Recently, researchers Raimund Bürger and Luis-Miguel Villada from Center for Research in Mathematical Engineering, CI²MA, of Universidad de Concepción (UdeC) were notified about the award of funding for the project called NOLOCO: Efficient Numerical Schemes for Non-Local Transport Phenomena, by the leading French research center Inria (French National Institute for Computer Science and Applied Mathematics).

“This project addresses theoretical and numerical problems arising from the mathematical study of conservation laws with non-local flow functions. These equations include a variety of applications, from vehicular traffic to industrial processes and biology, and are designed to macroscopically model the action of non-local interactions that occur at a microscopic level”, Villada explains.

In addition to the CI²MA researchers -who are academicians from UdeC and from the U. del Bío-Bío, respectively- the group of scientists participating in this three-year project, and awarded in the modality International Associate Team, is composed by Paola Goatin (Inria) as principal investigator, Christophe Chalons (Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France) and Régis Duvigneau (Inria).

According to Villada, this research team presents a set of “complementary skills that cover the analysis, numerical approximation and optimization of nonlinear hyperbolic systems of conservation laws, and their application to the modeling of vehicular and pedestrian traffic flows, sedimentation and other industrial problems” In this sense, the expected preliminary results will be related to the development of efficient and high-order finite volume numerical schemes for the calculation of approximate solutions of non-local equations; the sensitivity analysis of the solutions on the parameters of the model or the initial conditions.

Putting this project into practice will include works headed by graduate students in conditions to develop their thesis research, in addition to a research stay in the CI²MA by the French members of the team of scientists that will take place in October, when Fourth CI²MA Workshop: Non-Local Partial Differential Equations event will be held.