Call for Papers
EEDAS welcomes the submission of original research papers on the general theme of engineering emergence in autonomic systems which is described below. We seek theoretical, experimental, methodological as well as applications papers. Papers may report on completed work, descriptions of work in progress or discussion papers.
Submissions will be peer reviewed by at least three members of the program committee. Selection criteria include: relevance, technical correctness, originality of contribution and quality of exposition. The aim is to encourage diversity in opinion. Papers that present a valuable idea but need further development can be accepted as short communications.
Workshop Theme
Autonomic Computing addresses the need for systems to cope with and manage complex, highly dynamic, and changing operating conditions autonomously. Furthermore, many modern computing systems effectively operate in a decentralised fashion, adding an extra layer of complexity to the management (or even the prediction) of global system behaviour. Autonomic Computing arguably addresses one aspect of the problem (autonomous operation of individual units) but doesn’t inherently guarantee the emergence of the desired collective behaviour in systems where central or global control is impossible for one or several of the following reasons:
- The information needed to make decisions is inherently localised and cannot be gathered centrally (e.g. ad-hoc networks).
- A highly dynamic context implies that, even when information is gathered centrally, it is obsolete when it reaches the manager.
- The amount of processing required to orchestrate the system operation is beyond the capability of any participating unit.
- The centrally computed global solution cannot be practically implemented.
- Short response time is more critical than efficiency (quick, local reaction to events is better than a globally optimised but delayed solution).
Self-organising emergence is an approach to engineering decentralised systems so as to make them capable of dynamically adapting to changes without external intervention. The global functionality dynamically arises from the local autonomous decisions and interactions between individual entities based on local information usually communicated through local channels (long-range diffusion being typically achieved via “gossiping”). These entities are not explicitly aware of the resulting global behaviour. The lack of global or central control implies the need to design decentralised coordination mechanisms and the local rules governing individual behaviour with the explicit objective to take full advantage of emergent properties.
The ultimate challenge in engineering fully decentralised autonomous systems is to find a disciplined approach to foster globally coherent and desired system behaviour. Many research issues are still open, mainly because of the lack of a clear step-plan to map the desired global behaviour onto a specific set of local decision and interaction rules. As a result, exploitation of emergent behaviour in system design is still in its infancy. This workshop aims at gathering research results that could contribute to addressing this challenge.
Topics ...
Particular research topics include, but are not limited to:
Foundation:
- Theories, models, and decentralised mechanisms for self-organising and emergent behaviour
- Comparison of typically central/hierarchical autonomic computing vs. self-organising emergent approaches
- Biologically, sociologically, and economically inspired interaction mechanisms: stigmergy, swarm intelligence, markets…
- Robustness, Stability and Dependability of self-organising emergent systems
- Contextual and/or environmental awareness in self-organising emergent systems
Engineering:
- Software architectures for self-organising emergent systems
- Modelling approaches to support the design of self-organising emergent systems
- Middleware Technology:
- for supporting nature-inspired, socially-inspired, and other types of decentralised coordination mechanisms
- for supporting decentralised information exchange throughout the system
- Control of emergent properties in self-organising systems
- Design of high-level global behaviour from local interactions
- (Simulation) tools and test-beds for self-organising emergent systems
- Assessment metrics, performance evaluation, and verification for self-organising emergent systems.
Applications:
- Experience reports and practical applications of self-organising emergent systems
- Example application domains (not limited to):
- Peer-to-peer (P2P) applications;
- Overlay networks;
- Mobile robots;
- Sensor networks, mobile and/or ad hoc networks (MANETs);
- Grids;
- Embedded systems, ubiquitous computing;
- automated transportation and traffic systems;
- Computer networks, telecom networks;
- Multi-agent systems;
- E-business systems and services, e.g. supply chain management;
- Complex adaptive systems