OVERVIEW ON THE PROJECTS I HAVE BEEN (OR I AM) INVOLVED WITH

In this page you will find some information about my participation to national projects, since 2008.

2008/2009 – AUTOmobile Logistic MAnagement (AUTOMA) – CONCLUDED

The project aimed at obtaining important research results in the automobile logistics area, in order to develop an innovative system for the management of car distribution hubs. This system, using the opportunities coming from IT technologies and telecommunications,  allow reaching an optimization in the management processes of the automobile distribution flows in the port of Gioia Tauro. The project faced a series of fundamental research fields: automated interchange management, optimization and image processing for best use of the interchange, improvement of the loading and unloading procedures of lots of automobiles and automatic verification of damage; tracking and localization through adoption of RF systems for automatic identification of the automobiles and relative automatic methods of data acquisition; workflow management for evolved services, supporting automobile distribution. In addition, other faced issues regarded adaptive interface, multi-channel, multimodality, development of rich applications on various devices, channels, terminals and even mobile ones. Further study of these lines of research has been directed towards the implementation of some specific functionalities, allowing: knowledge, in a given moment and for each car, in which phase of distribution process it is involved, on which carrier it is localised, the set of the events (thus including probable suffered damages) that have regarded it; optimising the interchange activities and automating some of the procedures that involve the load, the unload and the storage of the lots of automobiles; optimizing the process of overall distribution taking into account the intermodality characteristics of this; supplying a multichannel and multimodal access, guaranteeing the right operativity also on potentially complex forms and procedures.

2008/2009 – logistic PROcess Management and Intelligence System (PROMIS)  – CONCLUDED

The main goal of this project has been the development of an innovative system that led to an optimization of the management process of the maritime terminals, based on a vision directed at the integrated logistic processes that take place within the great port hubs connected to intermodal transportation networks. It is known that the activity of a maritime terminal for container needs a computerised management system that assures the shipping lines shorter cruising times, higher service standards and, at the same time, allows maximising the use of the personnel and equipment. Based on the results of the research, a demonstrator has been planned and implemented,  giving the possibility of verifying the existing margins to improve the efficiency of the logistic activities and consequently the overall inexpensiveness of the entire management of the port terminal. Additionally, in consideration of the impact that the logistic activities have on productive chain of the related industries, the study of the methodologies to facilitate the interactions between the port and outside world has been carried out. Given these aims, the research activity has been concentrated on certain fundamental themes: Integrated planning of ship docking, container loading and unloading and interchange management; revisitation/integration of the multiple study models of these present in literature and adjustment of the same to the conditions of tangible operativity of the port of Gioia Tauro. Many other efforts have been made for the realization of the project goals:

– Models for intermodal management and medium-long term strategies: in consideration of the planned strengthening of the railway infrastructure, the analysis of the management processes of the container loading/unloading transported on the railway has received particular attention. In fact, the introduction in this area of new and more innovative technologies has been instrumental for an overall improvement of the competitiveness of the port and the logistic services supplied;

– Routing management of the means used for interchange handling: the developed research models analyzed the interchange handlings and recombined them in order to minimize idle handling and reach an overall acceleration of the operations;

– Information techniques and methodologies supporting logistic processes: together with the optimization techniques typical of operative research, alternative techniques based on the use of software agents have been proposed;

– Information techniques and methodologies supporting decision processes: the aim of this line of research has been the study of techniques and algorithms for building a data warehouse in order to optimize the extraction and analysis process of the data and information for information extraction and competitive intelligence;

– Innovative software architectures: the carried-out research activity has been  directed to the study and adoption of innovative software architectures (service oriented architecture- supporting operative Grid work) for building an information system of overall management of the activities that allows simple access to the different involved actors.

2011/2015 – PON01_01795 – Innovative Contact management based On novel integrated wireless Network Technologies and Crm Tools (I-CONTACT) – CONCLUDED

The industrial research project regards the creation of an advanced wired and wireless network infrastructure, endowed by services for multimedia support and advanced management of contents for telework in different geographical zones of the covered areas. The idea starts from Calabria’s (and other regions) needings: some rural environments or suburban cities are subject to depopulation, due to the Digital Divide, that forces people to leave their town to meet their requirements in bigger cities. Considering also the absence of occupational chances, some areas become poor and under-utilized, leading to unsuccessful employment of human resources, able to enrich the geographical areas. In this way, the technological gap of southern regions becomes higher and it brings a heavy recession in terms of culture and technology. The proposed project has the ambitious aim to offer occupational chances by the employment of telework locations, offering to the people the chance to remotely contribute to the development of the under-utilized geographical areas. This idea, that has not been considered in the past due to the lack of cultural and technological support, as well as the absence of ICT infrastructures, nowadays can be realized, because of the enormous progresses in the ICT fields, especially in the transport networks: the wide-band wireless access (so, not only by the classical ADSL) gives the chance to the protocols to adapt themselves to the network characteristics and users requirements. The transmission technologies over wireless networks and the possibility of the realization of distributed self-organized systems that can communicate in a robust and scalable mode (with a high level of Quality of Service) allow the planning of new advanced and intelligent services for the transmission of the Voice over IP (VoIP), video on demand (IPTV) and other data formats. In addition, the social communication and the collaborative tools for the web 2.0 make the users the main actors of the Internet, so they can also take the advantage from the new interaction and working manners offered by the network. According to this new working paradigm (that has been already used as reference in other countries like United States, northern Europe, China and Japan), the project aims to the introduction of working chances in those geographical areas where the depopulation process has already happened or where it is in progress, or where the available technologies are not able to reduce the Digital Divide, missing the possibility to create new business and employment. The structures that must be created over the intelligent wireless wide-band architecture are some advanced management centers called IP Contact Centers, that will cover the rule of centralizer and coordinator nodes of some portions of geographical areas. The Contact Centers are reachable in a multi-hop manner, basing the communication on wireless technology and distributed protocols. The Contact Centers will have some associated algorithms for the management of users and workers, creating the profiles of their needing and characteristics (Customer Relationship Management). In addition the distributed control centers will allow to realize remote teaching, through the utilization of e-learning platforms, in order to create different professional figures able to use different tools available on the network. The transport network and the advanced services that will be built-up compose the basis of a more refined infrastructure, able to integrate in the future different types of information for territorial control, civil and environmental security for the enhancement of life quality.

2014/2015 – SMARTEL – CONCLUDED

The project is focused on the physical security of the operators who have to work in/on dangerous locations like places where moving vehicles are approaching. In particular, the RF-ID and GPS technology will be studied in order to implement a centralized system able to monitor the position of each operator and to know exactly if a moving vehicle (car, bus, truck, etc.) is approaching to him. The project will be based on the operations in the Gioia Tauro’s marittime port (in south Calabria, Italy). The main topics of research of SMARTEL are:

– Localization in indoor and/or outdoor areas with GPS and RF-ID technology;

– Macro-area localization through RF-ID;

– Dangerous situations recognition;

– GPS and RF-ID coordinates real-time evaluation and correction;

– Alarm forwarding to operators and moving vehicles.