The 5th IEEE Workshop on Engineering Semantic Agent Systems (ESAS 2010)
Held in conjunction with COMPSAC, the IEEE Signature Conference on Computers, Software, and Applications. COMPSAC 2010 will be held in Seoul, Korea, July 19-23.

The theme of ESAS 2010 is Engineering Computationally Smarter Environments through MAS & Semantic Technologies.


The ESAS workshop series aims at garnering the synergy of both Semantic Web technology and multi-agent systems (MAS) technologies by leveraging the aspects of both the semantic web and the agent technologies. Semantic Web technologies render dynamic, heterogeneous, distributed, shared content equally accessible to human reader and software agents. Distributed agents that function autonomously can utilize Semantic Web content, reason about this content and infer new knowledge in order to achieve their often shared goals. Topics of interest at ESAS 2010 span a wide spectrum in both theory and practice of autonomous semantic agents, context-aware intelligent agents, agents as Semantic Web services, software agents, mobile agents, agent architectures, multi-agent systems, agent communities, cooperation and goal seeking through sharing policy and ontology, safety & security in systems, other QoS issues, and so on.

Mobile agent and MAS technologies are crucial in realizing multi-party dynamic application systems. Semantic Web technologies augment MAS by enabling agents with functioning based on the semantics of their mission and of the world around them. Agents, implemented as web services in developing distributed control and processing applications, entail interesting consequences such as situation awareness, semantic composition of services, context sensitive long-lasting transactions, effecting service policies and quality levels, etc. Complex applications could become realizable with novel features such as factory floor automation for flexible production, collaborative discovery of uncharted geography (for example, cooperative labyrinth discovery), traffic management and info dissemination with facilitation of emergency services, financial markets forecasting with optimization of portfolio gain, etc.

We envisage a strong undercurrent of intelligent software agents, mobile agents, and MAS running through this workshop; side by side with the use of semantic technologies, there are several foci of interest, including:

• Software Agents, Mobile Agents, and MAS: issues relating to architecture, implementation, coordination, service levels, security of pervasive semantic or otherwise agents.
• Agent, MAS and Semantic Web Technologies: concomitant utilization of specific technologies in agent, MAS, and semantic Web implementations; semantic agent communities & applications; case studies of best-practice MAS applications; projects in the making;
• Ontologies for Agents and MAS: agent cooperation and coordination ontology; ontology of workflow in MAS; ontologies for distributed applications and integration; sharing and semantic interoperability; discovery and operations on ontologies; trust & security issues;
• Platforms for Semantic Agent and MAS Implementation: languages, frameworks, tools, integrated development environments and software engineering practices supporting semantic or otherwise software agent & MAS architectures, coordination, trust & security mechanisms, description, discovery and composition of agent-based services.
• Other subjects of relevance in semantic technologies, semantic software agents, mobile agents, agent-based and multi-agent systems.


Invited Participants

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We invite researchers and practitioners of semantic software agents, mobile agents, MAS and semantic Web technologies to submit papers and to attend the workshop. Those with interests in ontology-based systems, semantic agents, and agent-based systems are welcome. Researchers working on the following are especially encouraged to propose papers: realization of multi-agent systems through semantic web technology, ontology-based agent applications, distributed control and processing applications, security & trust, interoperability, service levels and quality issues in such systems. Enterprises and research centers developing ontgologies, languages, integrated development environments, tools, and middleware that are employed in engineering the above are encouraged to propose demo and tutorial presentations.


Important Dates

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March 29, 2010: Workshop paper submissions due
Apr 10, 2010: Workshop paper notifications
Apr 30, 2010: All final manuscripts and author registration due


Paper Submission

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All submitted papers will be reviewed by the program committee according to its originality, significance, correctness, presentation, and relevance. We encourage authors to present position papers on practical studies and experiments, critiques of existing work, emerging issues, and novel ideas under development.
Both draft and camera-ready papers will need to be submitted electronically via the ESAS 2010 Submission Page (watch this space for further updates). Manuscripts will be limited to six pages for regular/invited papers, four pages for short papers, two pages for fast abstract and position statements including all figures, tables, and references. Extra page charges may apply. The format of submitted papers must follow the IEEE conference proceedings guidelines (i.e., 8.5" x 11", two-column format) available from http://www.computer.org/portal/web/cscps/submission.



All accepted papers will be published in the electronic conference proceedings by the IEEE Computer Society, indexed through INSPEC and EI Index (Elsevier's Engineering Information Index), and automatically included in the IEEE Digital Library. At least one of the authors of each accepted paper must register as a full participant of COMPSAC for the paper to be included in the proceedings. Each accepted paper must be presented in person by an author.

ESAS 2010 is a sequel in the very successful ESAS Workshops Series of the IEEE COMPSAC conferences. Please refer to the Post-Workshop Publication Activity section below for information on ongoing journal publication.


Post-Workshop Publication Activity

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We expect to have a special issue of a journal indexed in Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) for the papers accepted at ESAS 2010.

A special issue of the best papers of ESAS 2006 has been published with Multiagent and Grid Systems - An International Journal, IOS Press, ISSN 1574-1702; Volume 4, Number 3, 2008, pp: 293-346.

The authors of the papers accepted at ESAS 2007 and 2008 were invited to submit extended versions of their papers for publication in the Special Issue on Engineering Semantic Agent Systems of Expert Systems: The Journal of Knowledge Engineering by Wiley-Blackwell Publishing. This Special Issue will appear in mid-2010.

The authors of EAS 2009 have also been invited to submit an extended and revised version of their papers for publication in an edited volume on Semantic Agent Systems: Foundations and Applications by Springer-Verlag.


Please address all queries and questions to the Workshop Organizers.