IEEE CogSIMA 2011 - IEEE International Multi-Disciplinary Conference on Cognitive Methods in Situation Awareness and Decision Support

The aim of this conference is to provide a venue for presenting scientific results of studies of complex, heterogeneous dynamical systems that include humans, physical systems and computer agents whose behaviors depend on situation. Examples of such systems include ad hoc mobile networks, physical and cyber security systems, disaster monitoring and recovery systems, epidemic monitoring and control, intelligent transportation systems, financial and investment services, and tactical and operational battlefield command and control systems.

Common to these systems is the need to adequately perceive, reflect and act according to the situational changes happening both in the surrounding world and within the systems themselves. The amounts of information that needs to be processed in order to derive decisions overwhelm both the human cognitive capabilities and the computer processing power. Consequently, there is a need to develop new situation awareness and decision support approaches of augmenting the cognitive capabilities of both humans and computer agents.

These agents, both humans and machines, are faced with various problems: (1) selecting which data is relevant to the objectives and actively requesting or searching for additional information, (2) integrating disparate data sources into a coherent information representation and a consistent model of the world, (3) inferring relations among various elements of the model, including prediction of the future states of the world, (4) assessing uncertainties associated with decisions, (5) learning new models and/or model elements, (6) valuating particular current and/or future states of the world according to some metrics, (7) identifying desirable states of the world, selecting actions that could lead to the desirable states. (8) communicating and interacting with other agents, and engaging into the process of collective situation awareness and decision-making.

While this process is complex, it is further complicated by the fact that each of the steps mentioned above depend on the situation. A specific item of information is relevant in one situation but is irrelevant in another. A given model of the world is adequate in one situation, but is not appropriate in another. A given set of logical conditions implies a given relation holds in a given situation, but not in another situation. A given state is desirable in one situation but is harmful in another. A given sequence of actions leads to a given state in one situation, but not in another.

The solution to the above-mentioned problems requires multi-disciplinary research in and among a number of scientific fields, particularly: (1) The concepts of situation, context, event, goal, intention, action, activity, behavior need further studies from a number of different points of view, including the views of situation in linguistics, cognitive science, human factors, computer science and artificial intelligence, as well as in both industrial and military applications. (2) Situational awareness needs to be considered from the point of view of both the human agent, who needs support with dealing with the complications of situation dependent information processing, and the computer agent that is supposed to provide such support. In order for this support to be possible, both the human and the computer agents must share the ontology of the domain and be able uniformly perform and interpret the communication acts. (3) Situation dependent data integration must be studied in order to provide basic understanding of algorithms and processes for developing situational models that capture the changes of the world. (4) Since it is not expected that any such model would be adequate to capture the world changes over an extended period of time, mechanisms are needed to detect the need for a model change for learning a new model. (5) A theory of relevance is needed that would provide basis for decisions on what should be included and what not in a new model. (6) Context-dependent assessment of uncertainties associated with particular conclusions and decisions needs to be investigated. (7) Methods for planning and means of achieving new situational states need to be studied. (8) Approaches to spatial and temporal reasoning, reasoning about goals, intentions and actions, and collective reasoning by teams of agents (machines and/or humans) must be further studied. (9) Advancement of the situational control theory, including situational feedback, goal assessment and optimization, situational games with nature and adversaries, reflective situation control, and collective situational behavior need to be investigated.

Conference Scope

The main topics addressed by the conference include (but are not limited to):

Studies of concepts of situation, context, event, goal, intention, action, activity, and behavior
Theories of situational awareness in both humans and computer agents Situation dependent data integration
Modeling of situations ? model construction, adaptation and learning Theories of relevance
Methods of planning actions to achieve desired situations
Approaches to spatial and temporal reasoning, reasoning about goals, intentions and actions, and collective reasoning by teams of human and/or machine agents
Advancement of situational control theory, including situational feedback, goal assessment and optimization, situational games with nature and adversaries, reflective situational control, and collective situational behavior
Metrics and evaluation
Submission Guidelines

All papers must represent original and unpublished work that is not currently under review. Each paper will be reviewed by at least three independent referees. Papers will be evaluated according to their significance, originality, technical content, style, clarity, and relevance to the conference. At least one author of each accepted paper is expected to attend the conference.

Two types of paper submissions will be accepted:

Oral presentation paper (max. 8 pages): a research paper describes new results that advance the state-of-the-art in basic or applied research.
Poster presentation paper (max. 4 pages): a research paper describes a work in progress.
Submitted papers should clearly indicate on the first page the submission type. Authors of accepted papers will need to sign an IEEE copyright release form and present their paper at the conference. The conference proceedings will be digitally published by IEEE Communications Society and will be included into the IEEE Explore Digital Library.

All paper submissions will be handled electronically in EDAS via the CogSIMA 2011 submission page. Authors should prepare a Portable Document Format (PDF) version of their full paper in 2-column style (main text in 10-point size) including figures and correct margins. Please use the stylesheet templates provided by IEEE to assure that your proposal is in line with our guidelines.http://www.ieee.org/portal/pages/pubs/transactions....

Organizing Committee

General Chair:
Gabriel Jakobson, Altusys Corporation
Technical Program Co-Chairs:
Mieczyslaw M. Kokar, Northeastern University
Mica Endsley, SA Technologies
Local Arrangements Chair:
William Hortos, ACERT
Publications Chair:
Lundy Lewis, Southern New Hampshire University
Publicity Chair:
Adam Stotz, CUBRC
Finance Chair:
Mike Kincaid, L3 Communications
Treasurer:
Bruce Worthman, ComSoc
Sponsorship Chair:
Moises Sudit, CUBRC
Steering Committee Chair:
Gary Toth, ONR
For more information contact cogsimainfo-AT-ieee.org.