Connectionists: [Call-for-Papers] 6th eCAS workshop on Engineering Collective Adaptive Systems

[ACSOS Publicity]

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*********** eCAS 2021 - Call For Papers ***********
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*       6th eCAS Workshop on Engineering          *
*         Collective Adaptive Systems             *
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*  27 September -- 1 October 2021                 *
*  VIRTUAL (originally Washington, DC, USA)       *
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*  http://ecas2021.apice.unibo.it/                *
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In conjunction with the 2nd IEEE International Conference on Autonomic 
Computing and Self-Organizing Systems (ACSOS 2021, merger of the former 
ICAC and SASO conferences): https://2021.acsos.org

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***************** Important Dates *****************
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   - Paper submission deadline: *July 9th, 2021*
   - Notification to authors: *June 31th, 2021*
   - Camera ready: *August 20th, 2021*
   - Workshop date: September 27th / October 1st, 2021

All times in Anywhere on Earth (AoE) timezone.

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*************** Aims and Motivation ***************
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Modern computing systems tend to be composed of many distributed and 
heterogeneous entities interacting with one another and with their 
environment to pursue a variety of goals and functionality. These 
systems typically operate under continuous perturbations, making manual 
adjustments and open-loop approaches infeasible, hence requiring self-* 
features (e.g., self-organisation, self-adaptation, 
self-configuration...). For a collective system to be resilient, its 
adaptation must also be collective, in the sense that multiple entities 
must adapt in a way that addresses critical runtime conditions while 
preserving the benefits of collaborative interdependencies. 
Decision-making in such systems is distributed and possibly highly 
dispersed, and interaction between the entities may lead to the 
emergence of unexpected phenomena.

To engineer such collective adaptive systems (CAS), new approaches for 
and understanding of collective adaptation are needed, to allow: i) 
multiple entities to adapt in a coordinated or complementary way, with 
ii) negotiations or other mechanisms to decide which collective changes 
are suitable. Collective adaptation also raises a second important 
challenge: Which parts of the system (things, services, people) should 
be engaged in an adaptation, and how? This is nontrivial, as multiple 
solutions to the same problem may be generated at different levels, and 
individuals in the collective often have partial information. The 
challenge is to understand these levels and create mechanisms to decide 
the right scope for an adaptation for a given problem.

This workshop solicits papers that address new methodologies, theories, 
principles, and fundamental understanding, that can be used to underpin 
the design, operation, and analysis of CASs. Case studies, applications 
showing such approaches in action, and interdisciplinary work are 
particularly welcome. Research on CAS engineering can benefit from 
advances in related areas looking “beyond individual devices”, including 
(but not limited to) multi-agent systems, coordination, concurrency 
theory, self-* systems, collective intelligence, nature-inspired 
computing, organisational paradigms, and so on.

Suggested Topics include (but are not limited to):

- Novel theories relating to operating principles of CAS
- Novel design principles for building CAS systems
- Insights into the short and long-term adaptation of CAS systems
- Insights into emergent properties of CAS
- Insights into general properties of large scale, distributed CAS
- Comparing and analyzing approaches to CAS (e.g., distributed and 
centralized)
- Decision-making approaches in CAS
- Methodologies for studying, analyzing, and building CAS
- Frameworks for analyzing or developing CAS case studies
- Languages, platforms, APIs and other tools for CAS
- Scenarios, case studies, and experience reports of CAS in different 
contexts (e.g., Smart Mobility, Smart Energy/Smart Grid, Smart 
Buildings, traffic management, emergency response, etc.)

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********************** Scope **********************
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The workshop is expected to attract participants from many disciplines, 
including (but not limited to) Autonomic Computing, Biology, Game 
Theory, Evolutionary Computing, Network Science, Self-Organizing 
Systems, Pervasive Computing, Collective Intelligence, and to be of 
interest to anyone working with the domain of large-scale self-adaptive 
systems. In addition, the European Commission has funded seven 
scientific projects and a Coordination Action in this area, with 
projects starting at the beginning of 2013. The proposed workshop 
provides a natural base for the projects to meet and share ideas, yet we 
stress that the workshop is in no way limited to this audience, and is 
likely to have broad appeal to a wide range of researchers. Potential 
audience members might work in application areas relating to large-scale 
distributed systems, or may come from any of the many disciplines that 
can provide insights into the operation and design of such systems.

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************* Submission Instructions *************
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We solicit the following types of contributions:

- Workshop papers, limited to 6 pages, including references: these 
provide research contributions and should include proper motivation and 
evaluation.
- Position papers, limited to 2 pages, including references: these 
provide research ideas, should include proper motivation and arguments, 
but may include only preliminary forms of evaluation.

Both workshop papers and position papers will be published on IEEE 
Xplore in parallel with the main IEEE ACSOS conference proceedings. All 
contributions should follow IEEE Computer Society Press proceedings 
style guide and be submitted in PDF format using the Easychair login page:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ecas2021

By submitting, the authors confirm that in case of acceptance, at least 
one author will present the work at the workshop.

All papers will be reviewed by an International Technical Program 
Committee with a minimum of 3 reviews per paper. Contributions will be 
peer reviewed for originality, clarity and readability, relevance to 
themes, soundness, and overall quality.


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****************** Registration *******************
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All attendees at the workshop must register for ACSOS through the 
conference website: https://2021.acsos.org

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**************** Workshop Format ******************
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We anticipate a half-day workshop comprising the following items:

Presentation of the papers, which will be arranged into sessions 
organized to maximize the chance of interaction and discussion among the 
participants and the authors.
Future Directions & Challenges for CAS: an interactive session at the 
end of the day to map out the research landscape of CAS.
The workshop is structured to promote interaction and collaboration. In 
the past, discussions have led to joint activities on themes such as CAS 
and society.

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For more information, please contact the workshop organizers:

- Roberto Casadei, Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna, Italy
- Lukas Esterle, Aarhus University, Denmark