On the one hand, the demand response management and dynamical pricing supported by the smart grid had started to lead to fundamentally different energy consumption behaviours; On the other hand, energy supply has gone through a dramatic new pattern due to the emergence and development of renewable energy resources. Facing these changes, this thesis investigates one of the resulting challenges, which is how to integrate the wholesale market and the retail market into one framework in order to achieve optimal balancing between demand and supply. Firstly, based on the existing mechanisms of the wholesale and retail electricity markets, a simulation tool is proposed and developed. This enables the ISO to find the best balance between supply and demand, by taking into account the different objectives of the generators, retailers and customers. Secondly, a new market mechanism based on the interval demand is proposed in order to address the challenges of the unpredictable demand due to the demand response management programs. Under the proposed new market mechanism, the corresponding approaches are investigated in order to support the retailers to find their profit-optimal pricing strategies, the generators to develop their best bidding strategies, and the ISO to identify the market clearing price function in order to best balance supply and demand. In particular: 1) For the ISO, our designed mechanism could effectively handle unpredictable demand under the dynamic retail pricing. It also enables the realisation of the goals of dynamic pricing by utilising smart meters; 2) In the retail market, we extend the smart pricing model in the current research in order to enable the retailers to find the most-profitable pricing scheme under the proposed new mechanism with the demand-based piecewise cost (i.e., market clearing price) function; 3) For the wholesale market, we developed a pricing forecasting model in order to forecast a market clearing price. Based on this model, we analysed the optimal bidding strategies for a generator under an interval demand from the ISO. Simulation results are provided in order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approaches.

É ponto passivo a importância dos sistemas distribuídos no desenvolvimento da computação de alto desempenho nas próximas décadas. No entanto, ainda muito se debate sobre políticas de gerenciamento adequadas para os recursos computacionais espacialmente dispersos disponíveis em tais sistemas. Políticas de balanceamento de carga procuram resolver o problema da ociosidade das maquinas(ou, por outro lado, da super-utilização) em um sistema distribuído. Não são raras situações nas quais somente algumas maquinas da rede estão sendo efetivamente utilizadas, enquanto que varias outras se encontram subutilizadas, ou mesmo completamente ociosas. Aberta a possibilidade de executarmos remotamente uma tarefa, com o intuito de reduzirmos o tempo de resposta da mesma, ainda falta decidirmos "como" fazê-lo. Das decisões envolvidas quanto a execução remota de tarefas tratam as políticas de balanceamento de carga. Tais políticas, muito embora a aparente simplicidade quanto as decisões de controle tomadas ou ao reduzido numero de parâmetros envolvidos, não possuem um comportamento fácil de se prever. Sob determinadas condições, tais políticas podem ser tomar excessivamente instáveis, tomando sucessivas decisões equivocadas e, como consequência, degradando de forma considerável o desempenho do sistema. Em tais casos, muitas das vezes, melhor seria não tê-las. Este trabalho apresenta um ambiente desenvolvido com o objetivo de auxiliar projetistas de sistema ou analistas de desempenho a construir, simular e compreender mais claramente o impacto causado pelas decisões de balanceamento no desempenho do sistema. / There is no doubts about the importance of distributed systems in the development of high performance computing in the next decades. However, there are so much debates about appropriated management policies to spatially scattered computing resources available in this systems. Load balancing policies intend to resolve the problem of underloaded machines (or, in other hand, overloaded machines) in a distributed system. Moments in which few machines are really being used, meanwhile several others are underused, or even idle, aren't rare. Allowed the remote execution of tasks in order to decrease the response time of theirs, it remains to decide 'how' to do it. Load balancing policies deal with making decisions about remote execution. Such policies, in spite of the supposed simplicity about their control decisions and related parameters, doesn't have a predictable behavior. In some cases, such policies can become excessively unstable, making successive wrong decisions and, as consequence, degrading the system performance. In such cases, it's better no policy at all. This work presents an environment developed whose purpose is to help system designers or performance analysts to build, to simulate and to understand the impact made by balancing decisions over the system performance.

