Abstract
Tourism and manly experience and cultural heritage tourism are growing in tourist's interests. Rural regions have an untapped potential for this slice of tourism industry. Also, rural regions have an enormous collection of ancestral knowledge. Unfortunately, all this knowledge typically is elders-centered and it lack effective processes of digitalization, storage and providing systems for that all this heritage can be perpetuated through future generations. From this base-thinking it was created a project case study limited to the Portuguese Northeast region, named Viv@vo - living in the grandma's house. This paper presents this project and what it has been achieved during the project development process.

Abstract

Abstract
Pressurised networks are widely used to transport gas through extensive distances. To secure the gas transport at safety levels and also economic viability, the networks are thoroughly monitored. Paramount to network control and analysis is the modelling of the gas dynamics in the pipelines and its consequent simulation. In this work, the pipeline is represented by a quasi-hyperbolic PDE, whose exact solution is not easy to withdraw, and in alternative we opt for an approximation. The construction of the initial function, very important to obtain a good approximation, is done using a separation of variables. Special relevance is given to issues as consistency, stability and convergence in order to evaluate a class of FD methods for the solution of gas network models, in particular the quasi-hyperbolic equation. Horizontal pipelines are considered as well as some particular centred schema for an inclined pipeline.

Abstract
The search for higher efficiency in transportation planning processes in real life applications is challenging. The synchronisation of different vehicles performing interrelated operations can enforce a better use of vehicle fleets and decrease travelled distances and non-productive times, leading to a reduction of logistics costs. In this work, the full truck-load pickup and delivery problem with multiple vehicle synchronisation (FT-PDP-mVS) is presented. This problem is motivated by a real-life application in the biomass supply chain "hot-system", where it is necessary to simultaneously perform chipping and transportation operations at the forest roadside. The FT-PDP-mVS consists in determining the integrated routes for three distinct types of vehicles, which need to perform interrelated operations with minimum logistics costs. We extend existing studies in synchronisation of multiple routes by acknowledging several synchronisation aspects, such as operations and movement synchronisation. A novel mixed integer programming model (MIP) is presented, along with valid inequalities to tighten the formulation. A solution method approach is developed based on the fix-and-optimise principles under a variable neighbourhood decomposition search. Results of its application to 19 instances based on a real-world case-study demonstrate its performance. For a baseline instance, the synchronisation aspects tackled in this problem allowed for significant gains when compared to the company's current planning approach. Furthermore, the proposed approach can enhance planning and decision making processes by providing valuable insights about the impact of key parameters of biomass logistics over the routing results.

Abstract

Abstract
New energy market players such as micro-grid aggregators (MGA), distributed energy resource aggregators (DERA), and load aggregators (LAs) have all emerged to facilitate the integration of DERs into power systems. These players can participate in wholesale markets either individually or through distribution companies (Discos). In both cases, several operational challenges emerge for transmission system operators (TSOs) and distribution system operators (DSOs). Meanwhile, a transition is occurring from centralized wholesale markets into local energy markets (LEMs). A literature review shows that these LEMs are mostly modeled focusing on the coordination between DSOs and TSOs to meet demand in real-time operation using ancillary service markets and balancing markets. The main contribution of this paper is to model a local day-ahead energy market (LDEM) for optimal operation of a distribution network. This LDEM is cleared by the DSO with the aim of maximizing the social welfare of market players while satisfying the technical constraints of the network. To investigate the effectiveness of the proposed model, it is applied on the IEEE 33-bus network. Moreover, the effect of technical constraints of the network on the distribution locational marginal price (DLMP) is studied.