ARCOE-09 Final Call for Participation

Apologies for Multiple Postings

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CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

ARCOE-09 at IJCAI-09

July 11-12, 2009
Pasadena, CA, USA
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The IJCAI-09 Workshop on

Automated Reasoning about Context and Ontology Evolution (ARCOE-09)
http://km.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de/ws/ARCOE-09

July 11-12, 2009
Pasadena, California, USA

held at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence
(IJCAI-09)
http://ijcai-09.org


ARCOE-09 Highlights: McGuinness' and Baader's Invited Talks; IJCAI set
workshop dates to July 11-12, 2009


-- Description of the workshop --

Methods of automated reasoning have solved a large number of problems in
Computer Science by using formal ontologies expressed in logic. Over the
years, though, each problem or class of problems has required a different
ontology, and sometimes a different version of logic. Moreover, the
processes of conceiving, controlling and maintaining an ontology and its
versions have turned out to be inherently complex. All this has motivated
much investigation in a wide range of disparate disciplines -- from
logic-based Knowledge Representation and Reasoning to Software Engineering,
from Databases to Multimedia -- about how to relate ontologies to one
another.

ARCOE-09 aims at bringing together researchers and practitioners from core
areas of Artificial Intelligence (Knowledge Representation and Reasoning,
Contexts, and Ontologies) to discuss these kinds of problems and relevant
results. Historically, there have been at least three different, yet
interdependent motivations behind this type of research: defining the
relationship between an ontology and its context, providing support to
ontology engineers, enhancing problem solving and communication for software
agents.

Ontology and Context.  Most application areas have recognised the need for
representing and reasoning about knowledge that is distributed over many
resources. Such knowledge depends on its context, i.e., on the syntactic
and/or semantic structure of such resources. Research on information
integration, distributed knowledge management, the semantic web, multi-agent
and distributed reasoning have pinned down different aspects of how
ontologies relate to and/or develop within their context.

Ontology Engineering.  Ontology engineers are not supposed to succeed right
from the beginning when (individually or collaboratively) developing an
ontology. Despite their expertise and any assistance from domain experts,
revision cycles are the rule. Research on the automation of the process of
engineering an ontology has improved efficiency and reduced the introduction
of unintended meanings by means of interactive ontology editors. Moreover,
ontology matching has studied the process of manual, off-line alignment of
two or more known ontologies.

Problem Solving and Communication for Agents.  Agents that communicate with
one another without having full access to their respective ontologies or
that are programmed to face new non-classifiable situations must change
their own ontology dynamically at run-time -- they cannot rely on human
intervention. Research on this problem has either concentrated on
non-monotonic reasoning and belief revision or on changes of signature,
i.e., of the grammar of the ontology's language, with a minimal disruption
to the original theory.

ARCOE-09 will provide a multi-disciplinary forum, where differences in
methodologies, representation languages and techniques are over-arched and
hopefully overcome. Accordingly, the workshop will be structured into four
tracks: three of them will focus on specific areas, the fourth one will
foster links and integration.

Track 1:  Context and Ontology
This track will select and present works about Context and Ontology, a
well-established research area that has mainly concentrated on the
relationship between contexts and ontologies for distributed information and
for the enhancement of software agents.

Track 2:  Common Sense and Non-Monotonic Reasoning for Ontologies
This track will select and present works about logic-based Knowledge
Representation and Reasoning, a classic area of AI, which since its origins
has produced remarkable results on logic-based methods for supporting
knowledge engineers and for enhancing software agents.

Track 3:  Automated Ontology Evolution
This track will select and present works about Automated Ontology Evolution,
an area which in recent years has been drawing the attention of Artificial
Intelligence and Knowledge Representation and Reasoning on the automation of
ontology evolution.

Track 4: Links and integration
This track will foster links and integration by means of invited talks and
(panel) discussions. Topics that are likely to be covered are: the
formalisation of software engineering concepts for ontology development; the
relationship between automated reasoning and information retrieval;
relationships between representation languages; relationships between
canonical domains; relationships between contexts and ontology evolution and
between Non-Monotonic Reasoning and ontology evolution. Prof. Deborah
McGuinness and prof. Franz Baader have recently accepted ARCOE-09's
invitation to deliver an invited talk. The titles of their contributions
will be made available after the submission deadline.

