[agents] CFP E4MAS'14: Agent Environments for Multi-Agent Systems - 10 Years Later

[Danny Weyns]

     Agent Environments for Multi-Agent Systems - 10 Years Later
                                          E4MAS 2014

                      Organized with AAMAS 2014 in Paris
             Lecture Notes in Computer Science Proceedings

    http://homepage.lnu.se/staff/daweaa/events/E4MAS/2014.htm


DATES
- Paper submission deadline: January 29, 2014
- Paper notification: February 19, 2014
- Camera ready: March 12, 2014
- Workshop: May 5 or 6, 2014

FOCUS AND GOALS
In 2004, researchers in multi-agent systems became more and more
aware that agent systems consist of more than only agents. The
E4MAS workshop that was organized in conjunction with AAMAS 2004
emerged from this awareness. The driver for E4MAS 2004 was the
following statement: 'There is a general agreement in the multi-agent
research community that agent environments are essential for
multi-agent systems, yet researchers neglect to integrate the agent
environment as a primary abstraction in their models and tools for
multi-agent systems.'

During three successful editions of E4MAS and various additional
activities, a substantial group of researchers worked intensively on the
subject of agent environments. One of the primary outcomes of this
endeavor was a principled understanding that the agent environment
should be considered as a primary design abstraction, equally
important as the agents. Different models and architectures have been
proposed to design agent environments and these designs have been
validated in a variety of application domains. A special issue in the
Journal on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems in 2007
included a set of influential papers that define the role of agent
environments, their engineering, and outline challenges in the field.
The challenges have been the drivers for numerous follow up research
efforts.

The goals of this special edition of E4MAS are:
 - To reflect on the past 10 years of research and engineering
   on agent environments for multi-agent systems;
 - To investigate to what extent the challenges identified a decade
   ago have been tackled;
 - To outline challenges for future research on a short and longer term.

SUBMISSIONS
E4MAS welcomes the submission of original papers. We seek three
types of submissions:
- Technical contributions; including theoretical, experimental,
  methodological as well as applications papers (up to 12 pages)
- Surveys on selected topics (up to 12 pages)
- Position statements and future trend papers (up to 4 pages)

Concrete topics of interest include but are not restricted to:
- Modeling abstractions and architectures of agent environments
- Agent environments in relation to agents, interaction, organizations
  and Institutions
- Agent environments for specific agent paradigms (e.g., BDI
  agents, self-organizing systems, etc.)
- Agent environments for specific application domains
- Radically new approaches for agent environments
- Distribution and decentralization of agent environments
- Reflective and self-adaptive agent environments
- Formal models and reasoning techniques for agent environments
- Agent environment engineering: design, testing, validation
- Frameworks and reusable infrastructures
- Programming support for agent environments
- Integration of agent environments with common middleware
- Agent environments for simulation

PDF versions of papers should be submitted electronically via
EasyChair: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=e4mas.

All papers will be reviewed by at least 3 reviewers. Papers will be
selected based on originality and potential for stimulating discussion
at the workshop.

PLANNED PROGRAM
The workshop will take one day and will be organized in a highly
interactive way, in line with the preceding editions. During the
morning session, we plan short talks based on accepted and invited
papers as teasers for the following discussions. After lunch, we plan
breakout discussion sessions on targeted topics. The concrete
topics for discussion will be identified based on the input from
the presentations in the morning session and suggestions of the
reviewers.

PROCEEDINGS
All accepted papers will be published at the workshop website
before the event. After the workshop, proceedings will be published
in a Lecture Notes in Computer Science volume. The goal of this
book is to provide a reference work on the state of the art in
agent environments for multi-agent systems and outline directions
for future research. The aim is to start with a roadmap paper
coordinated by the workshop organizers and co-authored by all
interested workshop attendees. Furthermore, the book will
include chapters resulting from the different group discussions
at the workshop, complemented with revised versions of the
accepted and invited workshop papers.

ORGANIZATION
Danny Weyns, Linnaeus University, Sweden (danny.weyns at lnu.se<mailto:danny.weyns at lnu.se>)
Van Parunak, Soar Technology, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
Fabien Michel, LIRMM, Universite Montpellier II, France
Olivier Boissier, ENS Mines Saint-Etienne, France
Michael Schumacher, Univ. of Applied Sciences & Arts, Switzerland
Alessandro Ricci, Universita Bologna, Italy

PROGRAM COMMITTEE  (confirmed)
Rafael Bordini, FACIN-PUCRS, Brazil
Sven Brueckner, Axon Connected, USA
Alexis Drogoul, FI/MSI, Viet Nam
Jacques Ferber, Université de Montpellier II, Lirmm, France
Tom Holvoet, DistriNet, K.U.Leuven, Belgium
Franziska Kluegl, Örebro University, Sweden
Marco Mamei, Universita' di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Italy
Olivier Simonin, CITI Lab, Lyon, France
Mirko Viroli, Università di Bologna, Italy
Stefano Bromuri, Applied Intelligent Systems Laboratory, Switserland
Giuseppe Vizzari, University of Milan-Bicocca, Italy
Flavien Balbo, Lamsade - Université Paris Dauphine, France
Julien Saunier, INSA de Rouen, France
Franco Zambonelli, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy
Eric Platon, KVH Japan
Shinichi Honiden, National Institute of Informatics, Japan
Luca Tummolini, Inst. of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, Italy
Ambra Molesini, Università di Bologna, Italy
Gildas Morvan, Université d’Artois, France
Ana De-Melo, IME-USP, Brazil
Pablo Noriega, IIIA-CSIC Spain
Andrea Omicini, Università di Bologna, Italy


-----------------------------------------------------------
Danny Weyns, PhD
Professor of Software Engineering
Department of Computer Science
Linnaeus University
SE-351 95 Växjö
Sweden

AdaptWise: http://lnu.se/adaptwise<http://homepage.lnu.se/staff/daweaa/index.htm>
Home page: http://homepage.lnu.se/staff/daweaa/index.htm
danny.weyns at lnu.se<mailto:danny.weyns at lnu.se>
+46 470 767 548
+46 470 840 04 (fax)
------------------------------------------------------------