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Binding Environmental Sciences and Artificial Intelligence (W23) |
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Binding Environmental Sciences and Artificial Intelligence (W23) |
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supported by: |
 BESAI |
 ACIA |
| Related events: |
 iEMSs 2004 |
 ECCBR 2004 |
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 fourth edition of BESAI workshop under the ECAI
conference (1st BESAI’98 at Brighton, 2nd
BESAI’2000 at Berlin, and 3rd BESAI'2002 at Lyon), and we
hope its high level of participation and success will continue in
València.
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'2004 workshop.
The BESAI 2004 workshop recognizes 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 workshop intends to create a discussion platform
for AI and environmental science researchers.
The increasing degradation of the environment has forced society to
consider whether human beings are changing the essential conditions to
life on earth. This sensation has encouraged research, and an enormous
amount of effort has gone trying to understand and prevent
environmental degradation.
The workshop intends to create a discussion platform for AI and
Environmental researchers involved in the development of applications
in the current and sensitive area as Environmental Decision Support
Systems are. There have been many experimental environmental
applications of AI tools and techniques, basically Expert Systems, but
nowadays the recent innovations of AI enable the construction of real
applications. EDSS are present in the environmental management process
at different levels such as:
Research activities presented within the workshop may come from all environmental science fields, showing how AI approaches can be useful to the design and management of environmental systems. Among other issues, we expect that the following items will be discussed in papers and/or posters presented within the workshop:
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.
Content
Tony has been President of the Modelling
and Simulation Society of Australia and New Zealand since 1987 and is
Foundation President of the International Environmental Modelling and
Software Society. He is on the Board of numerous academic journals and
is Editor-in-Chief of Environmental Modelling and Software, an Elsevier
journal. He has undertaken invited study leave at Stanford, Cambridge
and Lancaster Universities, as well as at the University of Western
Australia, CSIRO Land and Water and the UK Institute of Hydrology
(Centre for Ecology and Hydrology).
Tony Jakeman received his Bachelor of Science with first class honours
in Pure and Applied Mathematics from the University of NSW in 1973. He
was awarded the PhD in Applied Numerical Analysis from the ANU in 1976.
After holding a short-term postdoctoral position in Statistics at the
University of Florida, he returned to ANU in 1976 and joined the Centre
for Resource and Environmental Studies. In 1997 he helped set up the
Integrated Catchment Assessment and Management (iCAM) Centre, a
continuing joint initiative of CRES and SRES.
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 by
Prof. Tony Jakeman will 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 5
questions:
All participants in BESAI 2004 workshop have to register both for the main ECAI 2004 conference and the workshop itself. Workshop attendance will be limited to registered participants.
Authors planning to submit a contribution to BESAI 2004 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.
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.
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 26, 2004. The Workshop
Organising Committee must receive final camera-ready papers, revised
according to the suggestions of the reviewers no later than June 10,
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 June 10, 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 València.
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.
Both intentions of submission and papers or posters must be submitted electronically to Mihaela Oprea AND Miquel Sànchez-Marrè at the following electronic addresses:
Mihaela Oprea
Department of Informatics
University Petroleum-Gas from
Ploiesti
e-mail: mihaela@upg-ploiesti.ro
Miquel Sànchez-Marrè
Knowledge Engineering
&
Machine Learning Group
Artificial Intelligence
section
Technical University of Catalonia
(UPC)
e-mail: miquel@lsi.upc.es
Further information on ECAI 2004 is available at the ECAI 2004 home page.
The URL of this Workshop home page is http://www.lsi.upc.es/~webia/besai/besai2004.html
