ADS 2011 - Agent-Directed Simulation (ADS'11) Symposium

Agent-Directed Simulation (ADS'11) Symposium
Agent-directed Simulation (ADS) Symposium is the premier platform to explore all three aspects of the synergy of simulation and agent technologies. Hence, it has a special place within simulation and agent conferences, including agent-based (social) simulation conferences. Therefore the ADS symposium fills a gap in the agent community as well as the simulation community.
The purpose of the ADS symposium is to facilitate dissemination of the most recent advancements in the theory, methodology, application, and toolkits of agent-directed simulation. Agent-directed simulation is comprehensive in the integration of agent and simulation technologies, by including models that use agents to develop domain-specific simulations, i.e., agent simulation (this is often referred to as agent-based simulation -when other two important aspects are not considered), and by also including the use of agent technology to develop simulation techniques and toolkits that are subsequently applied, either with or without agents.
Hence, agent-directed simulation consists of three distinct, yet related areas that can be grouped under two categories as follows:
Simulation for Agents (agent simulation): simulation of agent systems in engineering, human and social dynamics, military applications etc.
Agents for Simulation (which has two aspects): agent-supported simulation deals with the use of agents as a support facility to enable computer assistance in problem solving or enhancing cognitive capabilities; and agent-based simulation that focuses on the use of agents for the generation of model behavior in a simulation study.
Through the theme of agent-directed simulation, the symposium will bring together agent technologies, tools, toolkits, platforms, languages, methodologies, and applications in a pragmatic manner. In this symposium, established researchers, educators, and students are encouraged to come together and discuss the benefits of agent technology in their use and application for simulation. It is a way for people to discuss why and how they have used agent technology in their simulations, and describe the benefit of having done so.
The theme of ADS'11 is based on the observation of the following premises.
The growth of new advanced distributed computing standards along with the rapid rise of e-commerce are providing a new context that acts as a critical driver for the development of next generation systems. These standards revolve around service-oriented technologies, pervasive computing, web-services, Grid, autonomic computing, ambient intelligence etc. The supporting role that intelligent agents play in the development of such systems is becoming pervasive, and simulation plays a critical role in the analysis and design of such systems.
The use of emergent agent technologies at the organization, interaction (e.g., coordination, negotiation, communication) and agent levels (i.e. reasoning, autonomy) are expected to advance the state of the art in various application domains. However, modeling and testing complex agent systems that are based on such technologies is difficult. Using agent-supported simulation techniques for testing complex agent systems is up and coming field.
To facilitate bridging the gap between research and application, there is a need for tools, agent programming languages, and methodologies to analyze, design, and implement complex, non-trivial agent-based simulations. Existing agent-based simulation tools are still not mature enough to enable developing agents with varying degrees cognitive and reasoning capabilities.
ADS 2011 will provide a leading forum to bring together researchers and practitioners from diverse simulation societies within computer science, social sciences, engineering, business, education, human factors, and systems engineering. The involvement of various agent-directed simulation groups will enable the cross-fertilization of ideas and development of new perspectives by fostering novel advanced solutions, as well as enabling technologies for agent-directed simulation.
Program Topics
Theory/methodology:
High-level agent specification languages for modeling and simulation.
Agent programming and simulation modeling languages.
Distributed simulation for multi-agent systems.
Formal models of agents and agent societies.
Advanced agent features for agent-directed simulation: e.g.,
Holonic agents for cooperation and coopetition modeling and simulation.
Agents with personality, agents with dynamic personality, agents with emotions, agents having different types of intelligence such as emotional intelligence, agents with multi-intelligence.
Influence of cultural backgrounds in agent-directed simulation.
Agents with several types of understanding abilities such as multivision and switchable understanding abilities,
Trustworthy agents, and moral agents in simulation.
Agent-based simulation to monitor multi-simulation studies.
Agents in design and monitoring of simulation experiments and analysis of results.
Verification, validation, testing; quality assurance; as well as failure avoidance in agent-directed simulations.

Technology, tools, toolkits, and environments:
Agent infrastructures and supporting technologies (e.g., interoperability, agent-oriented software engineering environments).
Modeling, design, and simulation of agent systems based on service-oriented technologies, pervasive computing, web-services, grid computing, autonomic computing, ambient intelligence.
Agent architectures, platforms, and frameworks.
Standard APIs for agent simulation programming.

Applications:
Simulation modeling of agent technologies at the organization, interaction (e.g., communication, negotiation, coordination, collaboration) and agent level (e.g., deliberation, social agents, computational autonomy).
Application of agent simulations in various areas such as biology, business, commerce, economy, engineering, environment, individual, group, and organizational behavior, management, simulation gaming/training, social systems.
Conflict management simulation with holonic agents.
Modeling and simulation of emergence.
Author Guidelines
Technical papers provide a longer format for presenting experience reports, research results, or descriptions of "work in progress". They are limited to 8 pages.
Short position papers are targeted at raising a question or framing an issue for discussion during the symposium. Position papers are limited to 3 pages.
Poster presentations present an opportunity to present work in progress and receive feedback from colleagues. A one page write-up of the poster presentations will be included in the proceedings
Formatting guidelines and author instructions are available at http://www.scs.org/conferences. Papers should be submitted electronically to http://www.softconf.com/scs/ADS11. All papers will be subject to a peer-reviewing process by three program committee members. (Please see the key dates listed below)
Final Paper Submission Guidelines
All prospective authors, whose papers are accepted for inclusion in the program, will be invited to submit their position or technical papers to ADS'11. Accepted and registered papers will be published in the conference proceedings by the SCS. The committee will select a set of best papers. Authors of these papers will be encouraged to submit appropriately expanded versions of these papers for journal publication.
Key Dates
Manuscript submission October 31, 2010
Notification of acceptance December 30, 2010
Full Camera-ready papers January 20, 2011

General Co-chairs:
Dr. Levent Yilmaz
Department of Computer Science
and Software Engineering
College of Engineering
Auburn University
Auburn, AL 36849 USA
Dr. Tuncer Ören
SITE - School of Information
Technology and Engineering
University of Ottawa
800 King Edward
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1N 6N5