Les applications de transport de particules Monte-Carlo consistent à étudier le comportement de particules se déplaçant dans un domaine de simulation. La répartition des particules sur le domaine de simulation n'est pas uniforme et évolue dynamiquement au cours de la simulation. La parallélisation de ce type d'applications sur des architectures massivement parallèles amène à résoudre une problématique complexe de répartition de charges de calculs et de données sur un grand nombre de cœurs de calcul.Nous avons d'abord identifié les difficultés de parallélisation des applications de transport de particules Monte-Carlo à l'aide d'analyses théoriques et expérimentales des méthodes de parallélisation de référence. Une approche semi-dynamique reposant sur des techniques de partitionnement a ensuite été proposée. Enfin, nous avons défini une approche dynamique capable de redistribuer les charges de calcul et les données tout en maintenant un faible volume de communication. L'approche dynamique a obtenu des accélérations en extensibilité forte et une forte réduction de la consommation mémoire par rapport à une méthode de réplication de domaine parfaitement équilibrée. / Monte Carlo particle transport applications consist in studying the behaviour of particles moving about a simulation domain. Particles distribution among simulation domains is not uniform and change dynamically during simulation. The parallelization of this kind of applications on massively parallel architectures leads to solve a complex issue of workloads and data balancing among numerous compute cores.We started by identifying parallelization pitfalls of Monte Carlo particle transport applications using theoretical and experimental analysis of reference parallelization methods. A semi-dynamic based on partitioning techniques has been proposed then. Finally, we defined a dynamic approach able to redistribute workloads and data keeping a low communication volume. The dynamic approach obtains speedups using strong scaling and a memory footprint reduction compared to the perfectly balanced domain replication method.

Submitted by Lucio Flore Maciel (floremaciel@gmail.com) on 2017-02-15T08:26:10Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação Lucio Flore Maciel APLICAÇÃO DA SIMULAÇÃO A EVENTOS DISCRETOS NO BALANCEAMENTO DE LINHA DE MONTAGEM.pdf: 1899747 bytes, checksum: ce39bd6323b1cd070d845c8ce1d9a680 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Juliano Benedito Ferreira (julianoferreira@reitoria.unesp.br) on 2017-02-21T17:37:52Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 maciel_lf_me_guara.pdf: 1899747 bytes, checksum: ce39bd6323b1cd070d845c8ce1d9a680 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-02-21T17:37:52Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 maciel_lf_me_guara.pdf: 1899747 bytes, checksum: ce39bd6323b1cd070d845c8ce1d9a680 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-04-01 / O objetivo geral da pesquisa foi desenvolver um modelo de simulação a eventos discretos para ser aplicado ao balanceamento de uma linha de montagem de componentes numa empresa do setor automotivo, buscando aumentar a produtividade da linha e utilizando menores quantidades de insumos. Na situação estudada há muitos elementos com comportamento estocástico, que podem influenciar na produtividade da linha, além da diversidade de insumos que abastecem a montagem, o que torna o balanceamento da linha uma tarefa complexa e favorece o uso da Simulação como procedimento de solução. Na modelagem conceitual do problema estudado adotou-se o método IDEF-SIM e para a simulação foi utilizado o software ProModel®. Como resultados tem-se um modelo conceitual e implementado para uma linha de montagem que possibilitou informações interessantes sobre o problema, tais como: juntar funções de dois postos de trabalhos, eliminar excesso de movimentação e eliminar gargalos. / The overall objective of the research was to develop a simulation model discrete event to be applied to balancing an assembly line components in automotive company, seeking to increase line productivity and using lower amounts of inputs. In the situation studied for many elements with stochastic behavior, which may influence the productivity of the line beyond the range of products that supply assembly, which makes the balancing line a complex task and promotes the use of the simulation procedure as a solution. In conceptual modeling of the studied problem adopted the IDEF-SIM method and for the simulation we used the ProModel® software. As results has a conceptual model and implemented for an assembly line that has enabled interesting information about the problem, such as joining functions of two posts jobs, eliminate excess movement and eliminate bottlenecks.

