João Ferreira

• Phd Informatics
• Professor (Assistant) at Iscte – University Institute of Lisbon

Traffic accidents in urban areas lead to reduced quality of life and added pressure in the cities’ infra-structures. In the context of smart city data is becoming available that allows a deeper analysis of the phenomenon. We propose a data fusion process from different information sources like road accidents, weather conditions, local authority rep...

The decentralization in the electrical power grids has gained increasing importance, especially in the last two decades, since transmission system operators (TSO), distribution system operators (DSO) and consumers are more aware of energy efficiency and energy sustainability issues. Therefore, globally, due to the introduction of energy production...

This article presents a power management system (PMS) designed for smart homes aiming to deal with the new challenges imposed by the proliferation of plug‐in electric vehicles (EVs) and their coexistence with other residential electrical appliances. The PMS is based on a hybrid wireless network architecture composed by a local hub/gateway and sever...

The electric mobility dissemination is forcing the adoption of new technologies and operation paradigms, not only focusing on smart grids, but also on smart homes. In fact, the emerging technologies for smart homes are also altering the conventional grids toward smart grids. By combining the key pillars of electric mobility and smart homes, this pa...

This research work presents a prototype model, focused on an android application, to handle the problem of finding an available parking space during driving process for all type of road vehicles in a city using historical data and prediction methods, where there is not any type of real-time system to provide information about the current state of t...

In this research work, we apply the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm with a decentralized blockchain approach to handle the electric vehicle (EV) charging process in shared spaces, such as condominiums. A mobile app handles the user authentication mechanism to initiate the EV charging process, where a set of sensors are used for measuring energy c...

This research work presents an information system to handle the problem of real-time guidance towards free charging slot in a city using past date and prediction and collaborative algorithms since there is no real-time system available to provide information if a charging spot is free or occupied. We explore the prediction approach using past data...

Medicine is a knowledge area continuously experiencing changes. Every day, discoveries and procedures are tested with the goal of providing improved service and quality of life to patients. With the evolution of computer science, multiple areas experienced an increase in productivity with the implementation of new technical solutions. Medicine is n...

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is not only increasingly valued by companies but also plays an extremely important role in the development of their strategies. This study systematically reviews literature that seeks to ascertain just which CSR strategies feature in the literature and their means of implementation by companies. We made recours...

In this work we describe our first steps towards our H2020 project MARISA participation, where we intent to develop a tool-kit towards the identification of outliers in Vessel trajectories based on electronic data regarding position and time. These outliers can correspond to illegal activities that could be related with illegal immigration, drugs t...

As the adoption of Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) rises in the healthcare institutions, these resources’ importance increases because of the clinical information they contain about patients. However, the unstructured information in the form of the narrative present in those records makes it hard to extract and structure useful clinical informati...

Buildings play an important role in energy consumption, mainly in the operation phase. Current development on IoT allows implementing sustainable actions in building towards savings, identify consumption patterns and relate consumption with space usage. Comfort parameters can be defined, and a set of services can be implemented toward the goals of...

Emergency departments are an important area of a hospital, being the major entry point to the healthcare system. One of the most important issues regarding patient experience are the emergency department waiting times. In order to help hospitals improving their patient experience, the authors will perform a study where the Random Forest algorithm w...

The present work proposes a real-time multi-object detection and tracking system to be implemented in commercial areas. The purpose is to gather and make sense of costumer behavior data extracted from surveillance footage (available from ceiling cameras) in order supply retailers with a set of analytics, management and planning tools to help them p...

This work presents an approach to combine location information from beacons and local building information to give real-time location and guidance to a user inside a building. This information can help users orientation inside unknown buildings and the data stored from different users can provide useful information about users movements inside a pu...

The Internet of Things (IoT) is part of a new paradigm where it is possible to integrate every sensor to the Internet, allowing it to be even more immersive and pervasive. Mastering these technologies, such as pervasive and smart places, is a challenge, especially when the goal is to achieve a closer interaction between citizens and applications. T...

Transportation management is a logistical activity with a high impact on a company’s ability to compete in the market. Although the focus on cost reduction is the most usual concern with this activity, lead times and the quality of the service provided should also be considered depending on the market to be served. The goal of this research was to...

City parking is increasingly complex and available parking spaces are scarce. Being able to identify a space to park their cars can lead many drivers to drive around the intended parking area several times, increasing traffic density and pollution. In this research we propose a collaborative blockchain solution with gamification for parking. Users...

