Renewable energy investment is a complex process where multiple actors are often involved with their own, sometimes conflicting, interests. Here we propose a multi-actor multi-objective regional energy system planning approach to help actors gain mutual understanding regarding each other’s optimal investment wishes, in order to advance the planning process. This approach combines two models: Multi-Objective Optimization (MOO) and Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). The approach uses illustrative objectives and actors which is then applied to the greater Amsterdam region to showcase its usage and strength. The four chosen objectives, i.e. total Capital Expenditure, total Operation & Maintenance costs, land-use and visually impacted area are minimized simultaneously to obtain a set of Pareto-optimal solutions. These solutions are then evaluated for governments, funders and local residents with different preferences using TOPSIS. The case study shows that our approach is unique and useful when multiple actors have to decide together upon the energy investment capacities. It is able to provide quantitative and optimal decision-aiding from the multi-actor perspective and generate also sub-optimal yet acceptable solutions for all the actors. Based on our approach, the impacts of policy options can be revealed from the actors’ perspectives as well. ... Read more

A novel signal control strategy for urban traffic networks, called ART-UTC (the abbreviated form of 'Adaptive Real-Time Urban Traffic Control') is introduced. We propose an efficient algorithm for ART-UTC to determine the green priority of different rights-of-way at each intersection. The proposed algorithm takes into account the queue length on each link, the waiting time of the first vehicle in the queue, and the incoming traffic flow to the link. We also propose a law to determine the green times of each traffic light based on the queue length on the link that is controlled by that traffic light. An advantage of ART-UTC is that due to the simple computations involved, it can be used for real-time urban traffic control. To evaluate ART-UTC, two different urban traffic networks are simulated within the urban traffic simulator SUMO. The performance of ART-UTC is compared to the performance of a fixed-time traffic controller based on Webster's formulas and a vehicle-actuated traffic controller. The results show that by using ART-UTC, the total travel time of the vehicles, the average queue length on the links in urban traffic networks, and the average waiting time of the first vehicles in the queues on the links of the traffic networks are reduced significantly in the majority of the cases compared with the fixed-time and the vehicle-actuated controllers. ... Read more