As cláusulas restritivas de direitos fundamentais pertencem à perspectiva da norma, ao contrário das restrições que pertencem à perspectiva do direito. É comum nos depararmos no controle judicial de constitucionalidade das leis com o fenômeno das cláusulas restritivas, sobretudo, em casos versando sobre colisões de direitos fundamentais. Por se tratar de uma característica presente em muitas normas jurídicas, tanto no nível constitucional como no nível infraconstitucional, o recurso ao sopesamento, diante da carência argumentativa de outros métodos para lidar com essa problemática, tem se mostrado uma ferramenta eficaz. O objetivo deste trabalho é descobrir o quão eficaz é essa ferramenta e se a interpretação e aplicação dos direitos fundamentais só têm a ganhar em desenvoltura argumentativa quando ela é adotada em detrimento de outras alternativas. Para isso, é preciso saber como o sopesamento opera na justificação constitucional de normas de direito fundamental, especificamente em situações nas quais uma cláusula restritiva com a estrutura de princípio é inserida na formulação de uma norma com estrutura de regra ou vice-versa. Essa circunstância revela o duplo caráter das normas de direitos fundamentais, um fenômeno normativo pouco explorado, porém muito comum, cuja argumentação jurídica traz consigo uma série de dificuldades de congruência teórica. Explorar tais dificuldades constitui a essência do objeto desta pesquisa, pois compreendê-las é imprescindível à adequada satisfação do ônus argumentativo decorrente das cláusulas restritivas de direitos fundamentais. O argumento que pretendo defender, aqui, é o de que a prática argumentativa baseada isoladamente no raciocínio do sopesamento é incapaz de produzir uma resposta adequada a esse ônus argumentativo. No entanto, quando combinada com o raciocínio da subsunção, ela tem à sua disposição uma racionalidade jurídica que permite uma leitura correta das cláusulas restritivas de direitos fundamentais na formulação de normas de estrutura dúplice. / Fundamental rights limiting clauses belongs to the perspective of the norm, contrary to limitations which belong to the perspective of law. It is common in the judicial review of legislation to come across with the phenomenon of limiting clauses, namely in cases concerning collisions of fundamental rights. Since it is a characteristic present in quite many legal norms both in the constitutional and infra-constitutional levels, the recourse to balancing because of the argumentative deficiency of other methods to deal with this problematic has showed to be an efficient tool. The objective of this essay is to discover how effective is this tool and whether the interpretation and application of fundamental rights has only to win in argumentative resourcefulness when it is adopted to the detriment of other alternatives. For that, it is needed to know how balancing operates in fundamental rights norms constitutional justification, specifically in situations where a limiting clause with principle structure is inserted in the formulation of a norm that has a rule structure, and vice-versa. This circumstance reveals the double character of fundamental rights norms, an underexplored normative phenomenon but a very common one, whose legal argumentation brings with it a series of theoretical congruency difficulties. Explore these difficulties constitutes the essence of the object of this research, because to comprehend them is indispensable to achieve an adequate satisfaction of the burden of argumentation coming from the fundamental rights limiting clauses. The argument that I seek to defend here is that the argumentative practice based solely in the balancing reasoning is unable to produce an adequate answer to this burden of argumentation. However, when combined with the subsumption reasoning, it has at its disposal a legal rationality that allows a correct reading of the fundamental rights limiting clauses in the formulation of double structure norms.

O advento da teoria pós-positivista de Robert Alexy teve seus efeitos sentidos no Direito do Trabalho, principalmente por passar a ser constantemente mencionada em decisões trabalhistas. O presente trabalho se propõe, então, a dois objetivos centrais: a partir da análise da principal obra de Robert Alexy, Teoria dos Direitos Fundamentais, em cotejo com a jurisprudência trabalhista, demonstrar que nessas decisões não há, de fato, a aplicação da teoria pós-positivista, tal qual construída pelo jurista alemão e, posteriormente, que, ainda que fosse aplicada corretamente, ela própria é de todo incompatível com o Direito do Trabalho, em virtude da construção histórica deste ramo. / The advent of the post-positivist theory of Robert Alexy had its consequences on Labor Law, especially for being often mentioned on Labor Court decisions. Thus, this dissertation focuses on two main objectives: to demonstrate, based on the analysis of the main work of Robert Alexy Theory of Fundamental Rights in confrontation with some Labour Court decisions, that such decisions do not, in fact, apply the post-positivist theory as it was formulated by the German jurist; and, moreover, even if it were to be applied accordingly, this theory would still be incompatible with Labor Law, due to the historical construction of this area.

