CALL FOR PAPERS
MDPI Computers Journal (ISSN 2073-431X): Special Issue on Large-Scale Intelligent Environments (LSIE)

http://www.mdpi.com/journal/computers/special_issues/large_scale

Important Dates
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Submissions can be made at any time up until 15th October 2012 – papers will be published continuously (as soon as accepted).

Editors
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Dr. Mohammad Al-Mulla, Kuwait University, Kuwait (mrhalm@sci.kuniv.edu.kw)
Dr. James Dooley, University of Essex, UK (jpdool@essex.ac.uk)

Introduction
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As technology permeates into every aspect of our lives and becomes embedded in the environments that we encounter on a daily basis, the dreams for a world of ubiquitous computing are being realised. Augmented by the deployment of artificial intelligence, the technology rich spaces that surround us are given an ambient intelligence where software samples the real world, reasons with available information and pro-actively takes action. Much work has been done in this area as reflected by the literature, but as we delve further, the scale of the environments we envision increases. This special issue is intended to focus specifically on the challenges related to scaling-up intelligent environments research “beyond four walls”.
Within the context of this special issue, we consider an Intelligent Environment (IE) to be a ubiquitous computing deployment, preferably (but not necessarily) with some form of ambient intelligence. And so, a “large-scale” IE (LSIE) goes beyond the size of “normal” experimental labs and can be defined as adhering to one or more of the following characteristics:
- Monolithic: Large ubiquitous computing environments that exist as a whole and typically contain several physical sub-spaces (e.g. multi-room apartment, entire building, campus, town, city, etc.).

- Composite: Environments composed of multiple geographically or organisationally separated IEs that are electronically joined to form a larger compound. For example, a building that is not a monolithic IE, but composed of several independent IEs, or a “virtual University” that is composed of several classrooms from different countries and electronically linked to transcend their physical separation.

- Virtual-reality: Software simulations that are entirely virtual and model an IE on the scale of at least a multi-room/multi-floor building.

- Mixed-reality: Physical Environments that are extended/reflected by some component of virtual reality to enlarge their scale.

We are interested in articles that present new and novel approaches to the core problem area and are especially interested in real-world deployments (i.e. “living-labs”), experimental results and technology or software that facilitates the transition of users and their digital assets / profiles as they roam between IEs.

Topics
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We are keen to encourage the submission of research articles, review articles as well as communications from a wide variety of backgrounds and perspectives that relate to Large Scale Intelligent Environments in both research and industry. The following list gives an overview of some example topics :
- Infrastructure & Middleware
- Formal methods & Modeling
- Simulation and Virtualisation
- Agent-based approaches to Ambient Intelligence
- Applications
- Proof-of-concept and demonstration deployments
- Asset / Resource management and access control
- Responsive / Active architecture
- Mixed reality
- Context awareness
- Activity recognition
- Profile management / handling for single & multi users
- Conflict resolution among differing user preferences
- Intelligent interactive systems
- Multi-modal interfaces
- Mobile / Portable applications
- User evaluation and social studies.

Submissions
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Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. Papers will be published continuously (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are refereed through a peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page (http://www.mdpi.com/journal/computers/instructions). Computers is an international peer-reviewed Open Access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

The Article Processing Charge (APC) will be waived for well-prepared manuscripts. English correction and/or formatting fees of 250 CHF (Swiss Francs) will be charged in certain cases for those articles accepted for publication that require extensive additional formatting and / or English corrections.