Background
Koen van Dam (1978) is a researcher and post-doc in the Energy & Industry group at the faculty of Technology, Policy and Management (TPM) of the University of Technology in Delft (TU Delft).
After obtaining his pre-university (VWO) highschool diploma at the Goois Lyceum in Bussum he studied Artificial Intelligence at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. With an internship project at TNO (Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research) and a thesis on the design of a generic ontology translator he completed his Masters studies, with a specialisation in Knowledge Engineering, in 2002. Now holding an MSc degree he started working as a researcher at the faculty of Mechanical Engineering of TU Delft in the section Transport Engineering & Logistics on the control of Automated Guided Vehicles. In the beginning of 2005 he was offered a PhD position on the topic of modelling infrastructures as multi-agent systems and he transferred to TPM.
While working on his PhD research, Koen spent four months as a visiting researcher at the National University of Singapore. On the 30th of October 2009 he successfully defended his PhD thesis "Capturing socio-technical systems with agent-based modelling". He now works as a post-doctoral researcher, focussing on modelling urban energy systems and energy markets. Koen was also the president of Eurodoc, the European council for doctoral candidates and young researchers.
A detailed CV is available on request.
Research
Main research interests:
- Intelligent infrastructures
- Multi-agent systems
- Generic modelling
- Complex systems
- Ontology design (e.g. Energy Ontology (old draft))
- Knowledge acquisition
- Urban energy systems
- Electricity infrastructures
- Gas market
- Industrial networks
- Supply chains
Current research project: Knowledge Dissemination on Agent-Based Modelling for Infrastructure Systems
Details will follow shortly.PhD project: Modelling Infrastructures as Multi-Agent Systems.
The aim of this project was to develop an approach and building blocks that can be used to describe how actors that control and use an infrastructure (which is a socio-technical system) work together in a hierarchical, coordinated, cooperative or non-cooperative way. This framework can then be used to compare different control mechanisms for a certain infrastructure and to give guidelines for the application of a control method that proved to be succesful in one infrastructure in another type. The idea was to make multi-agent models of various infrastructures to reach this goal.
Additionally, it is interesting to analyse decision making (an essential part of any type of control) and how decisions made on one level influence decisions on other levels. Decisions made for low-level optimisation might not contribute much to the global system and decisions made at system level might not always be good at lower levels. The goal of this project is trying to find a way to better analyse these effects of emergent behaviour and help preventing negative effects so that system level optimisation is possible even in decentralised and privatised insititions.
A generic ontology has been been developed that formalizes concepts which play a role in energy and industrial network, but that can be more widely applied to other socio-technical systems. The use of a shared ontology makes it possible for different building blocks in the model to work together and to do experiments with different setups of the network, but social and physical changes. This ontology and generic building blocks are now being applied to case studies in the energy domain, but also on intermodal freight traffic, for example.
Scientific Publications
Koen H. van Dam and Zofia Lukszo (2010) Model factory for socio-technical infrastructure systems, in R.R. Negenborn, Z. Lukszo and H. Hellendoorn (Eds.) Intelligent Infrastructures, Series on Intelligent Systems, Control and Automation: Science and Engineering, ISCA42, Springer, pp 25-52, ISBN 978-90-481-3597-4
Koen H. van Dam and Zofia Lukszo (2009) Agent-based decision support for failure-prone networked infrastructures, Int. J. Critical Infrastructures, Vol. 5, No. 4, 2009, pp 323-339
Koen H. van Dam, Zofia Lukszo and Rajagopalan Srinivasan (2009) Abnormal Situation Management in a Refinery Supply Chain Supported by Agent-based Simulation. Proceedings of the 10th International Symposium on Process Systems Engineering (PSE2009), Salvador, Brazil, August 16–20, 2009
Koen H. van Dam and Arief Adhitya and Rajagopalan Srinivasan and Zofia Lukszo (2009) Critical evaluation of paradigms for modelling supply chains, Journal of Computers and Chemical Engineering 33(10):1711-1726, October 2009
Nikolic, I., Dijkema, G. P. J., and van Dam, K. H. (2009) Understanding and shaping the evolution of sustainable large-scale socio-technical systems towards a framework for action oriented industrial ecology. In M. Ruth and B. Davidsdottir (Eds.) The Dynamics of Regions and Networks in Industrial Ecosystems, Edward Elgar. pp 156-178, May 2009, ISBN 978 1 84720 742 5
