BESAI 2006 - 5th ECAI Workshop on Binding Environmental Sciences and Artificial Intelligence (W20) Tuesday August 29, 2006   Riva del Garda, Italy (http://www.lsi.upc.edu/~webia/besai/besai2006.html) A workshop held in conjunction with the 17th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2006) August 28th-September 1st, 2006. Riva del Garda, Italy

Kindly  supported  by:

BESAI

ACIA

Related events:

iEMSs 2006

Workshop Information

• What the workshop is about
• Content and Format of the Workshop
• Instructions for Participants
• Instructions for Submissions
  
• Important Dates
• Workshop Programme
  
• Workshop Notes
• Workshop Committee
• Address for Submissions and Further Information
• Related Past Workshops and Events
  

What the workshop is about

This workshop aspires to be an open forum for exposing and discussing the advances of international funded projects in the area, and bring together an interdisciplinary community of researchers with common interests in Artificial Intelligence and Environmental Sciences. This time will be the fifth edition of BESAI workshop under the ECAI conference, after the successful previous workshops (1^st BESAI’98 at Brighton, 2^nd BESAI’2000 at Berlin, 3^rd BESAI'2002 at Lyon, and 4^th BESAI'2004 at València). We hope its high level of participation and success will continue in Riva del Garda.

Environmental Studies and Artificial Intelligence are both of strategic interest. Both areas can provide society with solutions for many real applications, in order to use and protect the environment. Human activities imply intervention into nature, but properly managed, these interventions can be not only ecologically sound but also favourable to the continued growth of civilisation. The encounter between these fields is a new challenge for many researchers of both communities. Also, governmental agencies may be interested in BESAI'2006 workshop.

The present general lack of knowledge on several aspects which affect the environment, from its past history to its present state, on how to preserve it and how to protect it, has encouraged research on environmental issues and an important effort is being dedicated to understand how to better manage the ecosystems and prevent environmental degradation. It is recognised the critical importance of environment and resource issues and their relationships with artificial intelligence (AI) research. The workshop's central focus is the linkage between patterns of AI activity and the environment with a major emphasis on translating the scientific basis for environmental concern into techniques and strategies that address both the needs of human societies and the requirements of natural systems.

The BESAI workshop intends to create a discussion platform for artificial-intelligence (AI) and environmental-science researchers involved in the development of Intelligent Environmental Decision-Support Systems (IEDSS). These applications are special kinds of knowledge-based systems dedicated to solve real-world environmental problems, intervening in the environmental-management process at different levels such as:

• State diagnosis
• Problem identification
• Problem classification
• Risk assessment
• Explanation
• Argumentation support
  
• Intervention decision-making
• Solution design
  

The technical issues that we expect to address in this workshop may come from all environmental-science fields, showing how AI approaches can be useful to the environmental design and management systems. We expect that the following items will be discussed in papers and/or posters at the workshop:

• The link between AI research development and environmental degradation
• AI Efforts applied to Environment Management, Resource Policy Development and Environmental Impact Reduction
• The Role of AI in responding to Environmental Challenges and preventing Environmental Problems
• Development of Intelligent Environmental Decision Support Systems (IEDSSs)
• Spatial and Temporal Reasoning in Environmental Domains
  
• Environmental User as an Important Actor
• Environmental Risk Management
• Integration and Distribution of AI Techniques applied to Environmental Issues
• Environmental Modelling and Forecasting
• Environmental System Evaluation in the Context of Use versus Trust
• Soft Computing Techniques; are they Opaque?
• Environmental Knowledge Acquisition and Management
• Multi-Agent Systems for Environmental Systems
• Uncertainty in Environmental Domains
• Ontologies of Environmental Domains
• Real-time in Environment Management
• Environmental Emergencies Management
• Validation of IEDSSs
• Benchmarking for comparing IEDSSs

New and improved techniques or methods, as well as innovative applications, are welcome. Presentations of the current state of ongoing research projects and contributions emphasizing integration of various technologies or paradigms are specially welcome.

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Content and Format of the Workshop

Content

• We are working to have an invited talk providing an overview of the areas of applications and AI techniques that are and/or might be applied in Environmental Sciences. Some contacts have been made.

• A poster exhibition with the results of the work done under international funded projects, such as EU FP6 framework both in IST and in Environmental domains applying AI in Environmental Sciences.

• Papers presentation - The topics could include: machine learning, uncertainty management, knowledge representation, expert systems, knowledge-based systems, artificial neural networks, genetic algorithms, intelligent agents, multi-agent systems, data mining, case-based reasoning, fuzzy reasoning, etc.

