CfP: Enabling Domain Experts to use Formalised Reasoning at AISB 2013 (Exeter, UK, 2-5 Apr 2013); Deadlines 10 Dec and 14 Jan

[Christoph LANGE]

Do-Form: Enabling Domain Experts to use Formalised Reasoning
http://cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/formare/events/aisb2013

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

Symposium at the annual convention of the
AISB (Society for the Study of
   Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour;
   http://www.aisb.org.uk)
University of Exeter
2-5 April 2013
http://emps.exeter.ac.uk/computer-science/research/aisb/

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 14 January

PRE-SUBMISSION DEADLINE (for initial problem and tool descriptions,
   non-binding): 10 December

This symposium is motivated by the long-term VISION of making information
systems dependable.  In the past even mis-represented units of
measurements caused fatal ENGINEERING disasters.  In ECONOMICS, the
subtlety of issues involved in good auction design may have led to low
revenues in auctions of public goods such as the 3G radio spectra.
Similarly, banks' value-at-risk (VaR) models – the leading method of
financial risk measurement – are too large and change too quickly to be
thoroughly vetted by hand, the current state of the art; in the London
Whale incident of 2012, JP Morgan claimed that its exposures were $67mn
under one of its VaR models, and $129 under another one.  Verifying a
model's properties requires formally specifying them; for VaR models, any
work would have to start with this most basic step, as regulators' current
desiderata are subjective and ambiguous.

We believe that these problems can be addressed by representing the
knowledge underlying such models and mechanisms in a formal, explicit,
machine-verifiable way.  Contemporary computer science offers a wide
choice of knowledge representation languages well supported by
verification tools.  Such tools have been successfully applied, e.g., for
verifying software that controls commuter rail or payment systems (cf. the
symposium homepage for further background).  Still, DOMAIN EXPERTS without
a strong computer science background find it challenging to choose the
right tools and to use them.  This symposium aims at investigating ways to
support them.  Some problems can be addressed now, others will bring new
challenges to computer science.

TOPICS of interest include:

   * for DOMAIN EXPERTS: what problems in application domains could benefit
     from better verification and knowledge management facilities?
     Possible fields include:

     * Example 1 (economics):
       auctions, VaR, trading algorithms, market design

     * Example 2 (engineering):
       system interoperability, manufacturing processes, product 
classification

   * for COMPUTER SCIENTISTS: how to provide the right knowledge management
     and verification tools to domain experts without a computer science
     background?

     * wikis and blogs for informal, semantic, semiformal, and formal
       mathematical knowledge;
     * general techniques and tools for online collaborative mathematics;
     * tools for collaboratively producing, presenting, publishing, and
       interacting with online mathematics;
     * automation and computer-human interaction aspects of mathematical
       wikis;
     * ontologies and knowledge bases designed to support knowledge
       management and verification in application domains;
     * practical experiences, usability aspects, feasibility studies;
     * evaluation of existing tools and experiments;
     * requirements, user scenarios and goals.

THE SYMPOSIUM is designed to bring domain experts and formalisers into
close and fruitful contact with each other: domain experts will be able to
present their fields and problems to formalisers; formalisers will be
exposed to new and challenging problem areas. We will combine talks and
hands-on sessions to ensure close interaction among participants from both
sides.  We will start with an invited talk given by an expert from
economics (to be determined), on the need for verifiable models in this
domain and beyond.

SUBMISSIONS (TWO STAGES)

We run a two-stage submission process:

Stage 1: PROBLEM & TOOL ("NAIL & HAMMER") DESCRIPTIONS
          to be reviewed and matched with each other

Stage 2: REGULAR EXTENDED ABSTRACTS
          normal conference-like peer review

Accepted submissions from both stages will be included in the symposium
proceedings (see below).

In Stage 1 (by 10 December) we solicit …

* from DOMAIN EXPERTS: descriptions of canonical models and problems in
   their domain that might benefit from better verification and knowledge
   management facilities.  Descriptions should focus on aspects of these
   models that domain users find particularly problematic, and suspect
   might be aided by formalisation tools

* from COMPUTER SCIENTISTS: descriptions of formalisation, verification
   and knowledge management tools, with an emphasis on how they could be
   applied in a concrete real-world setting, or tailored to such application
   domains.

Stage 1 submissions should have 2 to 4 pages and may be summaries of
earlier publications on relevant problems and tools, focused to a target
audience of computer scientists or domain experts, respectively.

The symposium chairs, assisted by the PC members, will review and
initially publish commented versions of the Stage 1 submissions on the
symposium homepage, to provide orientation for Stage 2.  Should matching
problems and tools be identified, we will notify the respective authors.

In Stage 2 (by 14 January) we solicit regular submissions on any of the
TOPICS outlined initially.  We prefer submissions that specifically
address topics identified in Stage 1; for a tool description paper, this
could, e.g., be done by motivating the tool with a Stage 1 problem, and
sketching how the tool could, or will, be applied in this domain.  Each
submission will be refereed by three PC members on average.  Submissions
will be judged based on the PC's views of the likelihood of contributing
to a better matching of hammers (formalisation and verification tools) to
nails (domain problems).

At this stage we accept PDF submissions in any layout but count 1200 words
as one page for fair comparison.  We invite research and position papers,
as well as tool and system descriptions, from 3 to 10 pages.  Besides PDFs
we invite the submission of formalised knowledge representations with
human-readable annotations.

To submit a paper, please go to the Do-Form EasyChair page
(http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=doform2013) and follow the
instructions there.

FINAL VERSIONS

Final versions should be prepared in LaTeX according to the AISB
formatting guidelines linked from the symposium homepage.  For the final
version, non-PDF submissions should be accompanied by a PDF abstract of 2
to 4 pages.  Electronic proceedings (with an ISBN) will be made available
to the convention delegates on a memory stick, and on the AISB website.

IMPORTANT DATES

    * Pre-Submission (Stage 1): 10 December 2012
    * Stage 1 Submissions and Comments online: 14 December 2012
    * Regular Submission (Stage 2): 14 January 2013
    * Notification: 11 February 2013
    * Final versions due: 4 March 2013
    * Symposium: 2-5 April 2013 (days to be fixed)

PROGRAMME COMMITTEE (to be populated with further domain experts)

     1. Rob Arthan, Lemma 1, Reading, UK
     2. James Davenport, University of Bath, UK
     3. Michael Grüninger, University of Toronto, Canada
     4. Manfred Kerber, University of Birmingham, UK (co-chair)
     5. Michael Kohlhase, Jacobs University Bremen, Germany
     6. Christoph Lange, University of Birmingham, UK (co-chair)
     7. Till Mossakowski, University of Bremen, Germany
     8. Colin Rowat, University of Birmingham, UK (co-chair)
     9. Makarius Wenzel, University of Paris Sud, France
    10. Wolfgang Windsteiger, RISC / JKU Linz, Austria

COMMENTS/QUESTIONS/ENQUIRIES to be sent to DoForm2013 at easychair.org

-- 
Christoph Lange, School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham
http://cs.bham.ac.uk/~langec, Skype duke4701

→ Enabling Domain Experts to use Formalised Reasoning @ AISB 2013
   2–5 April 2013, Exeter, UK.  Deadlines 10 Dec (stage 1), 14 Jan (st. 2)
   http://cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/formare/events/aisb2013/