manufacturing paradigms, in the auto industry sector. This understanding is believed to be vital to turn these concepts really compatible. This achievement will provide an important contribution for a competitive and sustainable environment; its justification will be based on better “lean, agile, resilient and green production systems” at the company level, with implications at the overall supply chain level and its agents.

The research will be centred on the investigation of the conditions to increase company resilience, without affecting (or significantly reducing) the maintenance of a lean manufacturing environment. In addition, it addresses the need to develop a design for environment system, to assure that the production system management is really sustainable and that it continues maintaining its lean benefits.

The idea is to develop a model and methodologies to improve the organizational agility design, in order to speed-up the bridging between states that require more or less degree of resilience, at both the company and the supply chain levels.

Title: MISC - Massive Information Scavenging with Intelligent Transportation Systems

Starting Date: 01-07-2009

Expected Completion Date: 30-06-2012

PI: João Barros

Institutions/Research Centers involved: FEUP, FCUP, UA, IT

Companies involved: Biodevices, BAE, MacLaren Electronics, Petratex, STCP

Keywords: Intelligent Transportation Systems, Distributed Data Gathering, Network Coding, Human Stress Monitoring

See a visualization of MISC data overlaid on Google Earth depicting a voyage from Porto to Aveiro

Abstract:

The goal of the MISC project is to devise efficient, secure and dependable system architectures for a massively distributed urban scanner composed of private cars, taxis, city buses and trucks, which, while pursuing their usual routes at various speeds in a scattered fashion, are capable of gathering, storing, processing, and disseminating massive amounts of data. Depending on the sensing equipment installed in the vehicle, the captured data sets can be extremely rich and varied, including information about road conditions, traffic characteristics, commercial services, environmental parameters, and sampled measurements of critical infrastructures (such as the water distribution network and the local power grid). As an important addition, the envisioned massive data gathering system shall take the human factor into consideration, exploiting novel wearable sensing technology to collect vital biomedical data about drivers and passengers on urban transportation.

Title: Assessment and Development of Integrated Systems for Electric Vehicles

Starting Date: April 1st, 2009

Expected Completion Date: March 31st 2012

PI: Jorge José Gomes Martins

Institutions/Research Centers involved: Universidade do Minho, Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto, Instituto Superior Técnico

Companies involved: Simoldes, Efacec, Inteli, CEIIA

Keywords: Electric vehicles, Hybrid Vehicles, Smart Grids, Range extenders, Sustainability, Motor-in-Wheel, Flexible Design, electric mobility

Abstract:

The Portuguese government is committed to promote the development of sustainable vehicles as part of a strategy to accomplish new paradigms of mobility. This gives the opportunity to the MIT-Portugal Program to develop research activities in relevant technological areas. The MOBI-MPP project includes various tasks, based on specific partnerships between industrial companies and research/technological centres, developed under an integrated engineering approach in terms of reference specifications and benchmarking, design philosophy and manufacturing constraints:

• Modelling of the Energy Management System (EMS)
• Laboratory Implementation of the EMS
• Prototype Implementation
• Hybridization of the Electrical Vehicle
• Design of a Motor-in-Wheel Unit
• Sustainable Automotive Components
• Smart Grids
• Flexible Design Concepts and Sustainability Assessment