Fifth International Workshop on Modelling and Reasoning in Context (MRC 2008) June 8, 2008

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Call for Papers

MRC 2008

Fifth International Workshop on Modelling and Reasoning in Context

In conjunction with the Third International Conference on Human Centered
Processes (HCP-2008), at Delft University of Technology

Submission deadline: March 14, 2008

http://events.idi.ntnu.no/mrc2008

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Where traditional software applications "know" by design in which situations
they are to function, applications in pervasive computing and ambient
intelligence do not necessarily have this luxury. Due to the very nature of the
dynamism in the world with which these systems interact, they have to
dynamically adapt their behaviour in run time. To do this, they must be able to
somehow interpret the environment in which they are situated. This ability is
often referred to as being context aware, or even situation aware. Being aware
of the environment facilitates the ability to adapt behaviour by being context
sensitive.

Context sensitive processing plays a key role in many modern IT applications,
with context-awareness and context-based reasoning essential not only for mobile
and ubiquitous computing, but also for a wide range of other areas such as
collaborative software, web engineering, personal digital assistants,
information sharing, health care workflow and patient control, adaptive games,
and e-Learning solutions.

From an intelligent systems perspective, one of the challenges is to integrate
context with other types of knowledge as an additional major source for
reasoning, decision-making, and adaptation and to form a coherent and versatile
architecture. There is a common understanding that achieving desired behaviour
from intelligent systems will depend on the ability to represent and manipulate
information about a rich range of contextual factors.

These factors may include not only physical characteristics of the task
environment, but many other aspects such as the knowledge states (of both the
application and user), emotions, etc. This representation and reasoning problem
present research challenges to which methodologies derived amongst others from
artificial intelligence, knowledge management, human-computer interaction, and
psychology can contribute solutions.

One specific problem is to deal with uncertainty on different levels, from
interpretation of uncertain sensor input data up to identification of contexts
with fuzzy borders. Another issue is how to integrate findings from the social
sciences and psychology into the design of context aware systems and how to
build psychologically plausible knowledge models.

A third aspect is the ability of the system to use explanations, both as a part
of its reasoning and as a means of communication with the user.

This workshop aims to bring together researchers and practitioners exploring
modelling and reasoning issues and approaches for context sensitive systems,
from a broad range of areas, to share their problems and techniques across
different research and application areas. The workshop will examine mechanisms
and techniques for structured storage of contextual information, effective ways
to retrieve it, and methods for enabling integration of context and application
knowledge.

The Modeling and Reasoning in Context workshop series, established in 2004,
provides a forum for scientists and practitioners addressing the above issues to
exchange and discuss issues and ideas in a friendly, cooperative environment.

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Agenda

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The workshop will last two full days and will be organised into three main
parts.

The first part will consist of short presentations of the accepted papers,
grouped into sessions. Each session will be followed by a discussion period. The
goal of these sessions is to introduce the work of all the participants.

The second part will consist of three panel discussion sessions, each dedicated
to one specific issue. The suggested issues are "key issues for modelling
context", "key issues for reasoning in context" and one "open topics", but are
subject to change dependent on the interests of the attendees and the nature of
submissions. The goal of these panels is to discuss the various approaches to
each of these basic issues and to identify the critical problems in need of
attention and the most promising research directions.

The workshop will be concluded with an open discussion summarising the most
important lessons learned.

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Topics of Interest

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The major goal of the workshop is to bring researchers, scientists from both
industry and academia, and representatives from different communities together
to study, understand, and explore issues of development and application of IT
systems utilising context.

Besides contributed papers, this workshop will offer organised and open spaces
for targeted discussions. We note that the three first MRC meetings were all
held in conjunction with conferences on artificial intelligence and computer
science. We continue the success from last year, where the workshop was held at
CONTEXT 2007, and holding MRC 2008 at HCP will enable us to further reach out to
other relevant disciplines and communities and facilitate collaboration between
different fields.

Areas of interest includes, but are not limited to:

* Generic and specific context models
* Explicit representations
* Representation of and reasoning with uncertainty
* Retrieval of context and context information
* Context-based retrieval and reasoning
* Socio-technical issues
* Context awareness and context-sensitivity
* Context awareness in applications
* Evaluation of context-aware applications
* Explanation and context
* Mobile context
* Information aging
* Context focusing and context switching
* Context management

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Submissions

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Workshop submissions will be electronic, in PDF format only, using the EasyChair
submission system through the workshop website. Paper length should not exceed
12 pages in the Springer LNCS format. Guidelines and templates are available at
the Springer website (http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html).

Three members of the program committee will review each submission. A review
form will direct submitters to evaluate submissions for appropriateness,
technical strength, originality, presentation, and overall evaluation, as well
as recording the reviewer’s confidence in the topic.

Papers will be published in accompanying proceedings. Authors of accepted papers
will be invited to submit extended versions for inclusion in a book or a special
journal issue on context aware systems.

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Important Dates

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* Submission of papers: March 14, 2008
* Notification: April 4, 2008
* Camera-ready copies: April 11, 2008
* MRC Workshop: June 9-10, 2008

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Organisation

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Chairs

Anders Kofod-Petersen
Department of Computer and Information Science
Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Joerg Cassens
Department of Computer and Information Science
Norwegian University of Science and Technology

David B. Leake
Computer Science Department
Indiana University, USA

Marielba Zacarias
Faculdade de Ciencias e Tecnologia
Algarve University, Portugal

Preliminary Program Committee

- Patrick Brezillon, University of Paris 6, France
- Henning Christiansen, Roskilde University, Denmark
- Lorcan Coyle, University College Dublin, Ireland
- Chiara Ghidini, FBK-irst, Italy
- Eyke Huellermeier, University of Marburg, Germany
- Boicho Kokinov, New Bulgarian University, Bulgaria
- John Krogstie, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway
- Enric Plaza, Spanish Council for Scientific Research, Spain
- Thomas R. Roth-Berghofer, German Research Center for Artificial
Inteligence, Germany
- Hedda Schmidtke, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Korea
- Stefan Schulz, The e-Spirit Company, Germany
- Sven Schwarz, German Research Center for Artificial Inteligence, Germany
- Patricia Tedesco, University of Pernambuco, Brazil
- Santtu Toivonen, Idean, Finland
- Jose Tribolet, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal
- Roy Turner, University of Maine, USA
- Rebekah Wegener, Macquarie University, Australia

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Submission deadline: March 14, 2008

http://events.idi.ntnu.no/mrc2008

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Official Website: http://events.idi.ntnu.no/mrc2008