Optimization-based Approaches for Fault Detection and Estimation: with applications to health-monitoring of energy systems

Advancements in technology and societal demands have led to increasing complexity, size, and automation in modern industrial systems. This trend makes these systems more safety-critical, as the occurrence of faults in system components or subsystems may cause the entire system to fail, resulting in significant economic losses and casualties....

Behaviour and Stability of Interconnected Systems: From Biological Applications to Opinion Dynamics

An interconnected system is composed of multiple well-defined self-contained subsystems that interact among them and that together create collective behaviours. We can find many examples of interconnected systems in real life. Ranging from biological systems, such as the growth and interaction of populations in diverse and spatially distributed...

Finite-Dimensional Approximation in Dual Domain: with Applications in Opinion Dynamics and Dynamic Programming

This thesis is comprised of two main parts. In the first part of the thesis, we study the nonlinear Fokker-Planck (FP) equation that arises as a mean-field (macroscopic) approximation of the bounded confidence opinion dynamics, where opinions are influenced by environmental noises and opinions of radicals (stubborn individuals). The distribution...

Applications of trajectory-based analysis in optimization and control

The synergy between optimization and control is a long standing tradition. In fact, this synergy is becoming more and more apparent because of the multi-disciplinary character of the most pressing, current engineering problems along with constant developments of these two fields. <br/>Historically, optimization methods have helped the control...

Distributed Data-Driven Decision Making in Uncertain Networked Systems with Applications in Smart Energy Systems

This dissertation aims to develop a rigorous distributed approach to decision making using scenario-based techniques for large-scale networks of interconnected uncertain dynamical systems (called agents). A scenario program is a finite-dimensional optimization problem in which an objective function is minimized under constraints that are...

Distributed model predictive controller design based on distributed optimization

Distributed Estimation and Control for Robotic Networks

Mobile robots that communicate and cooperate to achieve a common task have been the subject of an increasing research interest in recent years. These possibly heterogeneous groups of robots communicate locally via a communication network and therefore are usually referred to as robotic networks. Their potential applications are diverse and...