Special Session

Today’s complex business arena brings several new challenges for industry and academia. In the area of engineering systems, a fundamental challenge is the design and development of highly performant, sustainable, robust and decentralized computing systems that are capable to adapt to a continuously changing environment and operate under noisy input, but yet having a desired set of parameters (e.g., concerning behavior, response time, processing power).
This special session deals with the application of bio-inspired methods, techniques and algorithms in engineering systems.
Biological systems are able to handle most of today’s business challenges still far beyond human artifacts. Methods, algorithms and computational intelligence techniques involving the study of collective behavior in decentralized systems have been developed in order to enhance engineering systems with a similar high stability and performance.
Bio-inspired computation methods, algorithms and techniques have widely been applied to complex engineering problems. As bio-inspired systems are being developed, their applicability (e.g., for optimization and self-adaptiveness of engineering systems) is currently being emphasized.
The objective of this Special Session is to provide an outlet to report on research aspects and applications of bio-inspired methods and techniques to engineering fields, from traditional applications (e.g., concerning manufacturing and control) to novel areas of swarms, and evolvable hardware and agents.
This session seeks papers discussing state-of-the-art research on bio-inspired methods, techniques and algorithms, on-going R&D projects, or recent advances in developing bio-inspired techniques and their applications to engineering problems. We encourage submission of unpublished papers describing new concepts, strategies, systems or tools providing practical implementations. In addition, we are interested in application papers discussing the power and applicability of these methods and techniques to real-world problems, and their relevance for sustainable development.
Submissions of original works are invited, including research, theory, development, and applications of bio-inspired methods, techniques and algorithms.
TOPICS include but are not limited to:
 - Swarm intelligence (e.g., ant colony optimization, particle swarm optimization, decision making based on swarm intelligence principles, theory and application of swarm intelligence to real world problems including: control systems, bio-informatics, supply chain management, planning and operations in industrial systems, transportation systems, and other areas);
 - Optimization techniques in dynamic, multi-objective, constrained environment;
 - Modeling and analysis of biological collective systems;
 - Cooperative co-evolution;
 - Self-assembly in bio-inspired manufacturing systems.
This includes any general engineering applications of bio-inspired methods and techniques, such as:
 - Evolvable hardware
 - Evolvable agents
 - Control and manufacturing applications
 - Signal processing
 - Medical applications
 - Communication systems
 - Computer networks.

Service sector is the largest sector of economy in most industrialized nations. The term service includes two players, the provider and the client, both benefiting from the association. Service requires deployment of knowledge, and skills for the service provider to sustain in the business environment among competitors. Service Engineering may be better visualized as an entire system that involves humans, organizations, technologies to create a complex platform for operation which may be better termed as service engineering system. This system does not behave in a linear manner and often, it is difficult to predict the behavior of any of its components. Knowledge is the key factor to integrate such a system taking inputs from the disciplines of computer science, economics, operation research, organizational behavior, human resources management, social sciences, mathematics etc. In order to sustain the client-provider cycle in business so that the service provider as well as the client gain from the association, knowledge about the system, the services, client, organization, individuals participation in the system is essential. It is a strategic factor to maintain sustainability in services engineering.
Knowledge is the result of learning which provides the only sustainable competitive advantage and is considered to be the most strategic organizational resource while is the most neglected asset. Knowledge Management (KM) may be defined as “a range of practices and techniques used by organizations to identify, represent and distribute knowledge, know-how, expertise, intellectual capital and other forms of knowledge for leverage, reuse and transfer of knowledge and learning across the organization”. It is known that knowledge and performance are interlinked, greater the knowledge, better is the performance. KM is one of the engines that drive continuous performance improvement for organizations. Having identified the importance of knowledge and its management, different organizations are emphasizing on need of applying KM as a smart tool for performance enhancement. The track emphasizes the need of KM and its applications for organizations providing services (including e-services and e-government services) for sustained performance and efficiency. Special KM applications like Case Based reasoning assist organizations in decision taking which provides considerable sustainable advantage to the service organizations. This is the upcoming current area of research that has immense ability to provide competitive edge to organizations applying KM over those who are yet to apply and help the service providers to maintain sustained competitive advantage. The session emphasizes the growing need of KM and its applications in present scenario for sustainable development in the service engineering sector.

The increasing of adoption of methods from computational intelligence, biologically inspired computing, and optimization in engineering discipline such as mechatronics or production enables the development of a new class of autonomous systems. These systems often posses abilities which are best describe by the phrase self‐x: self‐optimization, self‐coordination, self‐healing, self‐repair and many more.
These properties have in common that they shift decision making from humans to the technical systems. This shift has two possible benefits. First, decision made during the design of the system can be delayed until operation and thus the system is able to react more flexible to different application requirements. Second, the human effort in managing such system can be reduced and the corresponding systems are cost‐efficient.
This special session is dedicated to this new type of systems in the area of mechatronic systems and production systems. The topic of systems with self‐x properties shall be discussed under three major headlines: application of self‐x and autonomous control, methods and algorithms for self‐x and autonomous control, and design methodologies for systems with self‐x properties. The list of topics will include intelligent and reconfigurable production systems, adaptive control, applications of planning and learning, multi‐objective optimization, decision making under uncertainty, formal verification and design pattern for self‐x systems.

