SEAR Lab
Welcome to the Sustainable and Equitable Allocation of Resources or SEAR lab.
This lab is led by Dr. Erick C. Jones Jr., an assistant professor in the Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Engineering Department at the University of Texas at Arlington.
Mission, Vision, and Methods
Vision: The SEAR or Sustainable and Equitable Allocation of Resources Lab believes that by creating systems that properly allocate resources, we can sustainably, equitably, and resiliently meet society's needs for food, energy, and water while maintaining a high standard of living.
Mission: The SEAR or Sustainable and Equitable Allocation of Resources lab investigates how communities, companies, and countries can allocate their limited resources in a way that maximizes their desired outcomes in a sustainable, equitable, and resilient but also elegant way.
Methods: We assess these problems by combining physical experimentation, data analytics, and stochastic systems optimization to provide actionable decisions and/or create scalable prototypes.
Lab Capabilities
We typically use a multi-systems optimization modeling approach, but have used other methods like regression, machine learning, systems dynamics, and agent-based modeling simulation techniques.We are currently building our lab so that we can:
- Expert optimization modelers to investigate problems related to food, energy, and water systems, as well as supply chains.
- A Linux server farm in partnership with COSMOS to run computationally large scale optimization models.
- Experience with popular energy models like ReEDS, OSeMOSYS, TIMES and more.
- Energy Sensonsing and Control Equipment.
- Large-scale solar and storage systems.
- Inventory of Used Solar Panels and EVs to investigate secondary energy supply chains.
- RFID and IoT equipment and sensors to investigate supply chain and inventory problems.
- State of the art conveyor system
- Advanced Manufacturing equipment access including 3D printers.
- Hospital Beds to investigate health related systems.
- State of the art Optical and IR cameras for image AI image image recognition.
Research Interests
- Sustainability
- Equity
- Resilience
- Energy
- Infrastructure
- Food, Energy, Water, Systems
- Supply Chains
- Optimization
- Data Analytics
- RFID
- Industry 4.0
For more information please look at our current projects .
