**************************** Call for Papers ***************************
First International Workshop on Quality of Context (QuaCon '09)
http://www.quacon09.nexus.uni-stuttgart.de/

25 - 26 June, 2009
Stuttgart, Germany
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Advances in sensor technology, wireless communication, and mobile
devices lead to the proliferation of sensors in our physical
environment. At the same time detailed digital models of buildings,
towns, or even the globe become widely available. Integrating the
huge amount of available sensor data into spatial models results in
highly dynamic models of the real world, often called context models.

A wide range of applications can substantially benefit from common
context models. However, context data is inherently associated with
uncertainty, which has to be taken into account by both context
management systems and applications. Appropriate ontologies, models,
and metrics are needed to specify the quality of context data,
including aspects of degradation, consistency, and trust. Those
concepts are needed on different levels of abstraction, including the
raw sensor data, observable context, as well as the high-level context
derived from other context information by means of reasoning
techniques. In addition, methods and calculi are required to assess
the quality of context data on various levels.

For an integrated context-management approach a framework is needed
that defines the appropriate abstraction levels and that provides
quality mappings between these layers. Other important issues are
application-specific quality concepts and methods to handle uncertain
context data. If context data is to be presented to human users,
appropriate visualizing techniques are required to present the data
together with its quality assessments. On the other hand, if
applications specify what level of degradation they accept, this
information can be used to optimize context management by means of
suitable relaxation techniques.

Research in context management and in particular context quality
requires an interdisciplinary approach. Therefore, the QuaCon Workshop
aims to bring together researchers from various fields to discuss
approaches to context quality and to make a consolidated contribution
towards an integrated way of treating context quality. Topics covered
by the workshop include the following:

- Models for degradation and consistency of context data
- Degradation, spatial ontologies and spatial data mining
- Trust in context data
- Methods and calculi for context quality assessment
- Frameworks and metrics for context quality
- Uncertainty in sensor data processing
- Quality-aware algorithms for context management
- Quality-aware event and stream processing
- Uncertainty in reasoning on context data
- Application-specific context quality and case studies
- Visualization of context quality

Submitted papers must not have been previously published or currently
submitted for publication elsewhere. All papers will be reviewed by
the program committee, and accepted papers will be published in the
Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) Series (pending
approval). All paper submissions will be handled electronically.
Authors should prepare a Portable Document Format (PDF) version of
their full paper. Papers must be no longer than 10 pages and be
formatted according to the LNCS guidelines [1]. Papers not adhering to
these guidelines or the page limit are subject to rejection without
review. The deadline for submitting the paper is January 31, 2009.

For detailed submission instructions and further details please visit
the QuaCon '09 website at http://www.quacon09.nexus.uni-stuttgart.de.

Important Dates
---------------

January 31, 2009 Submission of Papers
March 10, 2009 Notification of Authors
April 10, 2009 Camera-Ready Copies Due
June 25 - 26, 2009 Workshop

QuaCon '09 Organizing and Program Committees
--------------------------------------------

General chairs:
Dieter Fritsch, Kurt Rothermel
Center of Excellence Nexus, University of Stuttgart

Program Committee:
Reynold Cheng, University of Hongkong
Alois Ferscha, University of Linz
Christian Freksa, University of Bremen
Andrew U. Frank, Technical University of Vienna
Johann-Christoph Freytag, Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin
Hans Gellersen, University of Lancaster
Christopher Gold, University of Glamorgan
Michael F. Goodchild, University of California, Santa Barbara
Christian S. Jensen, Aalborg University
Bernhard Mitschang, University of Stuttgart
Max Muehlhaeuser, Technical University Darmstadt
Paddy Nixon, University College Dublin
Sunil K. Prabhakar, Purdue University
Kishore Ramachandran, Georgia Institute of Technology

[1] http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-7-72376-0