• iEMSs’2006 (Burlington, Vermont, USA) event will occur few weeks in advance to the workshop. Several members of the BESAI committee will attend such an event. They will summarize in a report the relevant news to the workshop attendees.

• A focused discussion with several representatives of environmental European Union projects funded in the last years will be arranged. For example, some interesting projects would be:
  
  • INTAS New methods of information treatment for management of water quality in river basins
  • ECOMANAGE Integrated Ecological Coastal Zone Management System
  • I.Q.TOOLS Indicators and Quantitative Tools for Improving the Process of Sustainability Impact Assessment
  • DIMSUM Innovative Decision Making for Sustainable Water Management in Developing Countries
  • RIMSAT Remote Intelligent Management Support and Training
  • EGERIS European Generic Emergency Response Information System
  • ITEADS Intelligent tools for emergency applications & decision support
  • NaturNet-Redime New Education and Decision Support Model for Active Behaviour in Sustainable Development Based on Innovative Web Services and Qualitative Reasoning
  • A-TEAM Advanced Training System for Emergency Management

• A talk providing the role of environmental sciences and information technology in the 7th EU framework program. The idea would be to provide the feeling of the trend and the opportunities for BESAI in the next years. Some contacts with EU representatives will be made to bring them at the workshop.

• The workshop will devote ample time to discussion after each papers' session, and will end with an open discussion where conclusions will be drawn including the identification of new research areas and groups of work, initiation of new research projects proposals for international funded projects (such as the EU FP7).

Format

The workshop will be organised as a one-day event in a horizontal fashion using the AI techniques as the horizontal axis, and the discussion will be promoted to get benefits from a vertical axis that will be the different Environmental fields.
Special emphasis will be devoted towards the application issues and the exchange of experiences. An invited talk is being considered to be included. Normal research or/and applied papers will be considered, and also, a poster exhibition from outstanding research projects of participants will be organised.
Presentations will be grouped into sections to foster focused discussions. The workshop schedule will provide time for specific discussions directly after each presentation as well as for extended more general exchange of ideas between sessions, and will end with an open discussion where conclusions will be drawn including the identification of new research areas and groups of work, initiation of new research projects proposals for international funded projects (such as the EU FP6), and so on. Some of the attendees will be asked to serve as session commentators who summarise and critically reflect on the presentations of a session.
We think that in the presentations could be very interesting for the workshop purposes to prepare an introductory slide answering to these seven questions:

1. What is the environmental problem you are trying to solve?
2. What AI methods are you applying to solve the problem and how are you applying them?
3. How well are the methods working?
4. How you manage uncertainty ?
5. Spatial and/or Temporal reasoning is necessary/useful within your Environmnetal System? Do you use or design an interesting approache to solve Spatial/Temporal Reasoning challemges?
   
6. How are you evaluating /validating the work done? Some benchmark is available ?
   
7. Do you have some available environmental database for the new BESAI database repository?
   

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Instructions for Participants

All participants in BESAI 2006 workshop have to register both for the main ECAI 2006 conference and the workshop itself. Workshop attendance will be limited to registered participants.

Authors planning to submit a contribution to BESAI 2006 should contact as soon as possible to the Workshop Committee Contact people by e-mail.

Papers and/or posters emphasising integration of various technologies or paradigms adressing the above issues are specially welcome including machine learning, data mining, knowledge-based systems, case-based reasoning, soft computing, spatial and temporal reasoning, planning, decision processes, intelligent decision support systems, multi-agent systems, etc.

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Instructions for Submissions

Authors planning to submit a contribution must contact as soon as possible to the Workshop Committee Contact people by e-mail indicating the type of contribution: a paper or a poster or both. A provisional title and brief abstract should be provided, including a brief description of ongoing research lines, research projects or applications of the authors' research group, if available, within the scope of the aims of the workshop.

• The length of each paper including figures should be limited to 10 pages. The manuscript must start with an abstract of no more than 150 words and should include a list of no more than five keywords. The format style required for submission of papers and for the final camera-ready paper version for BESAI 2006 is the same as for the main ECAI'2006 and PAIS'2006 conference (text font size of 9 points, two columns, etc.). The format style guide is described in the ECAI'2006 web site style page.

• Posters' size should be DIN A1 format (80.44 * 57.64 cm).

