DADS 2021 - 16th DADS Track of the 36th ACM Symposium on Applied Computing

The Symposium on Applied Computing has been a primary gathering forum for applied computer scientists, computer engineers, software engineers, and application developers from around the world. SAC 2021 is sponsored by the ACM Special Interest Group on Applied Computing and the SRC Program is sponsored by Microsoft Research.
While computing is provided by the cloud and services increasingly pervade our daily lives, dependability, adaptiveness and security become a cornerstone of the information society. Unfortunately, most innovative systems and applications (Internet of Things, Industrial IoT, Smart Environments, Mashups, NewSQL) suffer from a lack of dependability and security, which is fueled by global scale, mobility and heterogeneity, as well as the demand for resource awareness, green computing, and increasing cost pressure.
Among technical factors, software development methods, tools, and techniques contribute to dependability and security, as defects in software products and services may lead to failure and also provide typical access for malicious attacks. In addition, there is a wide variety of fault and intrusion tolerance techniques available, including persistence provided by databases, redundancy and replication, group communication, transaction monitors, reliable middleware, cloud infrastructures, light-weight virtualization (docker), fragmentation-redundancy-scattering, and trustworthy service-oriented and microservice architectures with explicit control of quality of service properties and monitoring of service level agreements.
Furthermore, adaptiveness is envisaged in order to react to observed, or act upon expected changes of the system itself, the context/environment (e.g., resource variability or failure/threat scenarios) or users' needs and expectations. Provided without explicit user intervention, this is also termed autonomous behavior or self-properties, and often involves monitoring, diagnosis (analysis, interpretation), and reconfiguration (repair). In particular, adaptation is also a means to achieve dependability and security in a computing infrastructure with dynamically varying structure and properties and can itself be provided as a service (Control-as-a-service).
Topics of Interest
The track provides a forum for scientists and engineers in academia and industry to present and discuss their latest research findings on selected topics in dependable, adaptive and trustworthy distributed systems and services. The topics of particular interest include, but are not limited to:
Dependable, Adaptive, and secure Distributed Systems (DADS): E.g., Distributed ledger technologies: Blockchain and Smart Contracts; Massive scale, scalable applications; Big data; Self-* properties and autonomous behaviour; Mobility and sparse connectivity; Adaptable and adaptive security; Fault and intrusion tolerance; Performance-aware dependability; Context-awareness; Power-awareness, adaptive energy management, green computing, energy harvesting; Integration and balancing of competing attributes, CAP, continuos inconsistency; Cross-organizational heterogeneity.
Architectures, architectural styles, and middleware for DADS: E.g., Dezentralized Applications (D’Apps) and Blockchain-as-a-Service; Cloud systems and cloud-deployed applications; Cloud and Service Mashups; Service-oriented systems and microservices; Light-weight virtualization, Docker, Kubernetes, Swarm; P2P, MANET, smartphone-based, and pervasive systems; Event-based systems, Publish-subscribe systems; Control-as-a-Service: Control loop and MAPE pattern; Ransomware-as-a-Service: Threat diversification and measurements; In-memory computing; Safety vs. Security.
Protocols for DADS: E.g., Consensus protocols (PBFT, Proof-of-work, Proof-of-stake, Proof-of-*); Group communication, replication, transaction, coordination, orchestration; Failure detection, containment, and recovery; Dynamic (re-)configuration.
Modeling, design, and engineering of DADS: E.g., MDA support; QoS and SLA; Tool support; Design patterns for DADS; Abstractions and policies; Quantitative approaches; Run-time approaches.
Foundations and formal methods for DADS: E.g., Rigorous approaches, verification, assurance cases.
Applications of DADS: E.g., IoT-Internet of Things, Smart Environments, and Assistive Technologies; NewSQL; Industrial IoT, Industry 4.0, Digital Twin; Safety critical systems; Avionics and CNS (Communication, Navigation, Surveillance); VANETs (Vehicular adhoc networks); Automotive systems; Power utility automation networks, SCADA systems; Critical infrastructure protection and Disaster scenarios; Global sensor networks.
Evaluations, testing, benchmarking, and case studies of DADS
Holistic aspects of DADS: E.g., Social, cultural, psychological, economical, managerial, and educational aspects.