Transportation-related costs are responsible for a large portion of the logistics cost. This is particularly important in city logistics process where it is not easy to aggregate deliveries. Fleet management if often based on efficiency criteria which does not always is compatible with customers’ service requests. Models supported by ICT, blockchai...

Nowadays, concerns about climate change have contributed significantly to changing the paradigm in the urban transportation sector towards vehicle electrification, where purely electric or hybrid vehicles are increasingly a new reality, supported by all major automotive brands. Nevertheless, new challenges are imposed on the current electrical powe...

This research work uses a simplified approach to combine location information from a beacon’s propagation signal interaction with a mobile device sensor (accelerometer and gyroscope) with local building information to give real-time location and guidance to a user inside a building. This is an interactive process with visualisation information that...

This paper describes the development and implementation of an electronic platform for energy management in public buildings. The developed platform prototype is based on the installation of a network of wireless sensors using the emerging Long Range (LoRa) low power long-range wireless network technology. This network is used to collect sensor data...

This research work uses a simplified approach to combine location information from beacons propagation signal interaction with a mobile device with local building information to give real-time location and guidance to a user inside a building. This is an interactive process with visualisation information that can help user’s orientation inside unkn...

Recommendation systems are commonly used in websites with large datasets, frequently used in e-commerce or multimedia streaming services. These systems effectively help users in the task of finding items of their interest, while also being helpful from the perspective of the service or product provider. However, successful applications to other dom...

Energy markets are based on energy transactions with a central control entity, where the players are companies. In this research work, we propose an IoT (Internet of Things) system for the accounting of energy flows, as well as a blockchain approach to overcome the need for a central control entity. This allows for the creation of local energy mark...

The Emergency Departments (ED) are a complex and important area of a hospital. With limited resources, it is mandatory to focus on efficiency. When hospitals are unable to deal with high demand, problems may rise leading to longer waiting times and more dissatisfaction. In this research, the authors extracted knowledge from a hospital ED, through d...

As the adoption of Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) rises in the healthcare institutions, these resources' importance increases because of the clinical information they contain about patients. However, the unstructured information in the form of clinical narratives present in those records, makes it hard to extract and structure useful clinical kn...

As the adoption of Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) rises in the healthcare institutions, these resources’ importance increases because of the clin-ical information they contain about patients. However, the unstructured infor-mation in the form of the narrative present in those records makes it hard to ex-tract and structure useful clinical inform...

This paper presents an Android-based mobile app designed to provide real time context aware public transportation information and advice to its users through the combination of the user's preferences and geographic context with data retrieved from a public transportation information system called XTraN Passenger. Thus, this mobile app contributes t...

The experimental validation of a novel architecture of an off-board three-phase fast battery charger for electric vehicles (EVs) with innovative operation modes is presented in this paper. The proposed EV fast battery charger is based on a dual-stage power converter (ac-dc and dc-dc) sharing the same dc-link. The ac-dc stage is used as interface be...

This paper presents a low cost mobile application (app) integrated on an Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem, which uses varied sensor information collected by mobile devices to track and assist on the logistics of urban goods distribution processes. The proposed approach is leveraged by the trend of decreasing costs for mobile data communication in...

This paper presents an IoT (Internet of Things) system designed to allow the monitoring and control of parameters of the users' vehicles, anytime and anywhere in the world, through the Internet. The system prototype was developed and tested using an electric vehicle (EV) and the respective sensor systems. The main components of the proposed IoT sys...

This work presents the development of a mobile application which allows the user to access real time data related with public transportation information. This application combines the geographic user context and preferences with the data provided by a public transportation information system, fulfilling the necessities of today’s passengers and pro...

In this research work we developed a set of algorithms and approaches for vessel plate number identification, to be integrated in a Vessel Monitoring System (VMS). In addition, it was developed a solution that allows the creation of a history log of port exits/entries to assist the monitoring activities. This system will be based on a database and...

Models supported by ICT tools are developed to raise collaboration and share of resources in urban logistics process, in a kind of “Logistics-as-uber” concept, which allows implementing operations such as “GoodsPooling” concept, equivalent to carpooling concept: daily use of home/work trips to pick and deliver goods on the way. This solution can al...

