Project website: https://foodmapp.fer.hr

The European strategic plan to fight climate change requires impactful changes to the food industry and a reduction in food waste, as well as a change in the fragile, complicated supply chain of industrial-scale food producers and the creation of a novel, fair and sustainable food industry. The project is funded from Horizon Europe MSCA Staff Exchange call and coordinated by LARES research group. It aims at the transformation of food supply by enabling and promoting transparent local provision from local producers, including family farmers, and processors directly to consumers. It will gather extensive market intelligence from all stakeholders to understand market demand and preferences towards localised food supply transparency. This research will inform the development of a dynamic searchable map-based platform enabling local providers to supply and sell produce directly to consumers.

Project website: https://www.fer.unizg.hr/evbattpredtect

The project is focussed on application of estimation and predictive control in electric vehicle battery system and vehicle dynamics control in order to protect the electric vehicle battery from a premature degradation while minimally deteriorating the car driveability. Batteries are one of the most expensive and weakest links in electric cars, and it is necessary to ensure their exploitation in the vehicle in conditions that degrade them as little as possible. The need for the greatest possible energy recovery during braking and the best possible dynamic performance of the vehicle exposes the batteries to stress that violates their integrity in a currently uncontrolled way.
The main goal of the project is to develop a software module for battery protection of an electric vehicle and the way of its integration with the vehicle dynamics management system. The module dynamically limits the battery charge / discharge current and the air conditioning of the battery compartment in order to limit the rate of battery degradation with the least possible impact on the dynamic performance of the vehicle.

The project is carried out in close collaboration with industry partner Rimac Automobili that develops and produces electric sports cars, drivetrains and battery systems.

The project is funded from the call Strengthening R&D and Innovation Potentials (STRIP) through the Operative Programme Competitiveness and Cohesion for Croatia in period 2014-2020. The STRIP call was launched by the Croatian Ministry of Science and Education.

Project website: https://www.fer.unizg.hr/SmartCityLight

City lighting is among dominant infrastructure in cities where modernisation is one of the most cost effective investments from techno-economic perspective of energy efficiency. The project aims at developing centralized and distributed model predictive control algorithm and electronic controllers with wireless communication for predictive and autonomous adjustment of lighting intensity based on various micro-location external factors in the city (energy consumption, pedestrian and road traffic intensity, climate conditions) that achieves significant energy savings, reduces investment costs, increases safety and enables integration of various city infrastructure with additional diagnostics capabilities and a strong potential for creating smart city foundations.

The project aims to achieve 20% of operational costs reduction and 30% of investment cots reduction of city lighting, experimentally validated in a living lab.

The project is carried out in close collaboration with industry partner LED-Electronica, the producer of 15.000 city LED lamps annually, corresponding controller and communication electronics, cloud-based software platform for monitoring and control, and various services – and with over 60 references of successful implementations.

The project is funded from the call Strengthening R&D and Innovation Potentials (STRIP) through the Operative Programme Competitiveness and Cohesion for Croatia in period 2014-2020. The STRIP call was launched by the Croatian Ministry of Science and Education.

Project website: https://www.fer.unizg.hr/decide

In buildings, the world largest consumers, ICT is a fruitful area for integration of different technologies aimed to increase the energy efficiency, i.e. to achieve zero-energy buildings. High-tech equipment and highly expert staff are required, together with long-running modelling and consumption forecast procedures, which is the highest economic barrier for implementation of the new technologies, with return of unacceptable investment prognoses of above 10 years. By integration with renewable sources and microgrids, the buildings are becoming capable of active participation in the distributed energy market as energy-independent units, which finally enables the trend of smart cities.
The proposed methodology, aimed to be developed within the DECIDE project, uses two basic approaches: distributed optimal control among subunits of the same subsystem and hierarchical optimal control between different levels (subsystems). Distributed control implies the game theory application and mutual bidding of individual (local) interests of the subunits of a complex system.
The methodology starts with joining of these several approaches and aims at utilization of advantages of each the approach, and also incorporate the acquired experience of the research group in their research work so far related to building and transport subsystems. Bases for the proposed methodology are set in preceding research collaboration with national and international scientific partners who will have advisory roles in the project.