Each paper will be reviewed by at least 2 reviewers. The reviewers can be selected among the contributors. Each poster will be checked by at least 1 member of the Workshop Committee. Following the recommendations of the reviewers, authors of accepted papers / posters will have to submit a camera-ready paper or revised poster and to prepare a presentation or exhibition. Presentations will be grouped into sections to foster focused discussions. Software demonstrations of applications are strongly encouraged when available.
Notification of provisional paper / poster acceptance will be sent prior to May 15, 2004. The Workshop Organising Committee must receive final camera-ready papers, revised according to the suggestions of the reviewers no later than May 24, 2004. In addition to the camera-ready paper for the Workshop Notes, that will be distributed at the workshop, authors have to prepare an electronic version of their paper and make it available prior to the workshop.
Approved posters revised according to the revision comments should be also electronically delivered by May 24, 2004 to appear in a full or abstracted form in the final Workshop Notes. In addition, physical posters should be brought and exhibited in the workshop site at Riva del Garda.

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Important Dates

• April 21, 2006 - Deadline for submission of papers and posters
  
• May 24, 2006 - Notification of acceptance/rejection of papers and posters
• May 28, 2006 - Early registration deadline to ECAI'2006
  
• May 31, 2006 - Final revised camera-ready copies of papers and posters
  
• August 29th, 2006 - Workshop

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Workshop Notes

In addition to the workshop notes it is planned to publish some selected material based or derived from the workshop on other formats (book, special issue of a journal). Selected authors will have the opportunity to revise and extend their contributions. Previous BESAI workshops had selected papers published as a special issue in the Environmental Modelling & Software (Elsevier) and AI Communications (IOS Press) journals.

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Workshop Committee

Workshop Organising & Programme Committee Contact people

• Mihaela Oprea, Department of Informatics, University Petroleum-Gas from Ploiesti, Romania (mihaela@upg-ploiesti.ro)
• Miquel Sànchez-Marrè, Knowledge Engineering & Machine Learning Group, Technical University of Catalonia, Catalonia (miquel@lsi.upc.edu)
• Franz Wotawa, Institute for Software Technology, Graz University of Technology, Austria (wotawa@ist.TUgraz.at)

Workshop Organising & Programme Committee

• Paolo Avesani, IRST, Istituto Trentino di Cultura (ITC), Trento, Italy (avesani@itc.it)
  
• René Bañares-Alcántara, Dept. of Engineering Science, Oxford University, England, UK (rene.banares@eng.ox.ac.uk)
• Bert Bredeweg, Human Computer Studies Laboratory, University of Amsterdam (UvA), The Netherlands (bredeweg@science.uva.nl)
  
• Luigi Ceccaroni, Knowledge Engineering & Machine Learning Group. Technical University of Catalonia, Catalonia, Spain ()
  
• Joaquim Comas, Laboratory of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, University of Girona, Catalonia, Spain (quim@lequia.udg.es)
• Ulises Cortés, Knowledge Engineering & Machine Learning Group, Technical University of Catalonia, Catalonia, Spain (ia@lsi.upc.edu)
• Karina Gibert, Statistics and Operations Research Department, Technical University of Catalonia, Catalonia, Spain (karina.gibert@upc.edu)
  
• Eugénio Oliveira, University of Porto, Faculdade de Engenharia, Portugal (eco@fe.up.pt)
• Mihaela Oprea, Department of Informatics, University Petroleum-Gas from Ploiesti, Romania (mihaela@upg-ploiesti.ro)
• Ignasi Rodríguez-Roda, Laboratory of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, University of Girona, Catalonia, Spain (ignasi@lequia.udg.es)
• Miquel Sànchez-Marrè, Knowledge Engineering & Machine Learning Group, Technical University of Catalonia, Catalonia, Spain (miquel@lsi.upc.edu)
• Jean Philippe Steyer, Laboratory of Environmental Biotechnology (LBE), INRA Narbonne, France (steyer@ensam.inra.fr)
• Peter Struss, Dept. of Computer Science, Technical University of Munich, Germany (struss@in.tum.de)
• Franz Wotawa, Institute for Software Technology, Graz University of Technology, Austria (wotawa@ist.TUgraz.at)

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Address for Submissions and Further Information

Both intentions of submission and papers or posters must be submitted electronically to Mihaela Oprea at the following electronic address:

Mihaela Oprea
Department of Informatics
University Petroleum-Gas from Ploiesti
e-mail: m_oprea@yahoo.com

Further information on ECAI 2006 is available at the ECAI 2006 home page.

The URL of this Workshop home page is http://www.lsi.upc.edu/~webia/besai/besai2006.html

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