In this research work we describe the framework for a Personalized Trip Planner identify as T2* (Travel to Anywhere) towards a digital concierge in everyone’s pocket by a tailor made aggregation of features and services. The mission is to empower key stakeholders in the travel and tourism industry (Travelers, Concierges, and Service Providers) to d...

This research work is related to the Electric Vehicle (EV) integration in the electricity market, using the OpenADR open protocol for demand response. The proposed solution integrates a local developed EV charging system and a cloud management system, to coordinate the available energy produced from renewable energy sources, taking into account its...

In this research work we describe the creation of the concept of a distributed journey planning system that links as many journey planning services as are available in public transportation operators and willing to participate in one or more networks of journey planners across Europe. This is integrated on European project MASAI and it is part of a...

The limitations and work processes for how people work and interact are suffering changes due to the very fast development of technologies. The use of computers as daily instruments has a reflective effect on people’s activity and attitudes towards work. It is a challenge to take advantage of emergent technologies and also to overcome these technol...

This paper discusses the results of an applied research on the fishing activity based on a monitor system developed by a company and fishing reports produced at the end of each fishing activity. Due to economic interests combined with fishing limitations there is a natural tendency for wrong reporting. We apply Data Mining (DM) methodologies to fin...

The fundamental challenge in developing and evaluating creativity support tools is that we are not able to detect when a person is being creative. In this position paper we described our perspective of ambient intelligence in creativity support tools specially in the use of creative writing environments. Starting with the activity theory, we descri...

In this research work we propose a new approach to estimate the number of passengers in a public transportation and determinate the users’ route path based on a passive approach without user intervention. The method is based on the probe requests of users mobile device through the collected data in wireless access point. This data is manipulated to...

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis and comparison of digital current control techniques for active rectifiers. These rectifiers are connected to the power grid and are controlled aiming to obtain sinusoidal grid currents and unitary power factor. In this context this paper presents the principle of operation of a full-bridge full-controll...

With the growing of irregular renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, are required energy backup solutions to establish an advantageous compromise between the energy production and consumption. Typically, these renewable energy sources are not installed at the end-users level, which can create the problem of uncontrolled distributed energ...

This paper presents an improved five-level bidirectional converter (iFBC) controlled by finite control set model predictive control (FCS-MPC). This control strategy consists in using the discrete time nature of the iFBC to define its state in each sampling interval. Using FCS-MPC the switching frequency is not constant; however, it is suitable to f...

The spread of mobile devices with several sensors, together with mobile commu-nication, provides huge volumes of real-time data (big data) about users’ mobility habits, which should be correctly analysed to extract useful knowledge. In our re-search we explore a data mining approach based on a Naïve Bayes (NB) classifi-er applied to different sourc...

In this research work we propose a new approach to estimate the number of passengers in a public transportation or determinate the users’ route path based on probe requests of users mobile device through collected data in wireless access point. This data is manipulated to extract the information about the numbers of users with mobile devices and tr...

This research work is based on the development of a mobile application and associated central services for tracking users’ movements in a city, identifying the transportation mode and routes performed. This passive tracking generates useful data about users’ habits, which are then associated with the CO2 emission in the form of a mobility invoice,...

The spread of mobile devices with several sensors, together with mobile communication, provides huge volumes of real-time data (big data) about users’ mobility habits, which should be correctly analysed to extract useful knowledge. In our research we explore a data mining approach based on a Naïve Bayes (NB) classifier applied to different sources...

This paper presents experimental results of electric vehicle (EV) operation as an off-line uninterruptible power supply (UPS). Besides the traditional grid-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-grid modes, this paper presents an improved vehicle-to-home operation mode. This new operation mode consists of the detection of a power outage in the power grid and th...

This paper proposes an on-board Electric Vehicle (EV) battery charger with enhanced Vehicle-to-Home (V2H) operation mode. For such purpose was adapted an on-board bidirectional battery charger prototype to allow the Grid-to-Vehicle (G2V), Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) and V2H operation modes. Along the paper are presented the hardware topology and the cont...

This paper proposes a smart battery charging strategy for Electric Vehicles (EVs) targeting the future smart homes. The proposed strategy consists in regulate the EV battery charging current in function of the total home current, aiming to prevent overcurrent trips in the main switch breaker. Computational and experimental results were obtained und...

