[agents] CfP: 4th Workshop on Trustworthy Self-Organizing and Autonomous Systems (TSOS 2013) @ SASO 2013, Deadline July 11

[Jan-Philipp Steghöfer]

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                           TSOS 2013
 4th Workshop on Trustworthy Self-Organizing and Autonomous Systems
            September 9, 2013, Philadelphia, PA, USA
                     http://tsos.isse.de

                    Affiliated to SASO 2013
              Seventh IEEE International Conference on
              Self-Adaptive and Self-Organizing Systems

                 Submission Deadline: July 11, 2013
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Call for Papers
===============

The nature of self-organizing and autonomous systems and cyper-physical
entities demands that issues of trust and its different facets become a
primary concern. In autonomous cyber-physical or embedded systems with
complex interactions between physical components there is a significant
potential for failure, and considerable risk of severe adverse impact.
When considering interaction between such systems and entities, their
emergent behavior, and the highly dynamic and open environment in which
they will be deployed the concerns related to security, safety and trust
are even exacerbated. Not only will a thorough consideration of trust
yield more robust and more secure systems, but the incorporation of
trust can also lead to gains with regard to performance, acceptance and
ease of use. In domains in which systems have to be certified, the
formal treatment of trust and its facets in self-organizing or
autonomous systems is a necessity.

The issues of trust and reputation management in multi-agent systems
have received considerable attention. Also, formal methods to guarantee
functional correctness, safety, and security as well as techniques to
ensure reliability in distributed, self-organizing and autonomous
systems have been investigated by diverse research groups from different
communities. Furthermore, the role of humans as the users of
self-organizing, self- adaptive and autonomous systems and the usability
of such systems has been subject of research. These different facets of
the same problem have so far been considered only separately and many
have regarded security, safety, etc. as complementary to trust.

However, the overall trustworthiness of a self-organizing and autonomous
system is connected to all the aforementioned properties and should be
regarded holistically. In addition the legal issues of autonomous
cyber-physical systems have so far not received much attention, as they
mainly have been deployed in military contexts. When autonomous systems
such as robots and mini-helicopters start to become used by private
companies and individuals for everyday tasks such as driving, shopping
and video recordings, a whole new range of safety, security, legal and
trust issues arise.

The facets of trust must be considered in relationships between
components of the system and between the user and the system. Functional
correctness, security, safety, and reliability are facets that have to
be ensured for the system's components as well as for the system as a
whole. The classical notions of trust and reputation in MAS also apply
to this relationship between system components. The relationship between
the system and the user is influenced by the transparency and
consistency of the system towards the user and most importantly by its
usability, i.e., the way the user is informed about self-organization
processes and autonomous system decisions and allowed to interact with
the system.

Topics
======

The workshop will provide an open stage for discussions about the
different facets of trust in self-organizing and autonomous systems, how
every single one of them can be fostered, and how they relate. Further
examples for topics of interest are:

 * Trust management systems for self-organizing systems
 * Trust management in autonomous and cyber-physical systems
 * Metrics of trust and specialized metrics for single trust facets
 * Policies and their influence on trustworthiness
 * Formal methods to analyze, prove, or measure aspects of trust
 * Trust and reputation management in hierarchical multi-agent systems
and systems of systems
 * Engineering of trustworthy self-organizing and autonomous systems
 * Evaluations of the effects of trust in self-organizing and autonomous
systems
 * Analysis of threats to self-organizing and autonomous systems
 * Adaptive user interfaces
 * Visualization, transparency and controllability of self-organization
processes and autonomous decisions
 * Measuring and evaluating user trust in self-organizing and autonomous
systems
 * Using trust to deal with uncertainty
 * Trust and game theory
 * Explaining and clarifying trust decisions – when and how

Aim of the Workshop
===================

The aim of the workshop is to bring together researchers of different
communities such as Multi-Agent Systems, Autonomic Computing, Organic
Computing, Trust Management, Security, Cyber-Physical Systems, and
Distributed Systems to discuss - based on high quality position or
research papers – the different aspects of trust in self-adaptive and
self-organizing systems and to create a sense of the overarching
concepts and problems that are associated with a holistic view on
trustworthy self-organizing and autonomous systems. The workshop is an
opportunity to promote this view and to engage in discussions about the
interconnectedness of the different facets and their interplay in
self-organizing and autonomous systems, as well as in presenting on-
going research and identify areas where more attention from the
community is required.

Audience
========

The workshop is aimed at researchers that have been investigating one of
the trust aspects (functional correctness, safety, security,
reliability, credibility, usability) in self-organizing or autonomous
systems or that have been looking into trust and its different shapes.
We explicitly encourage participation of researchers from different
communities within computer science. The workshop will be set in an
informal and cooperative atmosphere with ample time allotted to discussions.

Important Dates
===============
 * Paper submission: July 11, 2013
 * Acceptance Notification: July 25, 2013
 * Camera-ready version: August 14, 2013
 * Workshop: September 9, 2013


Paper Submission
================
The workshop organizers solicit both original research papers as well as
position papers and papers of a controversial or visionary nature on the
topics outlined in the Call for Papers. Each paper will be reviewed in a
double-blind process. The decision will be based on the motivation of
the research, the clarity of the claims of the contribution, the
relevance of the research to the domain of self-organizing systems, its
evaluation, and the thoroughness of the related work comparison.
Submitted papers must not have been previously published or submitted
elsewhere.

The proceedings of all SASO workshops will be published by IEEE Computer
Society Press and made available as a part of the IEEE digital library.

Submissions should not exceed 6 pages and formatted according to the
IEEE Computer Society Press proceedings style guide and submitted
electronically in pdf format. Please submit your papers using the
conference management system that will be linked on the website well in
advance of the submission deadline. One of the authors has to register
for the conference and workshop.


Workshop Organization
=====================
Wolfgang Reif
Augsburg University, Germany
Institute for Software & Systems Engineering
reif at informatik.uni-augsburg.de

Christian Müller-Schloer
Leibniz University Hannover, Germany
Institute for Systems Engineering
cms at sra.uni-hannover.de

Audun Jøsang
University of Oslo, Norway
josang at matnat.uio.no

Jan-Philipp Steghöfer
Augsburg University, Germany
Institute for Software & Systems Engineering
Universitätsstr. 6a
D-86159 Augsburg
steghoefer at informatik.uni-augsburg.de
+49 (0) 821 598-2177
(Please contact for all enquiries.)


Program Committee
=================
 * Elisabeth André, Augsburg University
 * Didac Busquets, Imperial College London
 * Radu Calinescu, Oxford University
 * Rino Falcone, Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies
 * Christian Damsgaard Jensen, Technical University of Denmark
 * Jörg Hähner, Leibniz University Hannover
 * Tom Holvoet, Katholike Universiteit Leuven
 * Aad van Moorsel, Newcastle University
 * Onn Shehory, IBM Research Labs Haifa
 * Theo Ungerer, Augsburg University


-- 
Jan-Philipp Steghöfer
Lehrstuhl für Softwaretechnik
Institut für Software & Systems Engineering
Universität Augsburg

Raum 3041 N, Universitätsstr. 6a, 86159 Augsburg

FON:    (+49) 821/598-2177
MAIL:   steghoefer at informatik.uni-augsburg.de