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CALL FOR PAPERS
1st International Workshop on EVALUATION for SELF-ADAPTIVE
and SELF-ORGANIZING SYSTEMS
(Eval4SASO'2012)
https://sites.google.com/site/eval4saso2012/

10 September 2012

To be held in conjunction with the
Sixth IEEE International Conference
on Self-Adaptive and Self-Organisizing Systems
(SASO 2012)
http://saso2012.univ-lyon1.fr/
Lyon, France; 10-14 September 2012

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Aims and Scope
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Self-adaptive and self-organizing systems are, by nature, systems that operate and adapt under dynamic circumstances. This can be due to the environment in which they are embedded changing, or the problem to be addressed by the system changes, or the devices on which they operate has varying behaviour (the device fails, or communication capabilities fluctuate etc.).

Any scientific study of a software solution should include a thorough evaluation. The last decade has seen many self-adaptive and self-organizing systems proposed and studied. However, while the literature shows an element of evaluation of the proposed algorithms or systems, they also highlight that a fair comparison between algorithms is a very difficult and unsolved problem.

Evaluating solutions to dynamic problems is particularly complicated. The challenges range from aspects such as:
- solutions to dynamic problems need to take into account various (and sometimes conflicting) objectives, including timeliness of adaptation, overheads (for computation and communication), tolerance of disruption , etc.
- approaches for on-line algorithms, such as K-competitive analysis, may not be suitable since these require a notion of an optimal solution - a notion hard to define for dynamic solution techniques
- comparing self-organizing solutions to their static counterpart is not always a fair comparison. Comparing a distributed or decentralized solution, which needs to account for extra communication to allow the system to scale with an off-line algorithm, is unfair.
- comparing adaptive (i.e. self-adaptive or self-organizing) solutions is hard, because they have been driven with non-functional requirements and requirements such as reliability, stability or system lifetime may be more important than performance efficiency

Additionally, but related to these challenges, there are relatively few (and in some cases no) benchmark suites or codes for dynamic scenarios to work with.

In short, disciplined approaches to allow us to reason and study the qualities of SASO systems are required.

This workshop aims to bring together a variety of researchers in the SASO, autonomic computing and cyber physical systems areas, to discuss these topics. The workshop will solicit experience reports, theoretical work, position statements, and other research contributions.


Format
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The workshop will mainly be a forum for group discussion rather than a mini-conference. Depending on the submissions, the discussions may be steered by studying one or a limited number of concrete cases. Short presentations will pitch the main ideas of the contributors.

As a concrete deliverable of the workshop, the organizers will consider a collaborative effort in writing a survey and research agenda paper, describing a roadmap towards evaluating SASO systems.



Important Deadlines
-------------------

Abstract submission: July 1, 2012
Full paper submission: July 4, 2012
Notification of acceptance: July 25, 2012
Camera-ready version of accepted papers: August 24, 2012
Early registration: August 20, 2012


Topics of Interest
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Contributions are welcomed as
- experience reports
- position papers
- theoretical work
- other research contribution

on topics that include - but are not limited to:

- Techniques, models and theories on defining evaluation criteria for SASO systems
- Models on - and examples of - dynamic benchmark problems for SASO systems
- Experience reports on evaluation practice in SASO systems
- Methodologies for disciplined development of SASO systems


Papers submission and format
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Authors are invited to submit original unpublished papers that are neither accepted nor submitted elsewhere. Papers are limited to 8 pages. Position statements are limited to 4 pages. All papers should be formatted using the two-column IEEE Computer Society Conference Formatting Instructions.

Authors are kindly reminded of the IEEE policy on publications and the five levels of plagiarism defined by the IEEE. These rules will be strictly enforced. In particular, self-plagiarized papers will be rejected without further ado.

All papers should be submitted electronically in PDF format via https://sites.google.com/site/eval4saso2012/

All accepted papers will be published by IEEE Xplore following the workshop.


Review Process
---------------

All submitted papers will be peers reviewed by at least 3 reviewers.


Organizers
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Tom Holvoet, KU Leuven, Belgium program chair
Richard John Anthony, University of Greenwich publication chair
Julie McCann, Imperial College London, UK publicity chair


Program Committee (to be confirmed)