Antonio Violi

• PhD
• Professor (Assistant) at University of Sannio

This paper presents a risk-averse stochastic programming model for the optimal design of a home energy system that integrates renewable energy generation from photovoltaic panels and a battery energy storage system. Prosumer’s loads are classified into base and programmable loads and the possibility of exploiting the flexibility of these latter is...

Purpose Multi-criteria methods represent an adequate tool for solving complex decision problems that provide real support to the decision maker in the choice process. This paper analyzes a decision problem that recurs over time using one of the newer methods as the Parsimonious AHP. Design/methodology/approach In this paper we integrated the P-AHP...

The number of people using shared or smart mobility for daily travel and for tourism purposes is growing. This work aims to define a new smart decision approach to promotes the use of car-pooling by tourist groups to reach sites of interest that are difficult to reach with other public transport solutions. The decision problem consists in defining...

The efficiency of production processes is a topic of fundamental importance in the manufacturing sector. Different approaches for measuring the efficiency of manufacturing processes have been presented over time. However, the debate on the reliability of the tools and indicators currently available, as well as on their effectiveness and the ability...

Multi-criteria decision methods (MCDMs) are used as an effective tool to support decision makers (DMs) in critical decision processes. These methods are used in several fields of application by analyzing static decision-making problems in which it is assumed that the decision is made at a precise moment. By increasing the complexity of decision-mak...

This document proposes an innovative composite indicator to measure and control the performance of production processes. The aim is to provide a tool for controlling the efficiency of the processes, assessed in relation to the number and the impact of occurring “errors”, which can take into account the opinion of experts in the specific domain. Thi...

This paper focuses on the home energy management for a residential prosumager with flexible loads. In particular, three different types of controllable appliances (shiftable, interruptible, thermostatically controllable) have been considered, each one with a specific representation of energy consumption profile and a potential discomfort rate for t...

In this paper we address a real industrial application involving a company that manages an e-marketplace for logistics services in the Italian territory. For the carriers, the main service offered by the company consists in the design of the optimal routes integrating additional delivery requests with those already in charge. The aim is to increase...

This paper deals with the problem of modelling complex transaction cost structures within portfolio management models in an efficient and effective way. We consider a general structure of transaction costs, where the applied commissions depend on the range of traded monetary amount and we use this general structure within a portfolio optimization p...

It is widely recognized that the adoption of collaborative organization models in the agri-food sector can help farmers in rural areas to reach sustainable development goals. In any case, a holistic and coherent view of sustainability, organizational models and supporting technologies in the agri-food sector is still not present in the scientific l...

We describe a Smart Tourism System called SMARTCAL, designed in the context of a R&D project aimed at supporting the tourism development in Calabria (a region in the South of Italy). The system is designed by considering Points and Events of Interest (PEOI) and their relationship with the local transport systems and infrastructures. A proactive tou...

Scholars from different perspectives agree that agritourism can be the right tool to balance the needs of tourists with those of rural communities, offering real opportunities for economic and social development, while mitigating undesirable impacts on the environment. This paper aims to provide a holistic outlook of the different perspectives unde...

The paper deals with the energy procurement and economic management problem for an aggregation of prosumers at a strategic/tactical level. This decision process, usually in charge of the “aggregator”, the entity which coordinates market operations and resource management for the entire coalition, consists into the definition of the optimal mix of e...

In this work we describe a new Smart Tourism System called SMARTCAL, born during the development of a R&D project for supporting the tourism digitalisation, that includes the release of a pilot in Calabria (a region in the South of Italy). The project is a new initiative to support tourism and hospitality industry with a series of statistical tools...

In this paper, we propose a dynamic and stochastic approach for an inventory routing problem in which products with a high perishability must be delivered from a supplier to a set of customers. This problem falls within the agri-food supply chain (\({\mathcal {ASC}}\)) management field, which includes all the activities from production to distribut...

