Complex Networks
Complex Networks and Critical Infrastructures
Emergent phenomena in infrastructural networks; identification of potential vulnerabilities and mitigation of cascade failures.
Self healing both for maintaining high QoS (quality of service) and for speeding up recovery from major failures; network resilience.
Stochastic models for tackling with the effects of demand and production fluctuation on distribution networks.
Development of complex network models for urban infrastructure and their application to both modern and historical urban centres subjected to single or multiple, natural or man-made hazards.
Complex Networks and Decision Making
Developing distributed decision making algorithms for a set of decision makers interconnected by a web of relations. In order to successfully accomplish the decision making task the agents, without an orchestrator, need to cooperate with each other. However, each agent has only limited/local information and has the ability to communicate with a reduced set of neighboring decision makers.
Complex Networks in Medical Sciences
Using complex networks in medical data to represent “emerging knowledge” and facilitate data mining. Centrality of Electronic Health Records (EHR) in public health, epidemiological studies and scientific publications. Comprehensive approaches for the analysis of multi-evidenced data, i.e., data generated from multiple sources, such as cells, organs, individual lifestyle and social habits, environment, population dynamics, etc.
Complex networks and Operational Research
Novel optimization approaches that blend hard core optimization with complex network science, with the aim to provide effective and agile tools for solving problems such as task assignment/load balancing in IT or OT networks, clustering and social media marketing, Innovation in the field of OR introducing the flexibility of the complex networks approach into industrial models.
Infrastructures
Smart Grids
Optimizing power networks detecting and mitigating energy congestions, lowering the energy signature and reducing the greenhouse gas emission.
Smart Water Networks
Controlling and partitioning water networks to detect and mitigate leakages, lower the energy signature and reduce the vulnerability to pollutants and water poisoning.
Industrial ecology and digital cities
How the digitisation of infrastructure will change the energy, material, and information flows in cities. Study of the impact of new technologies on urban sustainability and resilience.
V2G (Vehicle to Grid)
Data-driven deployment planning for electric cars usage to mitigate the effects of the fluctuations in electric power generation
Resilience
Quantification of physical resilience of urban centres and critical infrastructures to natural and man-made hazardous events, such as earthquakes, landslides and terrorist attacks. Optimizing the recovery process.
Science and Society
Water Scarcity
Systemic approach to the management and planning of water usage, from sources up to the consumer. Involvement of citizens and policy makers in reaching the goals of a sustainable usage of water.
Energy Planning
Energy portfolio approach for the allocation and balancing of renewable energy sources. Investigation of the rebound effect following the introduction of innovative technologies.
Industrial ecology & sustainability
Urban ecosystems thermodynamics, urban metabolism, effects of climate change in cities. Relation between energy, information, and material flows and sustainability in cities.
Computational Social Science
Quantitative studies of information flows on social media. Echo-chamber detection, polarization measurements, sentiment metrics for online debates.
Science & Journalism: building new communities
Communication strategies, analysis and building of taylored tools and projects. Data and information mining, data validation and use of data and scientific information to build social communities and to promote and support and informed political debate.