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2nd CALL FOR PAPERS
                     
Second International Workshop on « Agent Technology for Disaster Management » (ATDM’09)
December 13rd 2009, Nagoya, Japan
Web site : http://doesnotunderstand.org/wikka.php?wakka=ATDM2009

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This workshop will take place in December 2009 in Nagoya (名古屋市), during the 12th International Conference on Principles of Practice in Multi-Agent Systems (PRIMA'09). A first workshop on the same topic already took place in May 2006 in Hakodate, Japan during the Fifth International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems.

Description

In the context of large natural disasters like the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004 or Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005∞ but also man-made disasters like terrorist attacks, the topic of disaster management has become a key concern both from a social and political point of view. It is critical to provide rescue personnel with information technology tools that enable more effective and efficient mitigation during crisis response. A number of distinct actors and agencies (local and international rescue teams, NGOs, etc.), each with their own aims, objectives, and resources, should be able to coordinate their efforts in a flexible manner in order to prevent further problems or to effectively manage the aftermath of a disaster.

This workshop will focus on the use of agent technology for disaster management and response and includes the following non-exhaustive list of special interest topics:
- Dedicated frameworks and architectures for agent-based spatial decision support systems (SDSS) for natural and man-made disasters,
- Coordination, communication and collaborative planning in large-scale multi-agent systems that deals with uncertainty and conflicting information during crisis management,
- Coordination and deployment of multi-robots system or wireless sensors network on site,
- Human-Agent or Human-Robot interactions (HRI) during search & rescue operations,
- Security issues in agent-based systems for search and rescue missions, use of games,
- Agent-based simulation systems, participatory simulations,
- Behavioural modelling and simulation of rescue workers,
- Development methods for agent based systems in emergency management.

Multi-Agent Systems are being increasingly applied to real-life applications that deals with uncertain, complex and dynamic environments. Future disaster response systems may involve a complex mixture of humans performing high level decision-making, intelligent agents coordinating the response, sensors networks providing real-time observations and robots undertaking physical tasks in large-scale environments, which are prone to uncertainty, ambiguity and incompleteness given the dynamic and evolving nature of disasters.

Although, this workshop will mainly focus on the potential of agent technology for disaster management and response, we also welcomes contributions focusing on potential problems and risks associated with the use of this technology.

Important dates
- Due date for full workshop papers submission: Sep. 30, 2009
- Final acceptance: Oct. 16, 2009
- Camera-ready paper due: Nov. 2, 2009
- Early registration deadline: Nov. 16, 2009
- Registration deadline: Dec. 1, 2009
- Workshop date: Dec. 13, 2009 (full-day workshop)

Submission guidelines

Springer has committed to publish the post-proceedings of all the PRIMA 2009 workshops in the "Studies in Computational Intelligence" book series. All accepted workshop papers will be published by Springer.

All submitted papers will be reviewed on the basis of technical quality, relevance, significance, and clarity. At least two reviews for each paper will be conducted. All workshop papers should be submitted electronically in PDF format through the Easychair website: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=atdm09 and should use the Springer SCI format. You can find the format requirements on Springer SCI website : http://www.springer.com/series/7092 The final accepted papers are limited to 16 pages. If you prepair your paper with the LaTeX format, please use the authors template provide by Springer.

Please create your account on Easychair website as soon as possible if you intend to submit a paper.

Organizers
- Serge Stinckwich, (UMI UMMISCO IRD/UPMC/MSI-IFI, Vietnam)
- Sarvapali D. Ramchurn (University of Southampton, UK)

Program committee
- Narjes Bellamine-Bensaoud (RIADI-GDL lab., Tunisia)
- Noury Bouraqadi (École des Mines de Douai, France)
- Alexis Drogoul (UMI UMMISCO IRD/UPMC/MSI-IFI, Vietnam)
- Julie Dugdale (MAGMA-LIG, France)
- Alessandro Farinelli (University of Verona, Italy)
- Frank Fiedrich (Institute for Crisis, Disaster and Risk Management, Georges Washington University, USA)
- Alexander Kleiner (University of Freiburg, Germany)
- Maurizio Marchese (University of Trento, Italy)
- Stephen Potter (University of Edinburgh, UK)
- Paul Scerri (Carnegie Mellon, USA)
- Tomoichi Takahashi (Meijo University, Japan)
- Gerhard Wickler (University of Edinburgh, UK)
- Tomohisa Yamashita (AIST, Japan)
- Khaldoun Zreik (Université de Paris 8, France)