In the electrical energy system production of electrical energy and its consumption must be in balance for maintaining the system stability and the system voltage frequency. Maintaining the balance in real time is the task of the transmission system operator (TSO). Households do not have the possibility to participate in system balancing since a technology platform for their participation does not exist and such a platform is planned to be developed within this project. It will enable the TSO to balance the system and diversify its balancing options by controlling the consumption of multiple small consumers. The system for control of electrical energy consumption in households will be based on mathematical models and machine learning and will offer needed flexibility to the TSO in an automated way, without infringing the comfort.

Development of an innovative software solution for centralized monitoring and control of a critical infrastructure in commercial and residential buildings

The aim of this project is to develop an integrated system for centralized monitoring and control of critical infrastructure systems in residential and commercial buildings. Critical infrastructure systems include system of heating, ventilation and air conditioning, lighting, power supply, fire protection, fire alarming, video surveillance and access control. Named subsystems are dominantly installed as separate systems in buildings and thus their control is considerably complex since each should be controlled separately, and thereby the possibilities for their communication and interaction do not exist. Since belonging to the same building they should constitute a unified whole for technical surveillance of electrical and mechanical installations in the building.

Project website: https://desme.fer.hr/

One of the priority goals set by the Europe Strategy 2020 si achieving an adequate level of renewable energy production. The Republic of Croatia has excellent natural predispositions for wind energy production. Existing and potential locations for the construction of wind farms are located in almost the entire coastal area. However, one of the basic problems of this production are lightning strokes on wind turbines and, consequently, the damage that is manifested through production downtime and their repairs. The aim of this project is to carry out research and development procedures with the aim of designing an expert system for measuring the parameters of lightning strokes and improving the protection of wind turbines from lightning strokes to reduce failures and downtime.

The project is funded from the call Strengthening R&D and Innovation Potentials (STRIP) through the Operative Programme Competitiveness and Cohesion for Croatia in period 2014-2020. The STRIP call was launched by the Croatian Ministry of Science and Education.

Project website: https://ukus.fer.hr/

The project goal is to develop an app that integrates communication and control modules, aiming at increasing the efficiency of industry facilities (focus is on power facilities). The communication module stores the data on the facility in a central database. The data are used to optimize specific processes using special algorithms integrated into the app. The advantage toward the existing solutions is the universality of the app as it will enable a communication to all industry protocols. The app also includes an efficient data acquisition, complex analyses over data and access of other systems to the collected data.

The project is carried out in close collaboration with industry partner Brodotehna that design and implements control systems for industrial, power and transport facilities.

The project is funded from the call Strengthening R&D and Innovation Potentials (STRIP) through the Operative Programme Competitiveness and Cohesion for Croatia in period 2014-2020. The STRIP call was launched by the Croatian Ministry of Science and Education.

The project aims at establishing autonomous virtual manager in vending machines logistics including vending machines, delivery, warehouse and capacities. The management system is targeted as a cloud-based platform, utilizing artificial intelligence and machine learning on historical data, mixture of various optimization approaches such as heuristic, evolutionary and convex optimization with experimental verification on large number of real local and international vending machines, delivery routes and warehouses. Modular approach enables flexibility and prompt application to a particular case while the predictive modules are coordinated to achieve additional and synergic cost savings, energy efficiency and greenhouse gasses reduction.

The project is carried out in close collaboration with industry partner INTIS, the producer of Televend vending machines products and services - a team of over 100 vending enthusiasts that want to carry traditional vending business into the future of connected smart machines.

