Call for Papers

6th IEEE International Conference on Self-Adaptive and Self-Organizing Systems

Introduction

The aim of the SASO conference series is to provide a forum for presenting the latest results about self-adaptive and self-organizing systems, networks and services. To this end, the meeting aims to attract participants with different backgrounds, to foster cross-pollination between research fields, to expose and discuss innovative theories, frameworks, methodologies, tools, and applications, and to identify new challenges. The complexity of current and emerging computing systems has led the software engineering, distributed systems and management communities to look for inspiration in diverse fields (e.g., complex systems, control theory, artificial intelligence, sociology, biology, etc.) to find new ways of designing and managing networks, systems and services. In this endeavor, self-organization and self-adaptation have emerged as two promising interrelated facets of a paradigm shift.

Self-adaptive systems work in a top down manner. They evaluate their own global behavior and change it when the evaluation indicates that they are not accomplishing what they were intended to do, or when better function or performance is possible. A challenge is often to identify how to change specific behaviors to achieve the desired improvement. Self-organizing systems work bottom up. They are composed of a large number of components that interact locally according to typically simple rules. The global behavior of the system emerges from these local interactions. Here, a challenge is often to predict and control the resulting global behavior.

Topics of Interest

The SASO conference is interested in both theoretical and practical aspects of systems exhibiting self-* characteristics. A particular focus is the modeling of natural, man-made and social systems that exhibit self-adaptation and self-organization characteristics as well as the constructive use of the underlying basic principles in technical systems. The sixth edition of SASO particularly encourages submissions from the following, non-exclusive list of topic areas:
• Principles, Theory, Methods and Architectures for SASO Systems
• Robustness, Resilience and Fault-Tolerance in/with Self-* Systems
• Self-* Behavior in Communication Networks
• (Self-)Control, (Self-)Observation, (Self-)Monitoring of Engineered Systems
• Collective Phenomena in Social and Socio-Technical Systems
• Self-Organization and Self-Adaptation in Biological/Natural Systems
• Applications of Spatial and Physics-Inspired Self-Organization
• SASO Principles in Cyber-Security
• SASO Principles in Collective Robotic Systems
• SASO Principles in Cyber-Physical Systems
• Real-World Experience with Engineered Systems Exhibiting Self-* Properties

All contributions must present novel theoretical or experimental results, or practical approaches and experiences in building or deploying real-world systems and applications. Contributions that contrast “conventional" engineering principles with novel approaches making use of SASO principles are especially welcome.

Submissions Instructions

All submissions should be 10 pages and formatted according to the IEEE Computer Society Press proceedings style guide and submitted electronically in PDF format. Please register as authors and submit your papers using the SASO 2012 conference management system. The proceedings will be published by IEEE Computer Society Press, and made available as a part of the IEEE digital library. Note that a separate call for poster and demo submissions has also been issued.

Emerging Topic Papers

In addition to regular papers, SASO also encourages the submission of papers on emerging topics. These submissions should be clearly marked as such (indicating “Emerging Topic:” in the title) and should provide a well-rounded survey of novel questions, methods and abstractions that are relevant for the design of SASO systems along with a clear indication of the possible impact on the SASO community. In this category we particularly encourage submissions that present innovative applications of methodological frameworks being used in other fields of science that study SASO related phenomena, thus highlighting connections and potential for collaboration between different scientific communities.

Review Criteria

Papers should present novel ideas in the topic domains listed above, clearly motivated by problems from current practice or applied research. We expect claims of contribution to be clearly stated and substantiated by formal analysis, experimental evaluations or comparative studies. Appropriate references must be made to related work. Since SASO is a cross-disciplinary conference, a particular criterion that will be strictly enforced by the program committee is that all papers must be understandable by researchers that are not members of the particular, highly-specialize scientific community. Emphasis should rather be placed on cross-cutting aspects that are relevant to a wider audience of researchers and engineers dealing with SASO systems. Furthermore, submissions making use of principles inspired by phenomena occurring in fields like biology, physics, sociology, economics, etc. are required to provide references for all relevant work in the respective field. Papers demonstrating SASO principles in practical applications are expected to provide an indication of the real world relevance of the problem that is solved, including some form of evaluation of performance, usability, or superiority to alternative state-of-the-art approaches. If the application is still early work in progress, then the authors are expected to provide strong arguments as to why the proposed approach will work in the chosen domain.

The program committee strongly suggests to review the list of common reasons for SASO submissions being rejected, which is available online. Furthermore, a collection of interdisciplinary approaches to the study of SASO-related phenomena is provided. Prospective authors are invited to check whether their research question can be related to this rich body of work, thus benefiting from tools, methods and findings developed in various disciplines.

Important Dates

Abstract submission April 23rd, 2012
Full paper submission April 30rd, 2012
Notification of acceptance June 20th, 2012
Camera-ready version of accepted papers July 18th, 2012
Early registration August 20th, 2012

All deadlines are at 11:59 PM American Samoa Time (UTC-11).

Program Chairs

Anwitaman Datta, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Marie-Pierre Gleizes, IRIT- University of Toulouse, France
Ingo Scholtes, Chair of Systems Design, ETH Zurich, Switzerland