Modelling and Simulation of Utility Service Provision for Sustainable Communities

Abstract

Abstract Utility service provision is designed to satisfy basic human needs. The main objective of the research is to investigate mathematical methods for evaluating the feasibility of using a more efficient approach for utility services provision, compared to the current diversity of utility products delivered to households. Possibilities for alternative utility service provision that lead to more sustainable solutions include reducing the number of delivered utility products, on-site recycling and use of locally available natural resources. The core of the proposed approach is the simulation system that enables carrying out feasibility study of so-called transformation graph, which describes direct transformations and indirect transformations of the utility products into defined services. The simulation system was implemented in C# and .NET 3.5, while the XML database was implemented using eXist-db. The XML database stores information about all devices, utility products, services and technologies that can be used to define and solve services-provision problems. An example of such problem and its solution is presented in this paper. This research is a part of the All-in-One Project.