This paper deals with the optimal home energy management problem faced by a smart prosumer equipped with PV panels and storage systems. The stochastic programming framework is adopted with the aim of explicitly accounting for the inherent uncertainty affecting the main problem parameters (i.e. generation from renewable energy sources and demands)....

This paper focuses on the home energy management problem faced by a smart prosumer equipped with photovoltaic panels and a storage system. Some of the home appliances (the shiftable ones) can be controlled in that the consumer may specify an operating time window within the load should be turned on. The inherent uncertainty affecting the main model...

This paper deals with the problem faced by an aggregator in defining the optimal tariff structure for a group of prosumers aggregated within a coalition. The random nature of the main parameters involved in the decision process is explicitly accounted for by adopting the stochastic programming framework and, in particular, the paradigm of integrate...

We introduce the study of an application for the Macingo Technologies, a company that manages an e-marketplace for logistics services. A carrier has to pick-up and delivery freight from different points and is able to accept further delivery requests through the web company platform. In order to investigate the convenience in accepting extra-delive...

The Orienteering Problem (OP) is a routing problem which has many applications in logistics, tourism and defense. Given a set of nodes, where each node represents a Point of Interest (POI), the orienteering problem aims to design a tour leaving from a starting POI, visiting a subset of POIs and finally arriving at the ending POI. The objective of t...

High dimensionality is a big problem that has been receiving a lot of interest from data scientists. Classification algorithms usually have trouble handling high dimensional data, and Support Vector Machine is not an exception. Trying to reduce the dimensionality of data selecting a subset of the original features is a solution to this problem. Man...

The definition of the electric energy procurement plan represents a fundamental problem that any consumer has to deal with. Bilateral contracts, electricity market and self-production are the main supply sources that should be properly combined to satisfy the energy demand over a given time horizon at the minimum cost. The problem is made more comp...

The paper focuses on the optimal management of distributed energy resources aggregated within a coalition. The problem is analyzed from the viewpoint of an aggregator, seen as an entity called to optimize the available resources so to satisfy the aggregated demand by eventually trading in the Day-Ahead Electricity Market. Both a full and a residual...

The paper analyzes the problem of the optimal procurement plan at a strategic level for a set of prosumers aggregated within a coalition. Electric energy needs can be covered through bilateral contracts, self-production and the pool. Signing bilateral contracts reduces the risk associated with the volatility of pool prices usually incurring higher...

We consider the problem faced by a large consumer that has to define the procurement plan to cover its energy needs. The uncertain nature of the problem, related to the spot price and energy needs, is dealt by the stochastic programming framework. The proposed approach provides the decision maker with a proactive strategy that covers the energy nee...

Portfolio optimisation is a crucial problem that every financial operator has to deal with. Nowadays the possibility to process large amount of data, to generate more confident forecasts and to solve more complex optimisation problems is powered by the adoption of advanced computing systems. This paper presents an efficient and effective decision s...

This paper addresses the capital budgeting problem under uncertainty. In particular, we propose a multistage stochastic programming model aimed at selecting and managing a project portfolio. The dynamic uncertain evolution of each project value is modelled by a scenario tree over the planning horizon. The model allows the decision maker to revise d...

The 2008 credit crisis has deeply affected the price of corporate liabilities in both equity and fixed income secondary markets leading to unprecedented portfolio losses by financial investors. A coordinated intervention by monetary institutions limited the systemic consequences of the crisis, without, however, avoiding a significant fall of corpor...

Capital rationing is a major problem in managerial decision making. The classical mathematical formulation of the problem relies on a multi-dimensional knapsack model with known input parameters. Since capital rationing is carried out in conditions where uncertainty is the rule rather than the exception, the hypothesis of deterministic data limits...

This paper addresses the problem faced by a large electricity consumer in determining the optimal procurement plan over a short-term time horizon. The inherent complexity of the problem, due to its dynamic and stochastic nature, is dealt by means of the stochastic programming modeling framework. In particular, a two-stage problem is formulated with...