abstract: Internet of Things (IoT) is emerging as part of the infrastructures for advancing a large variety of applications involving connections of many intelligent devices, leading to smart communities. Due to the severe limitation of the computing resources of IoT devices, it is common to offload tasks of various applications requiring substantial computing resources to computing systems with sufficient computing resources, such as servers, cloud systems, and/or data centers for processing. However, this offloading method suffers from both high latency and network congestion in the IoT infrastructures. Recently edge computing has emerged to reduce the negative impacts of tasks offloading to remote computing systems. As edge computing is in close proximity to IoT devices, it can reduce the latency of task offloading and reduce network congestion. Yet, edge computing has its drawbacks, such as the limited computing resources of some edge computing devices and the unbalanced loads among these devices. In order to effectively explore the potential of edge computing to support IoT applications, it is necessary to have efficient task management and load balancing in edge computing networks. In this dissertation research, an approach is presented to periodically distributing tasks within the edge computing network while satisfying the quality-of-service (QoS) requirements of tasks. The QoS requirements include task completion deadline and security requirement. The approach aims to maximize the number of tasks that can be accommodated in the edge computing network, with consideration of tasks’ priorities. The goal is achieved through the joint optimization of the computing resource allocation and network bandwidth provisioning. Evaluation results show the improvement of the approach in increasing the number of tasks that can be accommodated in the edge computing network and the efficiency in resource utilization. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Computer Engineering 2018

Este trabalho apresenta o projeto e a implementação da política de escalonamento com suporte à migração de processos JUMP. A migração de processos é uma ferramenta importante que complementa a alocação inicial realizada pela política de escalonamento em um ambiente paralelo distribuído, permitindo um balanceamento de carga dinâmico e mais refinado, resultando em um melhor desempenho do ambiente e menor tempo de resposta das aplicações paralelas distribuídas. A nova política unifica a alocação inicial e migração de processos em um único algoritmo, de forma a compartilhar decisões para o objetivo comum de prover um melhor desempenho para aplicações de uso intensivo de processamento em clusters heterogêneos. A política é implementada sobre o ambiente de escalonamento flexível e dinâmico AMIGO, adaptado para o suporte à migração de processos. A avaliação de desempenho mostrou que a nova política oferece ganhos expressivos nos tempos de resposta quando comparada às outras duas políticas de escalonamento implementadas no AMIGO, em quase todos os cenários, para diversas aplicações e diversas situações de carga do ambiente / This work presents the project and implementation of the scheduling policy with process migration support JUMP. Process migration is an important tool that complements the initial placement performed by the scheduling policy in a distributed parallel environment, allowing for dynamic and more refined load balancing, resulting in better performance of the environment and shorter response time for distributed parallel applications. The new policy unifies initial placement and process migration in a single algorithm, enabling the sharing of decisions for the common goal of providing a better performance for CPU-bound applications in heterogeneous clusters. The policy is implemented over the dynamical and flexible environment AMIGO, adapted in order to support process migration. Performance evaluation showed that the new policy offers expressive gains in response times when compared to other two scheduling policies implemented in AMIGO in almost all scenarios, for different applications and different environment load situations

This thesis discusses the use of a cooperative multiple robot system as applied to distributed tracking and sampling of a boundary edge. Within this system the boundary edge is partitioned into subsegments, each allocated to a particular robot such that workload is balanced across the robots. Also, to minimize the time between sampling local areas of the boundary edge, it is desirable to minimize the difference between each robot’s progression (i.e. phase) along its allocated sub segment of the edge. The paper introduces a new distributed controller that handles both workload and phase balancing. Simulation results are used to illustrate the effectiveness of the controller in an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) under ice edge sampling application. Successful results from experimentation with three iRobot(R) Creates are also presented.

abstract: Researchers and practitioners have widely studied road network traffic data in different areas such as urban planning, traffic prediction and spatial-temporal databases. For instance, researchers use such data to evaluate the impact of road network changes. Unfortunately, collecting large-scale high-quality urban traffic data requires tremendous efforts because participating vehicles must install Global Positioning System(GPS) receivers and administrators must continuously monitor these devices. There have been some urban traffic simulators trying to generate such data with different features. However, they suffer from two critical issues (1) Scalability: most of them only offer single-machine solution which is not adequate to produce large-scale data. Some simulators can generate traffic in parallel but do not well balance the load among machines in a cluster. (2) Granularity: many simulators do not consider microscopic traffic situations including traffic lights, lane changing, car following. This paper proposed GeoSparkSim, a scalable traffic simulator which extends Apache Spark to generate large-scale road network traffic datasets with microscopic traffic simulation. The proposed system seamlessly integrates with a Spark-based spatial data management system, GeoSpark, to deliver a holistic approach that allows data scientists to simulate, analyze and visualize large-scale urban traffic data. To implement microscopic traffic models, GeoSparkSim employs a simulation-aware vehicle partitioning method to partition vehicles among different machines such that each machine has a balanced workload. The experimental analysis shows that GeoSparkSim can simulate the movements of 200 thousand cars over an extensive road network (250 thousand road junctions and 300 thousand road segments). / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Computer Engineering 2019