8th IEEE International Conference on Networking, Sensing and Control

About the speakerEttore Bompard received his Master and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Politecnico di Torino, Italy. In May 1997 he joined the Politecnico di Torino, Department of Electrical Engineering, where he is presently Associate Professor of Power Systems; he is also Research Associate at the Institute for Economic Research on Firms and Growth of the (Italian) National Research Council in Moncalieri, Italy. He is Deputy Director for International Relations of the Doctorate School of Politecnico di Torino and Vice-Dean for International Culture of the First Faculty of Engineering of Politecnico di Torino. He directed and cooperated in various research projects on the security of power systems as critical infrastructures, with special reference to malicious threats, also in cooperation with the Joint Research Center of the European Commission (Institute for Protection and Security of Citizens – Ispra) and in the framework of Next Generation Infrastructure and NATO, Security Through Science programs. He is the scientific coordinator of the starting project SESAME (Securing the European Electricity Supply Against Malicious And Accidental Threats), co-founded by the EC and in cooperation also with TU Delft). His research interests include electricity markets analysis and simulation, smart grids design and simulation and power system vulnerability assessment and security management. He co-authored more than 100 publications and book chapters on various topics related to the power systems analysis.

Sensor systems have been used for centuries in medicine. Simple examples are the thermometer, bands for blood pressure measurements. These methods are still in use today along side more complicated and more sophisticated systems. These new systems have brought about a revolution in medicine, allowing more accurate measurements to be made, and also measuring deeper into the body using non-invasive, or minimally invasive techniques. These techniques lead to safer operations and faster patient recovery. Increasingly miniature sensor systems will be used for patients with chronic disorders to detect the on-coming of problems to enable treatment to be done on time. The effect of the ageing population will bring great strain on the medical services in the future. In addition to the applications mentioned above, to improve safety and reduce costs. Sensor systems in the home will be able to monitor patients and allow people to remain independent for longer. This is, of course, better for the patients, but also represents an enormous saving for health services. This talk will address the development of these sensor systems to where we are today, and consider some potential future directions.

About the speaker
Paddy French received his B.Sc. in mathematics and M.Sc. in electronics from Southampton University, UK, in 1981 and 1982, respectively. In 1986 he obtained his Ph.D., also from Southampton University, which was a study of the piezoresistive effect in polysilicon. After 18 months as a post doc at Delft University, The Netherlands, he moved to Japan in 1988. For 3 years he worked on sensors for automotives at the Central Engineering Laboratories of Nissan Motor Company. He returned to Delft University in May 1991 and is now a staff member of the Laboratory for Electronic Instrumentation with interests in micromachining and process optimisation related to sensors, with particular interest in medical applications. In 1999 he was awarded the Antoni van Leeuwenhoek chair and in June 2002 he became head of the Electronic Instrumentation Laboratory. He is Editor-in-chief of Sensors and Actuators A and General Editor of Sensors and Actuators A&B. He has been co-chair of IEEE MEMS conference in 2004 and programme chair of IEEE Sensors 2007-1009.

Traditionally, the collection of data on the operation of the transport system and the behaviour of the vehicles and travellers using the system has been difficult, expensive and incomplete. Recent developments in sensing, communications, data processing and modelling are transforming the data environment within which transport planners, managers and operators work, with potentially profound implications for the nature of future transport systems and services. The aim of this talk is to present an overview of some of the relevant technological developments taking place, explore some of the likely future impacts and identify relevant future research horizons.

About the speaker
Professor John Polak is Professor of Transport Demand and Director of the Centre for Transport Studies at Imperial College London and is also Research Director of the UK Transport Research Centre and Chairman of the UK Universities Transport Partnership. He is a mathematician by background with over 30 years experience in transport research and teaching, specialising in the areas of mathematical and statistical transport modelling and analysis. He is a past President of the International Association for Travel Behaviour Research and a past Council Member of the Association for European Transport and a past member of a number of TRB Committees and serves on the editorial advisory boards of a number of leading international journals. He has served as an advisor to central and local government and industry on a wide range of transport issues, both in the UK and overseas. Professor Polak has been in the forefront of innovative transport model development in the UK for a number of years and has published extensively on a number of aspects of travel demand modelling, network performance estimation, network control and traffic management and intelligent transport systems. Much of his recent research has been concerned with the collection, analysis and interpretation of very large scale real-time datasets related to operational, behavioural, attitudinal and environmental aspects of transport.