The European market for corporate bonds has grown significantly over the last two decades to become a preferable financing channel for large corporations in the local and Eurobond markets. The 2008 credit crisis has, however, dramatically changed corporations funding opportunities with similar effects on borrowing policies of sovereigns as well. Ac...

Strategic asset allocation is a crucial activity for any institutional or individual investor. Given a set of asset classes, the problem concerns the definition and management over time of the best asset mix to achieve favorable returns subject to various uncertainties, policy and legal constraints, and other requirements. Although a considerable a...

In this work, the optimal sensor displacement problem in wireless sensor networks is addressed. It is assumed that a network, consisting of independent, collaborative and mobile nodes, is available. Starting from an initial configuration, the aim is to define a specific sensors displacement, which allows the network to achieve high performance, in...

A very important task in electricity market operation is to forecast day ahead market price in order to implement adequate bidding strategies. In this direction, this paper proposes a technique to forecast day-ahead electricity prices based on the mean reverting process, using a properly fitted model. Results from the electricity market of Italy du...

In the last few years, several different mesh network architectures have been conceived by both industry and academia; however, many issues on the deployment of efficient and fair transport protocols are still open. One of these issues is rate adaptation, that is, how to allocate the network resources among multiple flows, while minimizing the perf...

In this paper, we deal with the definition of a decision model for a producer operating in a multi-auction electricity market. The decisions to be taken concern the commitment of the generation plants and the quantity of energy required to offer to each auction and to cover the bilateral contracts. We propose a multistage stochastic programming mod...

A crucial issue for addressing decision-making problems under uncertainty is the approximate representation of multivariate stochastic processes in the form of scenario tree. This paper proposes a scenario generation approach based on the idea of integrating simulation and optimization techniques. In particular, simulation is used to generate outco...

We propose a novel solution approach for the class of two-stage nonlinear integer stochastic programming models. These problems are characterized by large scale dimensions, as the number of constraints and variables depend on the number of realizations (scenarios) used to capture the underlying distributions of the random data. In addition, the int...

In this paper we propose some innovative optimization models for wireless sensor networks. The models are chosen depending on the task the network is called to execute and they focus on the optimization of some specific performance objectives. Indeed, starting from a generic configuration, the optimal solution defines a specific sensors displacemen...

This paper aims at defining a dynamic and flexible tariff structure for a distribution company that protects the retail consumers against the excessive fluctuations of the wholesales market prices. We propose a two-stage pricing scheme that sets in a first-stage a time-of-use tariff that is corrected later by a dynamic component once the real-time...

In this letter we investigate the placement of nodes, based on their residual energies, when both the forward and the backward directions of a data flow are considered. First we extend the monodirectional flow model and determine the nodes' positions that achieve the longest path-lifetime, then we propose a new model that allows us to find the opti...

The bilateral contract selection and bids definition constitute a strategic issue for electric energy producers that operate in competitive markets, as the liberalized electricity ones. In this paper we propose a two-stage stochastic integer programming model for the integrated optimization of power production and trading which include a specific m...

The paper investigates the potential advantages related to the adoption of grid computing technology in the financial sector. The increasing power of computational grids makes now possible to offer functionalities that were previously unimaginable. From derivative pricing, to risk management, from on-line trading to portfolio optimization, the poss...

In the deregulated marketplace, generation companies sell energy through auctions in a daily market. The daily-price volatility, together with the bids acceptance process uncertainty, make arise the need of performing risk assessment. A a multi-stage mixed-integer stochastic programming model with linear constraints, able to detect the profitabilit...

Most of the liberalized electricity systems use the auction as a market model. The complexity of the underlying optimization formulation depends on the technical and regulatory constraints that must be considered. In Italy, the auction clearing should include not only congestion management limitations, but also a challenging regulatory constraint i...

In this paper we deal with the definition of a decisional model for a producer op- erating in a multi-auction electricity market. The decisions to be taken concern the commitment of the generation plants and the quantity of energy required to offer to each auction and to cover the bilateral contracts. We propose a Multistage Stochastic Programming...