By strengthening the capacity of partners and conducting scientific research, this project aims to develop a comprehensive system of supervision and management of dynamically loaded structures to preserve their integrity, ie to prevent damage and extend its functionality. The development of innovative methodology includes optimization of sensor system monitoring, diagnostics of damagesmario in laboratory conditions, experimental research of fatigue properties of materials and development of inverse and statistical models, structural similarity theory, numerical algorithms for estimating structural fatigue and allowable loads, and control systems permitted operating modes. After the validation of the methodology on laboratory models and the real construction of the Končar wind turbine, the procedure of intellectual property protection over the developed methodology and commercialization of the project results will be initiated. As a partner in the project, FER will design ways of automatic control using methods of mathematical optimization and computer geometry that are non-invasively added to existing algorithms and preserve the integrity of the structure, and the applicant FSB and partner Faculty of Civil Engineering in Rijeka deal with methods management bases. The project leader at FER is prof. dr. sc. Mario Vašak.

DanuP-2-Gas - Innovative model to drive energy security and diversity in the Danube Region via combination of bioenergy with surplus renewable energy

Project website:http://www.interreg-danube.eu/danup-2-gas

The Danube Region holds huge potential for sustainable generation and storage of renewable energy. However, to date this region is highly dependent on energy imports, while energy efficiency, diversity and renewables share are low. In line with the EU climate targets for 2030 and the EUSDR PA2 goals DanuP-2-Gas will advance transnational energy planning by promoting generation and storage strategies for renewables in the Danube Region by coupling the electric power and gas sector. DanuP-2-Gas will bring together energy agencies, business actors, public authorities and research institutions via the Danube Energy Platform. Based on the platform developed during DTP project ENERGY BARGE it will incorporate all pre-existing tools and i.a. an Atlas, mapping prior unexamined available biomass and energy infrastructure. Further, a pre-feasibility study utilizing an optimization tool for efficient hub design will identify suitable locations for sectors coupling hubs and combination of two idle resources in the Danube region. Unused organic residue (e.g. straw) will be processed to biochar for easy transport along the Danube River and as basis for synthesis gas generation. Adding hydrogen produced from surplus renewable energy allows to upgrade this syngas to renewable natural gas. This will enable storage of surplus energy in the existing gas distribution grid increasing energy security and efficiency. All needed resources are available in the Danube region and the 10 partner countries. Thus, a transnational approach along the main transport route (Danube River) to share these resources is the key. The legal framework influencing the concept will be assessed on individual country level, leading to a transnational strategy with national roadmaps for simple implementation. Finally, impact of DanuP-2-Gas will be ensured via trainings on the developed tools and workshops elaborating future projects and business models with interested stakeholders.

The project is focused on developing different optimization modules for delivery routing, vehicle packing and capacity decision-making based on historical and real-time data. CEGLog aims to establish a cloud-based platform for last-mile logistics management based on mixture of various optimization approaches such as heuristic, evolutionary, complex networks and Markov processes, but also convex optimization and linear programming. The decisions are made in a modular and predictive way with future estimation of internal and external conditions acquired by applying machine learning and neural networks to historical data, which is accumulated by project partner (delivery company) over several years. Modular approach enables flexibility of the particular case, minimising the implementation time for the selected case studies while the predictive modules are coordinated to achieve additional and synergic cost savings, energy efficiency and greenhouse gasses reduction.

The project is carried out in close collaboration with industry partner GDi for industry focused business process software and data solutions with a wide range of related professional services, training and support in the area of Operations Support Systems (OSS), Decision Support Systems (DSS) and Cloud Computing and Geoinformation Systems (GIS) and a great focus on intelligent assets, operations, resources and smart data.

Project website: https://www.icent.hr/agrosparc

Actual and upcoming climate changes will evidently have the largest impact on agriculture crops cultivation in terms of reduced harvest, increased costs, and necessary deviation from traditional farming. The project goal is to develop mathematical models of different growth stages of wheat by applying the artificial intelligence and utilize it for prediction of crop development and harvest. Analysis of the big data will be carried out with respect to various climate conditions, artificially created and permuted in the prototyping chambers, and corelated with plant development identifiers in different growth stages. The models will be publicly and interactively used through a portal for prediction of plant development in real and hypothetical climate conditions, with accumulated and archived feedback from farmers as additional data for tuning of the developed models.

