Urban Water Management Research Group

The group on ‘Urban water management’ of the University of Luxembourg gives special emphasis to the optimisation of treatment processes in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) and the increase of energy efficiency of wastewater treatment processes. The research focus of the group is of fundamental and applied nature with a special focus on “energy and environment” and “sustainable use of resources”.

Within the last years, numerous projects were carried out in Germany and Luxembourg together with national and international partners with a special focus on the optimisation of energy consumption, the increase of energy production on WWTPs and the integration of WWTPs and biogas plants in Virtual Power Plants.

Further research is carried out in the following fields :

• Fate and behaviour of Micropollutants and Nanoparticles in sewer systems and wastewater treatment plants
• Sustainable Management of water and resources
• Decision support and Prediction Systems for Wastewater treatment and biogas production
• Bulking and floating sludge strategies for municipal and industrial wastewater treatment plants

Joachim Hansen

Transport Research Group MobiLab

The Transport Research Group MobiLab performs research ranging from traffic and transport data analysis of various types (travel surveys, traffic counting devices, video processing, etc.), transport planning and management of traffic operations and regional mobility and sustainability. This brings an interdisciplinary vision of transport and mobility research at UL, linking Computer Science, Engineering, Psychology & Human Sciences, and Geography and Spatial Planning.

The underlying research mission is to gain an understanding of how complex transportation networks behave and in turn can be managed/optimised. This involves:

• Studying travel behaviour, which affect traffic and transport at the operational (driving behaviour and its impact on efficiency, comfort and safety), at the tactical (choices like which mode, at what time to travel, which route, etc.) and strategic levels involving long-term decisions (residence, car ownership, etc.);
• Modelling transport & mobility patterns as a complex multi-layered, multi-modal and multi-objective network design problem using advanced dynamic models that consider activity-travel choices, traffic propagation dynamics, as well as innovative Intelligent Transport Systems for dynamic monitoring and management.
• Optimising the supply system, i.e. how can transportation services be optimised to handle the demand considering the inherent dynamics occurring at both daily and weekly time periods due to variable mobility patterns of the transportation users.

Francesco Viti

Geodesy and Geospatial engineering

In order to study trends and patterns of crustal motion in Luxembourg, detailed geodetic GPS measurements are carried out by the Administration du Cadastre et de la Topographie in collaboration with the University of Luxembourg. A network of continuous GPS stations is installed at 7 geologically stable sites across the country. The GPS stations record data continuously and data is processed at the Geodesy and Geospatial engineering Laboratory. Using a wide network of reference stations in Europe the vertical movement of the Luxembourg sites is determined very accurate. We analyze the GPS data and combine this with absolute gravity measurements and rain gauge data to evaluate seasonal changes in ground height resulting from rainfall and groundwater variations.

Research is carried out in the following fields :

• Geodesy
• Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)
• GNSS processing
• Solution combination
• Geodetic monitoring

Felix Norman TEFERLE