ISEP - GECAD - Grupo de Investigação em Engenharia do Conhecimento a Apoio à Decisão
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GECAD is a research unit settled in the Institute of Engineering - Polytechnic of Porto (ISEP/IPP) having as mission the promotion and development of scientific research in the Knowledge and Decision Sciences domains, having Information Technologies as support. It involves 2 research groups: Intelligent Systems and Power Energy Systems. GECAD is known worldwide in its areas of research, leading some research domains. [-]
GECAD is coordinated by Prof. Zita Vale, and recognized by FCT (Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation). 79 researchers are involved in GECAD, including 37 with PhD degree. It is the largest R&D unit from the Polytechnic sub-system of Portugal.
GECAD was involved in more than 60 R&D projects (more than 20 on-going projects now) with external funding. We are one of the Portuguese R&D units with more success at this level. Just a number, 8, is the number of projects assigned to GECAD in the last FCT Call for Projects. GECAD has a tremendous success in publications in important scientific journals; many special issues of these journals are edited by GECAD researchers.
Understanding its responsibility for the Society development, GECAD has decided to adopt a new slogan: “Intelligence for a Sustainable, Safe, and Inclusive World”. For this reason, the most recent GECAD projects are applied to areas like Energy, Transportation, Environment, Economy, Inclusion, Critical Infrastructures, Security, Information Access and new ways of Socialization.
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- A multi-agent environment in roboticsPublication . Oliveira, Eugénio; Camacho, R.; Ramos, CarlosThe use of Multi-Agent Systems as a Distributed AI paradigm for Robotics is the principal aim of our present work. In this paper we consider the needed concepts and a suitable architecture for a set of Agents in order to make it possible for them to cooperate in solving non-trivial tasks. Agents are sets of different software modules, each one implementing a function required for cooperation. A Monitor, an Acquaintance and Self-knowledge Modules, an Agenda and an Input queue, on the top of each Intelligent System, are fundamental modules that guarantee the process of cooperation, while the overall aim is devoted to the community of cooperative Agents. These Agents, which our testbed concerns, include Vision, Planner, World Model and the Robot itself.
- Addressing the facilities layout design problem through constraint logic programmingPublication . Tavares, José; Ramos, Carlos; Neves, JoséOne of the most difficult problems that face researchers experimenting with complex systems in real world applications is the Facility Layout Design Problem. It relies with the design and location of production lines, machinery and equipment, inventory storage and shipping facilities. In this work it is intended to address this problem through the use of Constraint Logic Programming (CLP) technology. The use of Genetic Algorithms (GA) as optimisation technique in CLP environment is also an issue addressed. The approach aims the implementation of genetic algorithm operators following the CLP paradigm.
- Decision-Support Tool for the Establishment of Contracts in the Electricity MarketPublication . Azevedo, Filipe; Vale, Zita; Vale, António A.The Pool, in many countries, was adopted for the participants of the electricity market to trade the electrical energy in a basis of each half-hour or one hour of the next day. However, like the traditional markets, the agents of electrical market are now exposed to the volatility of market price. In some countries, to face that problem and to turn the market more liquid, the derivatives markets – futures and options - were introduced to negotiate products with electrical energy as underlying active. In this context, there is a need of decisionsupport tools to assist those agents for the use of derivatives markets with the objective of practicing the hedge. In this paper, we present a decision model that supports producers to establish contracts with the objective to maximize the profit expected utility.
- Hedging Using Futures and Options Contracts in the Electricty MarketPublication . Azevedo, Filipe; Vale, Zita; Vale, António A.Since the 80’s with the experience of Chile, the electric sector has suffered, in many counties, a process of deregulation and liberalization. In almost of the countries, that process originated the appearance of a Pool where the participants of the market trade the electrical energy on a basis of half-hour or one hour of the next day. However, like the traditional markets, the agents of electricity markets are now exposed to the volatility of market price, so far inexistent in those markets. In some countries, to face that problem and to turn the market more liquid have been introduced derivatives markets – futures and options, to negotiate products with underlying active the electrical energy. In this context, there is a need of decision-support tools that allow those agents to use derivatives markets with the objective of practicing the hedge and simultaneously increase their results. In this paper, we present a decision model that supports producers in the establishment of contracts with the objective to maximize the profit expected utility. The paper presents a group of examples of the use of this decision-support system.