Due to the adverse impacts of the consumption of fossil fuels on our environment, the quest for a more sustainable energy supply is increasingly intensifying worldwide. Many renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar and tidal power generate electricity. Therefore, the development towards a sustainable energy supply leads to increasing electrification. Generators and consumers of electricity are connected by electricity networks. Traditionally, electricity networks transport electrical power from controllable bulk power generators running on fossil fuels or uranium to consumers. However, the combination of decentralization of generation, caused by the smaller scale of renewable generators, and decreasing controllability, caused by the fact that the availability of renewable energy sources is determined by the weather and can hardly or not be affected, requires new functions of electricity networks, in particular of distribution grids. The decreasing degree of controllability of electricity production and the high, but rare peaks caused by embedded generation require involving consumption in balancing supply and demand. To this end, electricity networks must develop into “Smart Grids”. One of the consequences of this trend is a vastly increased need to acquire, process and communicate data, both for measurement and control purposes. In the contribution, first the background of the development towards Smart Grids will be studied in more detail. Then, various functionalities and the corresponding architectures and sensing and communication requirements will be discussed.

About the speaker
J.G. (Han) Slootweg received a MSc degree in Electrical Power Engineering in 1998 (cum laude) and a PhD degree in 2003, both from Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. He also holds a MSc degree in Business Administration. He is currently manager of the Innovation department of Enexis B.V. (formerly Essent Netwerk B.V.), one of the largest Distribution Network Operators of The Netherlands, where his spearheads are energy transition (including distributed generation and smart grids), asset condition assessment and increasing workforce productivity through new technology. Before that, he was responsible for network planning and for the design of maintenance and renewal policies for Enexis’ regional transmission networks. He has written two editions of the company’s Quality and Capacity Plan required to meet regulatory obligations. He was also involved in the development, implementation and certification of Enexis’ proprietary Risk Based Asset Management process, enabling Enexis to be the first firm outside the UK to acquire a PAS 55 certificate. Han is also a part time professor in Smart Grids at the Electrical Energy Systems group of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology. He has authored and co-authored more than 75 papers, covering a broad range of aspects of the electricity supply. In 2007 Han won the Hidde Nijland prize for “significant contributions to electrical power engineering”.

Many of our infrastructures, such as electric energy, gas pipelines, transportation and information/communication systems suffer from common design, planning and operating problems. As a consequence of these problems, the infrastructures cannot function at the same time both efficiently and reliably. This, in turn, has major consequences on the environment and presents a challenge of national and inter-national importance that must be targeted and met under the well-defined R&D Programs. Efficient, clean and reliable energy systems must be viewed within Systems of Systems (SoS) of all infrastructures because of their interdependencies. This lecture will highlight a vision for a research program using control engineering and systems theory as a unifying theme for modelling energy systems as complex dynamic systems encompassing technical, economic, policy and information processes. Combining a systematic model-based approach to risk management with IT-intelligence and distributed hardware is a real opportunity to provide a framework for flexible dynamic robustness in complex systems. The approach is applied to a smart grid simulator—the first of its kind—showing how by embedding distributed decisions into system users (intermittent resources, PHEVs, demand, transmission grid) one could integrate large amounts of unconventional resources without raising costs significantly.

About the speaker

Marija Ilić holds a joint appointment at Carnegie Mellon as Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Engineering & Public Policy, where she has been a tenured faculty member since October 2002. Her principal fields of interest include electric power systems modeling; design of monitoring, control, and pricing algorithms for electric power systems; normal and emergency control of electric power systems; control of large scale dynamic systems; nonlinear network and systems theory; modelling and control of economic and technical interactions in dynamical systems with applications to competitive energy systems. She is Director of the Electric Energy Systems Group (EESG), Honorary Chaired Professor for Control of Future Electricity Network Operations of Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management of Delft University of Technology and Research Affiliate at MIT. In addition to her academic work, Dr. Ilić is a consultant for the electric power industry and the founder of New Electricity Transmission Software Solution, Inc. (NETSS, Inc.). She has co-authored several books on the subject of large-scale electric power systems.