1. the complete title of one (or more) paper(s) published in the open literature describing the work that the author claims describes a human-competitive result;

Green Swarm: Greener Routes with Bio-inspired Techniques

2. the name, complete physical mailing address, e-mail address, and phone number of EACH author of EACH paper(s);

Daniel Héctor Stolfi Rosso
6, Avenue de la Fonte
L-4364 Esch-sur-Alzette
Luxembourg
daniel.stolfi@uni.lu
+352 46 66 44 4060

Enrique Alba Torres
Bulevar Louis Pasteur, 35
29071 Málaga
Spain
eat@lcc.uma.es
+34 952 13 2803

3. the name of the corresponding author (i.e., the author to whom notices will be sent concerning the competition);

Daniel H. Stolfi

4. the abstract of the paper(s); 

This article proposes a mobility architecture, called Green Swarm, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from road traffic in smart cities. The traffic flow optimization of four European cities: Malaga, Stockholm, Berlin, and Paris, is addressed with new case studies importing each city's actual roads and traffic lights from OpenStreetMap into the SUMO traffic simulator, so as to find the best ways to redirect the traffic flow, and advise drivers. Additionally, the proposal is compared with three other strategies, which are also combined with Green Swarm in order to improve metrics such as travel times, gas emissions, and fuel consumption. This results in reductions in gas emissions as well as in travel times and fuel consumption in more than 500 city scenarios. The proposal has also been tested in scenarios where not all drivers are using it, to observe the change in traffic conditions when it is only in partial use, successfully paving the way for future sustainable cities.

5. a list containing one or more of the eight letters (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, or H) that correspond to the criteria (see above) that the author claims that the work satisfies;

(A) The result was patented as an invention in the past, is an improvement over a patented invention, or would qualify today as a patentable new invention.
(B) The result is equal to or better than a result that was accepted as a new scientific result at the time when it was published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.
(C) The result is equal to or better than a result that was placed into a database or archive of results maintained by an internationally recognized panel of scientific experts.
(D) The result is publishable in its own right as a new scientific result independent of the fact that the result was mechanically created.
(E) The result is equal to or better than the most recent human-created solution to a long-standing problem for which there has been a succession of increasingly better human-created solutions.
(F) The result is equal to or better than a result that was considered an achievement in its field at the time it was first discovered.
(G) The result solves a problem of indisputable difficulty in its field.
(H) The result holds its own or wins a regulated competition involving human contestants (in the form of either live human players or human-written computer programs).

A: because several companies want to make a prototype and potential patents based on it (like EMERGYA, SECMOTIC, and others)

B: because our result overcomes by far the state of the art in scalability and realism

E: because our result improves over results of human urban planners and over results of similar systems by including pollution into the decisions for a greener world

F: because we have improved previously published results like Red Swarm.

G: the problem is NP-hard, it involves extensive real simulations with real data, and has been addressed for several real cities in the same paper

6. a statement stating why the result satisfies the criteria that the contestant claims (see examples of statements of human-competitiveness as a guide to aid in constructing this part of the submission);

Our results improve current solutions implemented by traffic authorities for routing vehicles throughout the city in terms of travel times and pollution. Usually, human policies are simple, and consist of speed limits or traffic restrictions. As we state in the paper, our proposal does not discriminate vehicles as a way of improving the traffic (like the mentioned human policies do), despite the fact it can be also used combined with those other strategies if needed.
We solve this problem in a competitive manner compared to human experts and other algorithms, and we have done it in four European cities with a clear potential interests coming from companies to use it.
This is a very complex problem involving thousands of vehicles moving across a real city layout including traffic lights, roundabouts, left turns, real driving instructions, etc., where finding optimal routes for individual vehicles achieving a benefit for the whole city is very difficult and requires lots of technology, methodologies, and data: accurate digital maps, traffic data, location of traffic lights and their daily programs, standards for pollution in Europe, high performance computing, graphical interfaces, human preferences, dynamic systems, math, computer science, operation research, social behavior while driving, environment, etc.

7. a full citation of the paper (that is, author names; publication date; name of journal, conference, technical report, thesis, book, or book chapter; name of editors, if applicable, of the journal or edited book; publisher name; publisher city; page numbers, if applicable);

Stolfi, D. H., & Alba, E. (2018). Green Swarm: Greener routes with bio-inspired techniques. Applied Soft Computing Journal, 71, 952–963. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asoc.2018.07.032

8. a statement either that "any prize money, if any, is to be divided equally among the co-authors" OR a specific percentage breakdown as to how the prize money, if any, is to be divided among the co-authors;

Any prize money, if any, is to be divided equally among the co-authors

9. a statement stating why the authors expect that their entry would be the "best," and

The reasons for being the "best" from a scientific point of view are these:
+ We deal with a large hard optimization problem
+ The problem needs special representation, operations and evaluation, all this done in a new algorithm proposed
+ It requires HPC for simulating and analyzing complete cities and take decisions
+ Solving this problem requires lots of traffic data from the four cities aimed, digital maps that need to be made ready for use, a microsimulator of high quality (SUMO has been built by DLR), and many tools and scripts for the whole work
+ In terms of scalability, we believe that no other work comes close to the dimensions addressed in this document.
+ In terms of approach, no similar work exists considering individual preferences, city preferences, both in times and pollution
+ It is a unique piece of work in going from the idea, to the model, to implementing algorithms, simulating whole cities, getting results, and finding them useful at the end

The reasons for being the "best" from a social and human competitive point of view are these:
+ This work benefits every single city in the world in some manner, not only the four mentioned ones
+ This work considers social aspect of research, and aims at helping people
+ The paper addresses sustainability and pollution from a formal point of view (algorithm, maths, standard practices in Europe) and their real implications
+ The mix of real data, altruist goals, and life benefits is not usually found in research papers
+ As a result, the inhabitants of a city will arrive at destination earlier while they are healthier, breathing in a less polluted air, having a lower stress level and saving money.

10. an indication of the general type of genetic or evolutionary computation used, such as GA (genetic algorithms), GP (genetic programming), ES (evolution strategies), EP (evolutionary programming), LCS (learning classifier systems), GE (grammatical evolution), GEP (gene expression programming), DE (differential evolution), etc.

(10+2)-EA

11. the date of publication of each paper.  If the date of publication is not on or before the deadline for submission, but instead, the paper has been unconditionally accepted for publication and is "in press" by the deadline for this competition, the entry must include a copy of the documentation establishing that the paper meets the "in press" requirement.

October 2018