ARCOE-09 will bring the participants to position the various approaches with
respect to one another. Hopefully, though, the workshop will also start a
process of cross-pollination and set out the constitution of a truly
interdisciplinary research-community dedicated to automated reasoning about
contexts and ontology evolution.


-- Topics --

Track 1: Context and Ontology
Submissions are welcome on the role of context and ontology in areas that
include but are not limited to the following ones:

- Information Integration
- The role of context and ontology in Distributed Reasoning and Knowledge
Management
- The role of context and ontology in Semantic Web
- Multi-Agent Systems
- Data Grid and Grid Computing
- Pervasive Computing and Ambient Intelligence
- Peer-to-peer Information Systems
- Comparison of uses of contexts and ontologies

Track 2: Common Sense and Non-Monotonic Reasoning
Submissions are welcome on the role of common sense and non-monotonic
reasoning for ontologies in areas that include but are not limited to the
following ones:

- Ontology Debugging, Update and Merging
- Inconsistency Handling, Belief Revision and Theory Change for DL
ontologies
- Uncertainty Handling, Defeasible Reasoning and Argumentation in ontologies

- Heuristic and Approximate Reasoning
- Planning and Reasoning about Action and Change on the Semantic Web
- Rules and Ontologies
- Temporal and Spatial Reasoning

Track 3: Automated Ontology Evolution
Submissions are welcome on the role of automated ontology evolution in areas
that include but are not limited to the following ones:

- Ontology fault diagnosis and repair
- Problem Solving
- Agent Communication
- Persistent Agents in Changing Environment
- Multimedia on the Web
- IT and Automated Reasoning


-- Attendance --

Following IJCAI-09 policy, the total number of participants in ARCOE-09 will
be limited to 75 people. This includes organisers, PC members, invited
speakers, authors and attendees. Authors will be selected on significance of
their submission and will be preferred to simple attendees. Attendees will
be selected on a first-come-first-served basis. Please check
http://ijcai-09.org for registration procedure and fees.


-- Submission Requirements and Dates --

ARCOE-09 will accept submissions of long abstracts, for both long
presentations and poster presentations. The distinction during the
selection-phase will be based on the significance and the quality of
submissions as well as oriented towards fostering cross-pollination and
discussions during the event. All selected abstracts will be included in the
IJCAI-09 Working Notes. Authors are kindly requested to provide keywords
upon submission. The format for submissions is the same as that of IJCAI-09.
Please check http://www.ijcai-09.org/fcfp.html for the style files.
Submissions should be no longer than 3 pages.

- Submission deadline: March 6, 2009
- Notification to authors: April 17, 2009
- Camera-ready version: May 8, 2009
- Workshop dates: July 11-12, 2009


-- Submit to --

Please submit to http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=arcoe09


-- Workshop Co-Chairs --

- Alan Bundy
School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, Informatics Forum, 10
Crichton Street, Edinburgh EH8 9AB, UK. Tel: +44-131-650-2716, Fax No.:
+44-131-650-6899.

- Jos Lehmann
School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, Informatics Forum, 10
Crichton Street, Edinburgh EH8 9AB, UK. Tel: +44-131-650-2725, Fax No.:
+44-131-650-6899.

- Guilin Qi
Institute AIFB, Universitaet Karlsruhe, D-76128 Karlsruhe, Germany. Tel:
+49-721-608-6038.

- Ivan Jose Varzinczak
Meraka Institute, Meiring Naude Road, CSIR, 0001 Pretoria, South Africa.
Tel: +27-12-841-33-23.


Please send all enquiries and communications to:

arcoe-09@aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de


-- Program Committee --

- Richard Booth (Mahasarakham University, Thailand)
- Paolo Bouquet (University of Trento, Italy)
- Jerome Euzenat (INRIA Grenoble Rhone-Alpes, France)
- Chiara Ghidini (FBK Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Italy)
- Alain Leger (France Telecom R&D, France)
- Deborah McGuinness (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA)
- Thomas Meyer (Meraka Institute, South Africa)
- Maurice Pagnucco (The University of New South Wales, Australia)
- Valeria de Paiva (Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), USA)
- Luciano Serafini (FBK Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Italy)
- Pavel Shvaiko (Informatica Trentina S.P.A., Italy)
- John F. Sowa (VivoMind Intelligence, Inc., USA)
- Holger Wache (University of Applied Sciences, Northwestern Switzerland)
- Renata Wassermann (Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brasil)