=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1498/HAICTA_2015_paper8
|storemode=property
|title=Biomass On-line Management System: BI.O.MA.S.
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1498/HAICTA_2015_paper8.pdf
|volume=Vol-1498
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/haicta/StefanisKPGN15
}}
==Biomass On-line Management System: BI.O.MA.S.==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1498/HAICTA_2015_paper8.pdf
Biomass On-line Management System: BI.O.MA.S.
Christos Stefanis1, Eleni Kamateri3, Maria Partalidou2, Stelios Gargas4, Kostas
Nasias5
1
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Department of Food Science and Technology,
Thessaloniki 54124, Greece, e-mail: cstefan@agro.duth.gr
2
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, School of Agriculture, Dept. of Agricultural Economics,
54124 Thessaloniki, Greece, e-mail: parmar@agro.auth.gr
3
Nasias K. & Co LP (EXEO), 54352, Thessaloniki, e-mail: ekamater@hotmail.com
4
Nasias K. & Co LP (EXEO), 54352, Thessaloniki, e-mail: steliosgargas@gmail.com
5
Nasias K. & Co LP (EXEO), 54352, Thessaloniki, e-mail: nasias@exeo.gr
Abstract. A new tool that will exploit the benefits of ICT technology and
promote biomass entrepreneurship is presented: BI.O.MA.S. This new
approach is based on a web-based tool for the real-time biomass supply chain
management, an online marketplace combined with an auction platform for
biomass products/services and the release of an app for smartphones and
mobile devices. The goals and the novelty of Biomass-On-line-Management-
System (BI.O.MA.S.) will be the creation of an integrated, online system
which will help the interactions between the several actors of the biomass
market and the agricultural sector, contribute to domestic and international
bioenergy trade, and increase business-to-business, business-to-consumers and
e-commerce in agriculture.
Keywords: biomass, energy, agriculture, e-commerce, e-auction.
1 Introduction
Over the past decades energy from biomass has been on the cutting edge of research
in renewable energy. This is expected to be doubled in next decade. Moreover, the
biomass production for the generation of bioenergy still encounters several issues
that have to be addressed. The biomass supply chain comprehends of diverse and
independent procedures including production of biomass, collecting, storage,
transportation to the point and eventually energy production (J.E Iakovou E et. al.
2010; Sharma B et. al. 2013).
Currently, there are several biomass trading systems. Notwithstanding, most of
them do not focus on small-medium biomass stakeholders, do not aim to train or
motivate the biomass community towards the environmental and social benefits of
agriculture. Also, they lack a user-friendly interface and do not work properly on
mobile devices. Towards this direction we aim to developing BI.O.MA.S. an
integrated, online system for the real-time management and auctioning of the
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biomass products and services. Besides a web-based platform, BI.O.MA.S will be
available as a mobile app.
2 Architecture
The BI.O.MA.S. architecture will introduce a scalable and modular approach for
facilitating the design, deployment and execution of the BI.O.MA.S. functionality on
top of an integrated platform. It comprises of three horizontal layers: the Presentation
Layer, the Application Layer/Business Intelligence and the Data Layer (Figure 1).
Each layer comprises a set of FIWARE and new components (addressing the specific
needs of the project).
The core environment will be developed using the Marketplace – WMarket
enabler. The Marketplace will provide functionality necessary for bringing together
offering and demand for making business. It also provides a Pricing Simulator
Decision Support feature (Pricing Simulator Tool) that supports the decision-making
processes. The IaaS Resource Management enabler will enable BIOMAS to address
the increasing needs on computing resources (scalability) required for the real-time
performance of the BI.O.MA.S. platform in order to store data and perform powerful
analytics. POI (Points of interest) GE will be used by BI.O.MA.S to enable users to
run location-based search queries. The Identity Management – KeyRock enabler will
be used in order to reduce the effort for account creation and management ensuring
the users’ privacy. The Object Storage is object-based storage container which can be
efficiently used as the storage of the marketplace’s data (product descriptions,
profiles, actions, events, statistics, etc.) and informational content (tutorials, videos,
user manuals etc.). The revenue model of the BI.O.MA.S system will be managed by
RSS GE. It will publish to inform when users or agreements exceed predefined
targets, upcoming events etc.
Apart from mentioned GEs, the BI.O.MA.S project will develop (from scratch)
new components. The Biomass Storage and Logistics module will help users to
implement and maintain a storehouse of biomass products and services.
Logging/auditing module will keep track and display previous for each user. The
Collaboration module will help different actors to collaborate and combine different
services/products. Trend Analysis and BI module provides data analysis and business
intelligence support to users enabling them to define their pricing policy, make
predictions and decide where to invest. Finally, the Event Planning Calendar module
will be used to plan user activity and future business transactions, services/products
delivery, opening of new auctions etc.
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Fig. 1. The architecture of BI.O.MA.S. platform and FIWARE technologies usage.
3 Conclusions
In this paper we present the architecture of an online marketplace and auction
platform for biomass products and services via the usage of FI-WARE technology.
Moreover, the additional design of five new components specially developed for
project’s purposes will offer new added-value functionalities and advances such as
real time-auctions, event planning calendar, location-based searching, history
monitoring, statistics and trends analytics. Compared with existing solutions,
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BI.O.MA.S. will offer a trading solution that will enable small and medium biomass
players to enter the biomass market. Subsequently, we plan, as future work, to
expend the supported features and properties of biomass products or extend the
platform to support other agricultural products.
Acknowledgments. This project is funded by FRACTALS (Future Internet Enabled
Agricultural Applications, FP7 project No. 632874), under the funding framework of
the European Commission".
References
1. Iakovou E., Karagiannidis, A., Vlachos, D., Toka, A. and Malamakis, A. (2010)
Waste biomass-to-energy supply chain management: A critical synthesis. Waste
Management 30(10), pp. 1860–1870.
2. Sharma, B., Ingalls, R.J., Jones, C.L. and Khanchi, A. (2013) Biomass supply
chain design and analysis: Basis, overview, modeling, challenges and future.
Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 24, p. 608–627.
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