SPARK 2014 - International Scheduling and Planning Applications woRKshop (SPARK)

Application domains that contain planning and scheduling (P&S) problems pose a combination of issues, from modelling to technological to institutional, that present challenges to the AI planning and scheduling community. New domains and real-world problems are becoming increasingly affordable for AI.
The international Scheduling and Planning Applications woRKshop (SPARK) series was established to help address the gap between developments in the AI P&S community and application of these advances.
Objectives and Topics
The workshop aims to provide a stable forum on relevant topics connected to application-focused research and the deployment of P&S systems.
The immediate legacy began in 2007 with the ICAPS'07 Workshop on Moving Planning and Scheduling Systems into the Real World, and continued in 2008-2013 with successful yearly editions.
The websites of the previous editions of the workshop series are available at http://decsai.ugr.es/~lcv/SPARK/.
These workshops presented a stimulating environment where researchers could discuss the opportunity and challenges in moving P&S developments into practice, and analyze domains and problem instances under study for, or closely inspired by, real industrial/commercial deployment of P&S techniques.
This is the 8th edition of SPARK. The previous editions saw substantial attendance with respect to other collocated events (about 30+ people every year since 2007)
This success, together with the new creation, last year, of the Novel Applications track that continues this year make SPARK:
The ideal incubator to test, discuss, mature and improve potential papers for that main track with the feedback of an excellent audience.
A great place for the inception of new applications and challenges.
The challenges and discussions that emerged in the last years' editions set the baseline for this year's SPARK workshop. A goal of the workshop series is the definition of a longer term set of challenges that could be of benefit for the research community as well as practitioners.
During SPARK14, we will continue discussing the formation of the Special Interest Group on Application of Planning & Scheduling (SIGAPS). This is a coordinated effort on increase the visibility of the application-oriented planning and scheduling research and engineering carried out in the research community, drive initiatives into more applied and transferable research, and promote/foster a closer relationship with industry.
Authors of accepted papers will be encouraged to share their domains and instances, or parts of them, towards a library of practical benchmarking problems that could also be useful for the community.
Starting from the results of the previous editions, SPARK'14 will deepen the debate on application-relevant aspects of P&S theory and practice, with the aim of reporting and discussing experiences relating to deploying P&S systems.
Topics of the workshop include, but are not limited to:
Novel domains and benchmark or challenge problems
Experiences in deploying P&S systems, from their conception to their maturity in practice
Comparison with previously existing technologies and/or systems
Integration of operational knowledge from existing legacy components
Integration of multiple sources of knowledge and reasoning schemes (actions, time, resources)
Algorithmic and technological issues
Mixed initiative approaches
User interface design, visualization and explanation
Machine learning methodologies applied to P&S systems
Handling dynamic and uncertain sources of knowledge
Engineering, deployment, and maintenance
Evaluation, testing, and validation
Plan execution and replanning
Assessment of impact on end users
Modelling and domain model acquisition
Workshop Format
The workshop will retain the successful format of previous SPARK editions.
In order to foster discussion amongst speakers and attendees, reviewers of submissions will be asked to write a public critique of each paper composed by a set of public questions or thoughts, in addition to regular private comments to the authors and confidential comments to the organizers. These critiques will also be provided to the authors in advance of the workshop and distributed among the workshop attendees.
Each session will consist of presentations of technical papers, their commentaries, and a short discussion on the topic of papers.
The SPARK'14 workshop will feature a panel discussion aiming at wrapping up all the relevant issues and challenges as possible propositions for future editions of the series.
Submission
Submissions may be regular papers (preferably 6 pages, although consideration will be given to papers of up to 8 pages) or short position papers (at most 2 pages). All papers should conform to the AAAI formatting guidelines and style. Submissions will be reviewed by at least two referees. Interested contributors are invited to communicate their intent to submit to the workshop organizers.
Submissions, in PDF format, may be submitted via the EasyChair site.
All workshop participants must be registered for ICAPS'14 or one of the co-located conferences.
Important Dates
Paper submission: February 20th, 2014
Notification of acceptance: March 20th, 2014
Camera-ready paper submission: TBA
Workshop date: June 22nd or June 23rd (TBA), 2014
Organizing Committee
Gabriella Cortellessa(ISTC-CNR, Italy)
Mark Giuliano (Space Telescope Science Institute, USA)
Riccardo Rasconi (ISTC-CNR, Italy)
Neil Yorke-Smith (American University of Beirut, Lebanon, and University of Cambridge, UK)
Program Committee
Laura Barbulescu (Carnegie Mellon University, USA)
Anthony Barrett (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, USA)
Mark Boddy (Adventium, USA)
Luis Castillo (University of Granada, Spain)
Gabriella Cortellessa (ISTC-CNR, Italy), Co-Chair
Riccardo De Benedictis (ISTC-CNR, Italy)
Minh Do (SGT Inc., NASA Ames, USA)
Simone Fratini (ESA-ESOC, Germany)
Mark Giuliano (Space Telescope Science Institute), Co-Chair
Christophe Guettier (SAGEM, France)
Patrik Haslum (NICTA, Australia)
Nicola Policella (ESA-ESOC, Germany)
Riccardo Rasconi (ISTC-CNR, Italy), Co-Chair
Bernd Schattenberg (University of Ulm)
Tiago Vaquero (University of Toronto)
Ramiro Varela (Universityof Oviedo)
Gérard Verfaillie (ONERA, France)
Neil Yorke-Smith (American University of Beirut, Lebanon, and University of Cambridge, UK), Co-Chair
Terry Zimmerman