Abstract
The organizations ability to manage corporate environmental performance is emerging as a strategic issue for companies. Environmental decision-making requires an explicit methodology in which it must be possible to articulate the involvement of various stakeholders, incorporate multi-disciplinary knowledge, and integrate criteria involving trade-offs in order to deal with different opinions and heterogeneous factors. The choice of sustainable options for the company and the creation of commitments among stakeholders are a must for businesses. The main motivation of this paper is to present results from the initial steps of the development of a methodology to support decision-making of corporate environmental strategies. Illustrations from an ongoing case study are presented. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Abstract

Abstract

Abstract
This paper intends to analyze the performance of an electric bus for three different routes in the city of Oporto. The objective is to study the correlation between the type of route a bus travels and the amount of energy it spends in performing it. Besides energy, the potential of the recovering part of it through regenerative braking will also be discussed. It is expected that long and demanding routes, e.g. those encompassing meandering paths, will make the bus use more energy. To accomplish these objectives, a simulation platform was built upon both a nanoscopic representation of the electrical bus and its microscopic interaction with the road traffic network while performing different journeys through specific routes. Simulation results are compared and discussed, as well as are directions for future work identified. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Scientific Committee

Abstract

Abstract
The performance of a company depends on the quality of its strategic decisions but depends also on how those decisions are implemented. Companies are composed of different units that can be geographically distributed with different levels of autonomy and local resources. Due to the complexity of the problem many companies use simulation to analyse the performance of critical sectors based on a number of scenarios. This reality requires new approaches that, taking advantage of existing models enables their integration with new models, facilitate their upgrade and allow a distributed execution. In this work we developed a Framework to integrate distributed agent-based simulators (ABMS) with a mechanism of communication TCP/IP to exchange synchronization messages and business messages based on the OASIS standard. The XML standard format was used for coding of all the messages. The communication mechanism of the Framework was developed in order to benefit from distributed computing.