This paper presents a new approach of pre-defined profiles, based in different voltage and current values, to control the charging and discharging processes of batteries in order to assess their performance. This new approach was implemented in a prototype that was specially developed for such purpose. This prototype is a smart power electronics pl...

This work is integrated in the SmartCITIES Cloud Ticketing project from Link Consulting SA, aiming at proposing a multi-tenancy implementation of a ticketing system on the Amazon cloud platform. The SmartCITIES project introduced the “thin device” concept, which allows transferring the traditional ticketing operations to a cloud platform, increasin...

We propose the idea of using the drivers themselves as sources of traffic information, providing a simple system interface on a mobile device to alert the user of possible traffic situations. Allied to this concept is a system, which based on information sent by drivers, identifies occurrences relating to traffic and again establishes communication...

This paper presents an on-board bidirectional battery charger for Electric Vehicles (EVs), which operates in three different modes: Grid-to-Vehicle (G2V), Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G), and Vehicle-to-Home (V2H). Through these three operation modes, using bidirectional communications based on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), it will be pos...

This paper presents the outcomes of a research work consisting in the development of an Electric Vehicle Assistant (EVA), which creates and stores a driver profile where are contained the driving behaviours related with the EV energy consumption, the EV battery charging information, and the performed routes. This is an application for mobile device...

This work is about the problem of multimodal shortest path in the trans- portation networks system, where users have several modes and forms to travel from an origin to a destination. To extend the traditional shortest path problem an innova- tive framework is presented, which integrates a multi-decision criteria related with political enviroment p...

Electric Vehicles (EVs) have limited energy storage capacity and the maximum autonomy range is strongly dependent of the driver's behaviour. Due to the fact of that batteries cannot be recharged quickly during a journey, it is essential that a precise range prediction is available to the driver of the EV. With this information, it is possible to ch...

In this paper we describe the development of a productive validation device in a mobile platform, to achieve a low cost ticketing device public transport passenger. This work is integrated in the project Smart CITIES Cloud Ticketing from Link Consulting SA, used to propose a multi-tenancy implementation of ticketing terminals. Additionally, it was...

This paper provides an overview of a set of OLAP based feedback tools for management of a public BUS transportation system, providing data to continually educated drivers and network planners in regards to Fuel Usage Efficiency. Details on collection, extraction, transformation, loading and analysis of data into a data warehouse and multi-dimension...

This paper provides an overview of a Cooperative transportation infrastructure, by providing the driver with a collaborative holistic approach of different public transportation infrastructure sources, that can be combined with real traffic information, parking places and charging slots and current driver position, to support the driver decision ma...

In this work it is proposed the design of a system to handle Distributed Energy Resources (DER), which is a new reality due to Electric Vehicles (EVs), Microgeneration (MG) and the open Electrical Markets (EM). This upcoming reality brings the need of the 'old' central energy control to be installed locally. For that we propose a local energy broke...

In this paper is presented the development of a smart batteries charging system for the Electric Vehicle (EV) CEPIUM, aiming the integration of EVs in the future Smart Grids. The main features of the developed charging system are the mitigation of the power quality degradation and the bidirectional operation, as Grid-to-Vehicle (G2V) and as Vehicle...

The aim of the present work, in the field of Cloud Computing (CC), is to contribute for the evolution of traditional ticketing systems to integrated systems in CC. The CC paradigm suggests virtual infrastructures, scalable and automated management of shared resources in the same business model. The management of equipment and core ticketing process...

In this work it is proposed the design of a system to handle Distributed Energy Resources (DER), which is a new reality due to Electric Vehicles (EVs), Microgeneration (MG) and the open Electrical Markets (EM). This upcoming reality brings the need of the ‘old’ central energy control to be installed locally. For that we propose a local energy broke...

In this research work, we introduce the concept of a reputation service to evaluate user collaboration towards community or system goal. Online reputation mechanisms allow members of a community to submit their opinions (feedback) regarding other community members and their publication activity. Submitted opinions are analyzed, aggregated with feed...

The goal of this research work is to introduce the concept of a lower cost flexible system for ticking purposes implemented on a cloud platform. We propose therefore the evolution of the traditional architecture of ticketing for a cloud based architecture in which the core processes of ticketing are offered through a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) bu...

The current work deals with the scenario of growing population in the cities and the associated sustainable mobility problems. To address this problem it is developed an system called INTEGRA for a mobile device, based on the integration from different data sources such as multi-modal public transportation systems, car and bike sharing. This system...

