Systems, Man & Cybernetics - January 2017 - 22

trucks performing the waste collection in an Italian city
(Trieste). The white dot represents the depot, the black one
is the landfill, and the routes in the same shift have different shades of the same color for their pickup points.
Smart Cities and SGs
The management of SGs is a crucial problem in the administration of smart cities. A typical issue is the integration of
electric mobility with the power system, especially at the distribution level. The identification of the optimal smart charging strategy is a problem that involves two main systems
with different requirements and, often, conflicting objectives. For electric vehicle (EV) drivers, it is essential to meet
the same level of flexibility they are used to with traditional
vehicles. Moreover, when EVs are deployed in company
fleets, the reliability of a vehicle's state of charge is essential.
On the other hand, electric grid operators aim at minimizing the impact of the charging of EVs on the power system to defer such operations to off-peak hours and to shift
them to areas characterized by low electricity demand. The
cooperation and interaction between these two systems is,
therefore, crucial, and modern SGs will enable it. A number
of contributions regarding the smart management of EV
charging operations can be found in the related literature.
The traditional approaches that take into account both driver and grid requirements determine the optimal charging
profile for each EV on the basis of a smart charging signal
broadcast by the grid operators.
However, to make EVs effectively competitive with traditional vehicles, the coordination of charging operations
within the public infrastructure is the cornerstone. Not
only the charging profile but also the assignment to the
best charging station must depend on the grid conditions.
To overcome this drawback, an IP for electromobility can
guarantee the fulfillment of the needs of both electric grid
operators and EV drivers [12]. Figure 4 presents the platform architecture for smart management and coordination
of EV charging operations. In particular, charging operations involving the public charging infrastructure are considered by taking into account not only the traditional
resource assignment problem and capacity constraints but
also the grid requirements. In our idea, this turns into a
time-varying configuration of the public charging infrastructure by considering the interconnected involved systems, such as the charging infrastructure, the energy
distributors, the energy providers, and the users.

About the Authors
Maria Pia Fanti (mariapia.fanti@poliba.it) is a full professor of system and control engineering in the Department of
Electrical and Information Engineering of the Polytechnic
University of Bari, Italy. Her current research interests
include discrete-event systems; Petri net; consensus protocols; and management and modeling of complex systems,
such as automated manufacturing, transportation, logistics,
and health-care systems. She has authored more than 240
papers and two textbooks in such research topics.
Walter Ukovich (ukovich@units.it) is a full professor
of operations research in the Department of Engineering
and Architecture of the University of Trieste, Italy. He has
authored more than 210 scientific papers in his research
fields, which include optimization, logistics, transportation, production planning and control, and health-care
systems management.
References
[1] M. Jamshidi, Ed., System of Systems Engineering: Innovations for the
21st Century. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2009.
[2] J. Holt, S. Perry, R. Payne, J. Bryans, S. Hallerstede, and F. Overgaard Hansen, "A
model-based approach for requirements engineering for systems of systems," IEEE
Syst. J., vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 252-262, 2015.
[3] L. Abbatecola, M. P. Fanti, A. M. Mangini, and W. Ukovich, "A decision support
approach for postal delivery and waste collection services," IEEE Trans. Autom.
Sci. Eng., vol. 13, no. 4, pp. 1458-1470, 2016.
[4] M. P. Fanti, A. M. Mangini, M. Roccotelli, and W. Ukovich, "A district energy management based on thermal comfort satisfaction and real-time power balancing," IEEE
Trans. Autom. Sci. Eng., vol. 12, no. 4, pp. 1271-1284, 2015.
[5] M. P. Fanti, A. M. Mangini, M. Dotoli, and W. Ukovich, "A three level strategy for the
design and performance evaluation of hospital departments," IEEE Trans. Syst.,
Man, Cybern., Syst., vol. 43, no. 4, pp. 742-756, July 2013.
[6] M. P. Fanti, G. Iacobellis, and W. Ukovich, "A risk assessment framework for
hazmat transportation in highways by colored Petri nets," IEEE Trans. Syst., Man,
Cybern., Syst., vol. 45, no. 3, pp. 485-495, 2015.
[7] M. P. Fanti, A. M. Mangini, G. Iacobellis, and W. Ukovich, "Freeway traffic modeling
and control in a first order hybrid Petri net framework," IEEE Trans. Autom. Sci.
Eng., vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 90-102, 2014.
[8] V. Boschian, M. Dotoli, M. P. Fanti, G. Iacobellis, and W. Ukovich, "A metamodeling
approach to the management of intermodal transportation networks," IEEE Trans.
Autom. Sci. Eng., vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 457-469, 2011.
[9]. M. P. Fanti, G. Iacobellis, W. Ukovich, V. Boschian, G. Georgoulas, and C. Stylios,
"A simulation based decision support system for logistics management," J. Comput.
Sci., vol. 10, pp. 86-96, Sept. 2015.
[10] V. Boschian, M. P. Fanti, G. Iacobellis, and W. Ukovich, "Analysis of impact of
ICT solutions in international freight management," Eur. Transp., no. 51, pp. 1-16,

Conclusion
To deal with the different requirements and peculiar features
of SoS, the need for managing such complex, distributed, multiobjective, and collaborating systems is apparent. As a consequence, the development of solutions involving novel research
and application areas, such as big data, IoT, and cloud- and
web-service-based approaches, to manage SoS in different
domains will become essential, providing attractive and promising opportunities for both practitioners and researchers.
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IEEE SyStEmS, man, & CybErnEtICS magazInE Janu ar y 2017

Aug. 2012.
[11] M. P. Fanti, G. Rotunno, G. Stecco, W. Ukovich, and S. Mininel, "An integrated
system for production scheduling in steelmaking and casting plants," IEEE Trans.
Autom. Sci. Eng., vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 1112-1128, 2016.
[12] M. Clemente, M. P. Fanti, and W. Ukovich, "Smart management of electric vehicles
charging operations: The vehicle-to-charging station assignment problem," in Proc.
19th World Congr. Int. Federation of Automatic Control, Cape Town, South
Africa, 2014, pp. 918-923.

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