UTC Com­pieg­ne and the CETMEF (acronym for Tech­ni­cal research cen­tre for mar­itime and riv­er trans­porta­tion) launched their joint team PHEBUS in June 2012, with the fol­low­ing research top­ics: phys­i­cal mod­el­ling and car­tog­ra­phy applied to sus­tain­able man­age­ment to port and riv­er based cities. One of the objec­tives is to imag­ine and design the port of the future. 

Modelling and mapping out the “Port of the future”

Pro­duc­ing renew­able ener­gy, opti­mis­ing and shar­ing ener­gy con­sump­tion, sus­tain­able land man­age­ment … these are some of the activ­i­ties that con­cern the urban milieu, the imple­men­ta­tion of which requires both good knowl­edge of the land space involved, and the geo­graph­ic and phys­i­cal capac­i­ty of the phe­nom­e­na, plus the tools for con­cer­ta­tion and involve­ment of var­i­ous actors in the deci­sion chain. “More­over, cities and espe­cial­ly those in port or riv­er sit­u­a­tions appear today to have advan­tages when it comes to installing facil­i­ties for renew­able ener­gy, there­by extend­ing them and improv­ing on their effi­cien­cy fac­tor”, explains Jean-Louis BATOZ, direc­tor of the UTC AVENUES-GSU Lab­o­ra­to­ry. The poten­tial to cap­ture solar ener­gy is high giv­en the sur­faces avail­able, but could also prove attrac­tive since pro­duc­tion and con­sump­tion sites coin­cide, reduc­ing line loss­es and ensur­ing bet­ter effi­cien­cy. The Port of the Future there­fore will be in posi­tion to take advan­tage in an opti­mal man­ner of urban poten­tials. There is, how­ev­er, a pri­or need to mod­el these and to map them accordingly. 

PHEBUS: a unique brand of collaboration unique taking into account sustainable development in an urban milieu

It is with this objec­tive in mind that UTC-AVENUES-GSU and the CETMEF decid­ed to set up a joint team for research. The CETMEF – a tech­ni­cal ser­vice of the French min­istry in charge of Ecol­o­gy – is reg­u­lar­ly engaged in nation­al lev­el stud­ies about imple­men­ta­tions that fol­low suite to the so-called Grenelle laws on the envi­ron­ment. The lat­ter were framed and adopt­ed for the pur­pose of pro­vid­ing coher­ent, nation­al respons­es to cur­rent­ly observed envi­ron­men­tal issues. The UTC AVENUES-GSU team have always been inter­est­ed in mul­ti-scale and mul­ti-phys­i­cal mod­el­ling for build­ings, adopt­ing pluridis­ci­pli­nary and sys­temic aids to deci­sion approach­es for sus­tain, able urban devel­op­ments. Col­lab­o­ra­tion between UTC and the CETMEF, in the form of the PHEBUS* should lead to the devel­op­ment of tools for dig­i­tal and phys­i­cal mod­el­ling used to analyse spa­tial con­fig­u­ra­tions and asso­ciate data to gain bet­ter knowl­edge of the ter­ri­to­ries involved and bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion among the var­i­ous actors. 

Innovative solutions for energy procurement and risk management 

In a wider con­text, PHEBUS pro­pos­es inno­v­a­tive solu­tions « for clean, sure ener­gy pro­cure­ment, improved safe­ty fac­tors for per­sons faced with nat­ur­al and tech­no­log­i­cal risks, con­tribut­ing to the eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment and bet­ter eco­log­i­cal and social vis­i­bil­i­ty of future urban port schemes”, under­lines François HISSEL, Sci­en­tif­ic Direc­tor in the “Sim­u­la­tion, Com­put­er Sci­ence, Mod­el­ling” Depart­ment with the CETMEF and co-Direc­tor for PHEBUS. Sev­er­al research themes have already been cho­sen and ini­ti­at­ed: improved pro­duc­tion process­es for renew­able ener­gy sources, ener­gy use opti­mi­sa­tion in build­ings, har­mon­is­ing urban plan­ning tools, con­trol sys­tems for risks in the con­text of cli­mate change. * Urban Physics, Ener­gy man­age­ment map­ping for mar­itime or riv­er side cities.