Koen H. van Dam, Arief Adhitya, Rajagopalan Srinivasan and Zofia Lukszo (2008) Nuances of benchmarking agent-based and equation-based models of an oil refinery supply chain. Proceedings of the first international conference on infrastructure systems 2008 Building Networks for a Brighter Future, 10--12 November 2008, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Zofia Lukszo, Koen H. van Dam, Margot P.C. Weijnen and Gerard P.J. Dijkema (2008) Agent-based models for crisis management, in H. Bouwman, R. Bons, M. Hoogewegen, M. Janssen and H. Pronk (eds.), Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom, Essays in commemoration of prof.dr. Rene Wagenaar, IOS Press, 2008, ISBN: 978-1-58603-879-3
Koen H. van Dam, Arief Adhitya, Rajagopalan Srinivasan, Zofia Lukszo (2008) Benchmarking numerical and agent-based models of an oil refinery supply chain, proceedings of the European Symposium on Computer Aided Process Engineering ESCAPE 18, June 1--4, 2008 - Lyon, France
Dam, K.H. van, Houwing, M., Lukszo, Z. and Bouwmans, I. (2008) Agent-Based Control of Distributed Electricity Generation with Micro Combined Heat and Power -- Cross-Sectoral Learning for Process and Infrastructure Engineers, Journal of Computers and Chemical Engineering, Vol. 21, No. 1-2, pp. 205--217, January/February 2008
Chappin, E. J. L., Dijkema, G. P. J., van Dam, K. H., and Lukszo, Z. (2007). Modeling Strategic and Operational Decision-Making -- Agent-Based Model of Electricity Producers, Proceedings of the 21st annual European Simulation and Modelling Conference (ESM'07), October 22--24, 2007, St. Julian's, Malta
Sirikijpanichkul, A, Dam, K.H. van, Ferreira, L. and Lukszo, Z., (2007) Optimizing the Location of Intermodal Freight Hubs: An Overview of the Agent Based Modelling Approach, J Transpn Sys Eng & IT, 2007, 7(4), 71-81.
Dam, K.H. van, Lukszo, Z., Srinivasan, R. and Karimi, I.A. (2007) Opportunities for Agent-Based Models in Computer Aided Process Engineering, accepted for the European Symposium on Computer Aided Process Engineering ESCAPE 17 May 27--30, 2007, Bucharest, Romania
Dam, K.H. van, Lukszo, Z., Ferreira, L. and Sirikijpanichkul, A (2007) Planning the Location of Intermodal Freight Hubs: an Agent Based Approach. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Networking, Sensing and Control, April 15--17, 2007, London, England
Dam, K.H. van, and Lukszo, Z. (2006) Modelling Energy and Transport Infrastructures as a Multi-Agent System using a Generic Ontology, proceedings of the 2006 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Oct. 8 - Oct. 11, 2006 - The Grand Hotel, Taipei, Taiwan
Dam, K.H. van, Verwater-Lukszo, Z., Ottjes, J.A. and Lodewijks, G. (2006) Distributed intelligence in autonomous multi-vehicle systems, Int. J. Critical Infrastructures, Vol. 2, Nos. 2/3, pp.261
Dam, K.H. van, Houwing, M., Lukszo, Z. and Bouwmans, I. (2006) Modelling an Electricity Infrastructure as a Multi-Agent System - Lessons learnt from manufacturing control, proceedings of the 16th European Symposium on Computer Aided Process Engineering and 9th international symposium on process systems engineering, ESCAPE 16 + PSE 2006
Dam, K.H. van, Nikolic, I., Lukszo, Z. and Dijkema, G.P.J., (2006) Towards a Generic Approach for Analyzing the Efficiency of Complex Networks, proceedings of the 2006 IEEE International Conference on Networking, Sensing and Control, April 23-25, 2006, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA
Nikolic, I., Dijkema, G.P.J., Dam, K.H. van and Lukszo, Z. (2006) Complex Systems Approach Applied to the Rotterdam Industrial Cluster, proceedings of the 2006 IEEE International Conference on Networking, Sensing and Control, April 23-25, 2006, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA
Rammelt, C.F., Nikolic, I., Boes, J. and Dam, K.H. van (2005), Complex Systems Approach to 'Development Aid'. Proceedings of the 11th Annual International Sustainable Development Research Conference, June 6--8, Helsinki, Finland
Dam, K.H. van, Ottjes, J.A., Lodewijks, G., Verwater-Lukszo, Z., and Wagenaar, R. (2004), Intelligent Infrastructures: Distributed Intelligence in Transport System Control -- an Illustrative Example. Proceedings of the 2004 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, October 10--13 2004, the Hague, the Netherlands
Dam, K.H. van (2002), Design of a Generic Ontology Translator -- Implemented for JADE, Masters' thesis, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Publications can be sent on request.
Other Activities
- President of Eurodoc, the European council of doctoral candidates and young researchers (2007-2008)
- Board member of het PNN, the PhD Network of the Netherlands (2005-2007)
- Dutch delegate of Eurodoc (2006-2007).
- Vice-president of Promood, the representative body of PhD researchers at the Delft University of Technology (2004-2005)