Project website: http://rewaise.eu/

REWAISE will create a new “smart water ecosystem”, mobilising all relevant stakeholders to make society embrace the true value of water, reducing freshwater and energy use, resulting in a carbon free, sustainable hydrological cycle, to transition into a resilient circular economy.

A network of nine living labs, involving 5 major water utilities, demonstrates real-life, large-scale operational environments for technological innovations and new governance methods to secure a resource-efficient water supply for the EU. New business niches will be created, incentivizing water-related investments, and accelerating SME growth, by linking users with specific water needs, incorporating life cycle and cost assessments, and collective action in new governance frameworks for smart value creation and high social returns.

By incorporating paradigm shifts from a linear Roman heritage to a new circular, water-smart economy, REWAISE reveals the full Value of Water for Europe, considering 3 key components of the economic and societal value generated by integral water cycles:

• Value in Water: is accomplished by extracting and putting to beneficial use dissolved substances such as nutrients, minerals, chemicals and metals, as well as organic matter and energy, embedded in raw and used water streams.
• Value from Water: encompasses the economic activities inherent to the water cycle, related products and services that generate benefits and jobs, directly or in other sectors that depend on water, such as energy and transportation,
• Value through Water: the societal, health and well-being functions of water, which will be enhanced by inter-linking users, regulators, water operators and other stakeholders in electricity and chemicals markets through a digital platform that optimizes decision making and business opportunities through socio-economics-based coordination between them, while minimizing emissions , risks and vulnerability.

Project website: https://www.interreg-central.eu/Store4HUC

It is challenging to provide a low carbon energy supply in cities in a style of energy storages. Especially in historical urban centres it is very difficult to achieve these results, because interventions in this specific area meet strict architectural protection constraints, involve higher implementation costs and often come in conflict with town planning policies. Therefore, the main objective is to improve and enrich energy and spatial planning strategies targeting historical city centres by focusing on integration of energy storage systems to enhance the public institutional and utility capabilities. The pilot actions implemented in specific sites will demonstrate the various energy storages that can be adapted and transferred to other local or regional environments. The storages will provide good show-cases to the local authorities which can benefit in sense of improved energy efficiency and increase usage of renewable energy sources and lower costs for energy. The transnational strategy will provide the recommendations for improving the energy and spatial planning. The energy management tool will enable to monitor all features that proof the effectiveness of the pilot installations. Additionally, the autarky rate tool will indicate the economic and reasonable utilisation of storages. By establishing the stakeholder deployment desk Store4HUC will reach the relevant players to share the knowledge and also transfer it to other additional audience. It will enable to gain wider consensus of the pilot instalment and further tool usage, especially with the signed memorandums of the future tool utilisation. The project approach foresees also peer review actions, mutual learning within project consortium and exchange of experiences and knowledge with target groups what can enhance the transnational added value. Innovative energy storage installation and storing of renewable energy sources determines the innovative aspect of Store4HUC.

Development of a System for Predictive Control and Autonomous Trading of Energy in Buildings

The project joins multi-year experience of the Klimaoprema company in development, production and commercialization of elements of the heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems with research results of University of Zagreb Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing in the area of model predictive controlachieved through several finished and ongoing projects.

The aim of the project is to develop a set of products and services based on information and communication technologies which enable predictive control of energy in buildings of different configurations conected to energy grids subject to dynamic energy market conditions. The PC-ATE Buildings project is focussed on control of elements for maintaining comfort in building rooms and on preparation of the medium which is supplied to the elements in rooms. Thereby varying conditions  of energy exchange with distribution networks are taken into account, together with weather forecast and different local predictions based on historical building data.