- MASCEM: A Multiagent System That Simulates Competitive Electricity MarketsPublication . Praça, Isabel; Ramos, Carlos; Vale, Zita; Cordeiro, ManuelAround the world, the electricity industry, which has long been dominated by vertically integrated utilities, is experiencing major changes in the structure of its markets and regulations. Owing to new regulations, it's evolving into a distributed industry in which market forces drive electricity's price. The industry is becoming competitive; a market environment is replacing the traditional centralized-operation approach. This transformation is often called the deregulation of the electricity market. MASCEM, a multiagent simulator system, is a valuable framework for evaluating new rules, new behavior, and new participants in the numerous electricity markets that are moving toward liberalization and competition.
- Optimal Contracts Allocation Using Mean Variance Optimization MethodPublication . Azevedo, Filipe; Vale, ZitaThe process of restructuration and liberalization of power systems are a constant all over the world. However, those processes, due to the specific characteristics of the “product” electricity, create uncertainty and new risks that did not exist when power systems were vertically integrated. Those changes origin the necessity of tools that allow the participants of the electricity markets to practice the hedge against the volatility of the System Marginal Price. In that sense, we present in this paper a decision-support application, based on a Mean Variance Optimization Method trying to give a response to the necessities of the electricity markets participants. The results show that the proposed method can be useful to producers and also to others participants of electricity markets like Brokers and Load Serving Entities (LSE).
- An agent-based approach to support decisions on electronic marketplacesPublication . Viamonte, Maria João; Ramos, Carlos; Rodrigues, Maria de Fátima Coutinho; Cardoso, José; Ramos, Carlos; Vale, ZitaWith the increasing importance of Electronic Commerce across the Internet the need for software agents to support both customers and suppliers in buying and selling goods/services is growing rapidly. It is becoming increasingly evident that in a few years the Internet will host a large number of interacting software agents. Most of them will be economically motivated, and will negotiate a variety of goods and services. It is therefore important to consider the economic incentives and behaviours of economic software agents, and to use all available means to anticipate their collective interactions. This paper addresses this concern by presenting a Market Simulator designed for analysing agent market strategies based on a complete understanding of buyer and seller behaviours, preference models and pricing algorithms. The system includes agents that are capable of increasing their performance with their own experience, by adapting to the market conditions. The results of the negotiations between agents will be analysed by Data mining tools in order to extract rules that will give the agents feedback to improve their strategies. We will describe the characteristics and technologies involved in the architecture we are specifying and developing.
- Fabricare: an agent-based system for manufacturingPublication . Sousa, Paulo; Neves, José; Ramos, Carlos; Ramos, Carlos; Vale, ZitaDue to current and future trends in manufacturing, computer-supported manufacturing systems are now more distributed than the traditional CIM approach. This paper presents a prototype system for the problem of scheduling of manufacturing orders, focusing on the internal implementation of each type of agent in the system.
- Hybrid methods for the maintenance scheduling of generating units problemPublication . Gomes, Nuno; Cordeiro, Manuel; Vale, Zita; Ramos, Carlos; Ramos, Carlos; Vale, ZitaReal world search and optimization problems are usually characterized by having large search spaces, being difficult to model and being constantly changing. Constraint Logic Programming (CLP) has proved to be a good tool to model and solve this type of problems despite some efficiency problems. It seams that the problem is related to some lack of a “global perspective” of the constraints in the search process, One way of overcoming this problem is to hybridize Constraint Logic Programming with Linear Programming (LP) in order to enhance the solving process by finding feasible solutions early in the search by “global reasoning”. In this work we propose 4 hybrid methods for solving a Maintenance Scheduling of Generating Units problem. The main idea is to take the advantages of both CLP and LP avoiding their problems. Some initial tests show that for some conditions all the hybrid methods can perform better than CLP alone.
- Proposal for the combination of ontology assemble and ontology mapping processesPublication . Silva, Nuno; Santos, Jorge; Rocha, João; Ramos, Carlos; Vale, ZitaOntology mapping is dependent on the matching algorithms, which in turn depends on the semantics of the ontologies. This proposal grounds on two distinct technologies: ontology mapping and ontology assemble. The ontology mapping system is a service-oriented system in which autonomous plug-able services capture and represent the ontology mapping domain’s expertise. Automatic ontology mapping systems perform poorly due to the lack of ontologies’ semantics to reason upon. The assemble process aims to integrate well-founded, proofed knowledge into the domain ontologies, providing extra semantics. Exploiting such semantics indistinct phases of the ontology mapping process, we envisage that such semantics would be very useful in the improvement of the automatic mapping results. Conversely, the ontology mapping experiences would provide feed-back to the assemble process, suggesting its improvement too. The cyclic improvement would run indefinitely. This paper suggests therefore the combination of efforts from both the assemble and mapping processes towards a better semantic relations and assembled ontologies.