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A novel hierarchical hybrid neural model to the problem of long-term electrical load forecasting is proposed in this paper. The neural model is made up of two self-organizing map nets: one on top of the other, and a single-layer perceptron. It has application into domains which require time series analysis. The model is compared to a multilayer perceptron. Both the hierarchical and the multilayer perceptron models are endowed with time windows in their input layers. They are trained and assessed on load data extracted from a North-American electric utility. The models are required to predict once every week the electric peakload and mean-load for the next 2 years. The results are presented and evaluated in the paper.

This paper presents a discussion about using consistent global checkpoints to synchronize processes of a program of distributed simulation during the rollback procedure, allowing to improve the simulation performance and to carry out a more suitable memory management. A new optimistic protocol is presented as consequence of using consistent global checkpoints.

The number of vehicles worldwide has grown rapidly over the past decade, impacting how urban traffic is managed. Traffic light control is a well-known problem and, although an increasing number of technologies are used to solve it, it still poses challenges and opportunities, especially when considering the inefficiency of the popular fixed-time traffic controllers. This study aims to apply Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning (HRL) and Options Framework to control a signalized vehicular intersection and compare its performance with that of a fixed-time traffic controller, configured using the Webster Method. HRL combines the ability to learn and make decisions while taking observations from the environment in realtime. These capabilities bring a significant adaptive power to a highly dynamic problem. The test scenarios were built using the SUMO simulation tool. According to our results, HRL presents better performance than those of its own isolated sub-policies and the fixed-time model, indicating a simple and efficient alternative.