Information integration in enterprises is a nightmare due to the differences in software and hardware platforms and due to syntactic and semantic differences in the schemas of the data sources. This is a well-known problem in the area of Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), where many applications have been developed for the purpose of informa...

We propose a specific language (created for the IR area) that provides a common notation and concepts for the design of IR systems. The language is based on UML extension mechanisms with specific stereotypes for IR. From this language (UML Profile) we define standard libraries of models and code templates that can be used in the development of IR s...

The idea developed in this paper is the creation of standard information retrieval modules in a distributed manner in order to create testing systems to validate methods and algorithms. An investigator in information retrieval can construct a retrieval test system just by integrating different modules and manipulating the input variables of each mo...

The recent and massive investments in Electric Vehicles (EVs) reveal a change of paradigm in the transports sector and the proliferation of EVs will contribute to an effective reduction in the emissions of greenhouse gases. Nevertheless, for the electrical power grids EVs will be extra loads, which will require the demand energy to charge their bat...

The aim of the present work, in the field of Cloud Computing (CC), is to contribute for the evolution of traditional ticketing systems to integrated systems in CC. The CC paradigm suggests virtual infrastructures, scalable and automated management of shared resources in the same business model. The management of equipment and core ticketing process...

This paper presents a mobile information system denominated as Vehicle-to-Anything Application (V2Anything App), and explains its conceptual aspects. This application is aimed at giving relevant information to Full Electric Vehicle (FEV) drivers, by supporting the integration of several sources of data in a mobile application, thus contributing to...

Batteries of Electric Vehicles (EVs) and Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) have a large potential not only to provide energy for the locomotion of these vehicles, but also to interact, in dynamic way, with the power grid. Thereby, through the energy stored in the batteries, these vehicles can be used to regulate the active and the reactive p...

Electric Vehicles (EVs) are being introduced in the market, but batteries reduced energy storage capacity and the lack of a high density charging infrastructure limit their autonomy range. In order to overcome this limitation, we propose developing a new solution enabling drivers to drive longer distances. This will be achieved by integrating some...

This paper presents a comparison of four types of on-board batteries charging systems for Electric Vehicles (EVs) and Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs), and their impact on the power quality of the electrical power grid. In the comparison are analyzed the features, the characteristics and the operation of each charging system, aiming their c...

In this paper is presented an H-Bridge Multilevel Converter topology for Electric Vehicles (EVs) and Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs). The topology of the presented multilevel converter allows the interface between the batteries, the electric motor of the vehicle, and the electrical power grid. Thereby, taking into account that the proposed...

This paper presents a recommender system responsible for processing information that will help the driver in the daily use of his Electric Vehicle (EV), minimizing the problem of range anxiety through a personalized range prediction and by presenting in real time relevant information about the charging stations that can be reached within the range...

In this paper is presented the development of a smart batteries charger for Electric Vehicles (EVs) and Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs), aiming their integration in Smart Grids. The batteries charging process is controlled by an appropriate control algorithm, aiming to preserve the batteries lifespan. The main features of the equipment are...

In this work it is proposed the design of a mobile system to assist car drivers in a smart city environment oriented to the upcoming reality of Electric Vehicles (EV). Taking into account the new reality of smart cites, EV introduction, Smart Grids (SG), Electrical Markets (EM), with deregulation of electricity production and use, drivers will need...

In this work is proposed the design of a system to create and handle Electric Vehicles (EV) charging procedures, based on intelligent process. Due to the electrical power distribution network limitation and absence of smart meter devices, Electric Vehicles charging should be performed in a balanced way, taking into account past experience, weather...

In this work is proposed the design of a system to create and handle Electric Vehicles (EV) charging procedures, based on intelligent process. Due to the electrical power distribution network limitation and absence of smart meter devices, Electric Vehicles charging should be performed in a balanced way, taking into account past experience (spread i...

The current work deals with the problem of growing population in the cities and the associated mobility problems. For this problem it is proposed a Multi-Modal Transportation Advisor system, based on the integration from different data sources such as public transportation systems, car and bike sharing or car pooling. Taking into account real time...

Being the next big step in automobile industry, electric vehicles continue to have limited autonomy which associated with the long charging times, limited charging stations and undeveloped smart grid infrastructure demands for a hard planning of the daily use of the vehicle. This paper presents an information system that will help the driver in the...