Recently, energy problems, especially reducing global environmental loads, are global high-priority issue. Interdisciplinary alliances are required to solve these problems, and among them, information technology and its applications show a big potential in energy problems. Ranging from on-line energy trading to network based data acquisition control for smart- and micro-grids, information technology is penetrating all aspects of these prediction, design, operation and validation of concerning systems.
This special session gathers experts in the areas of energy systems and information technology to discuss the newest trends and exchange valuable experience and knowledge in information technology and its application for providing a groundbreaking initiative for the power engineering, communications and information technology.
We organize the special session including the following topics, but are not restricted to:
  Interoperability of Energy Technology and Information Technology
  Demand response system
  Distributed energy resources
  Micro grids
  Smart grids
  Energy controlling system
  Information Technology used in power grid and power markets
  Internetworking and interoperability
  Wide area automation technology
  New energy services
  Power markets and energy business
  Integration of distributed generation
  Renewable energy resources
  Energy distribution automation
  Resource optimization
  Protection and Power Quality
  Simulation and evaluation of energy systems
  Electric power system
  End-use applications and loads of energy

Due to the knowledge-based Medical Informatics applications and Medical Decision Support Systems have advanced at a tremendous rate and seems to be
accelerating, as computers become faster and more powerful. The objective of this invited session is to explore recent research progress in the medical/health/healthcare informatics areas of artificial intelligence and software engineering. Papers describing original work concerning the algorithm, tool design, implementation, and real-world application are welcome.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
  Medical decision support systems
  Healthcare intelligent user interfaces
  Medical web services and agents
  Medical knowledge-based methods/tools for software engineering
  Automatic healthcare software designs
  Automatic health data collection
  Automatic medical/health/healthcare machine learning
  Automatic medical process/project management
  Healthcare information systems based on Service-oriented Architecture(SOA)
  Bio-informatics applications
  Wireless applications in healthcare informatics
  Medical image applications.

Manufacturing scheduling has been investigating for many years. Some of the existing scheduling techniques have been applied to actual manufacturing systems. However, these scheduling techniques face problems in new manufacturing paradigms, such as collaboration, agility, sustainability, uncertainty, and changeability.
Recent high performance of computing enables us to solve complex scheduling problems easily and rapidly. It creates new possibilities for traditional scheduling methods as well as novel scheduling methods. This special session brings together experts in the area of manufacturing scheduling to discuss the latest trends and define future trends in manufacturing scheduling.
Topics of interest include, but are not restricted to:
 - Optimization theory and technique: Integer programming approach, Lagrangian relaxation method, Modern heuristics, Evolutional optimization, Game theory
 - Scheduling under uncertainty: Pro-active scheduling, Reactive scheduling, Real-time scheduling, Rolling scheduling
 - New concepts and structures: Cost-based scheduling, Agent-based scheduling, Auction-based scheduling, Planning and scheduling in supply chains, Sustainability
 - Industrial applications: Practical scheduling techniques in industrial cases, Simulation of manufacturing systems and supply chains

Software engineering has made tremendous progress in the last years. A major goal was to reduce the error rate of software while being able to faster generate results. Techniques developed are among others: com-ponent orientation, test-driven development, model-driven approaches, refactoring code analysis, mea-surements of test coverage, continuous integration, or product line engineering.
In industrial automation, software gets more and more important in order to provide an effective and effi-cient operation of automation and control systems. However software engineering methods applied in this domain lag behind the mainstream software engineering methods. By applying the new techniques to in-dustrial automation software development, a significant gain can be achieved. But in order to successfully apply the new techniques adaptations for the industrial automation and control systems domain have to be done.
The following topics should be presented in this special session
 - Software engineering methods for automation and control systems
 - Model-driven design of automation and control systems
 - Component-based design of automation and control systems
 - Test-driven software quality assurance of automation and control systems
 - Formal verification
 - Product line engineering
 - Automation objects / components

Service industry, which has come to occupy about 70 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), plays important role to create values for people and society. However, methodologies to design, provide and diffuse services have not been established compared to product design methodologies in manufacturing industry. Service Engineering aims to build new methodologies to create innovative services of value by adopting scientific and/or engineering point of views.
This workshop focuses on Service Engineering related topics but not limited to: service design methods, ICT based service providing methods, analysis of consumer preference and service diffusion, and industrial applications. Objective of the workshop is to provide an international forum of researchers to discuss the visions, state-of-the-art and future trends in the field of Service Engineering.

High level of integration, low power consumption, low-cost, flexibility, and the ability to implement complex computational intelligence-based algorithms are clear advantages of embedded systems with regard to traditional controllers in a wide range of applications. In the last years, reconfigurable platforms have become also an advantageous design alternative, as the resources available in current reconfigurable devices allow an efficient partition of tasks in integrated hardware and software components, as well as the implementation of suitable communication infrastructures in distributed configurable systems. The Special Session seeks papers describing original research or application aspects of Embedded Systems and Reconfigurable SoCs in the areas of interest of INDIN including, but not limited to, the following topics:
 - Model-based development
 - HW / SW co-design and co-simulation
 - High-level design
 - Formal methods
 - Fault tolerance applications
 - Industrial experiences
 - Case studies

Mobile/Wireless communication network is not only an access network to the Internet but also an industrial infrastructure in a future information society. It requires high quality, security, flexibility and robustness. This special session focuses on the methodologies to realize such a network based on tremendous number and various types of nodes, heterogeneous wireless links, self-organized topology, dynamic reconstruction and so on.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
 - Sensor Network
 - Ad-hoc Network
 - Mesh Network
 - Ubiquitous/Ambient Network
 - Heterogeneous Wireless Access Network
 - Secure Wireless Communication
 - Mobility Management
 - Radio Resource Management, Spectrum Sharing
 - Routing for Wireless Multi-hop Network

Recently, a variety of communication forms based on application-level networking are generated. These networks include content distribution network (CDN) platform like IP broadcast network, file sharing platform based on so-called Peer to Peer (P2P) technologies, and the other overlay network applications. They require more feasible, reliable, secure, and efficient properties for industrial use. This special session focuses on the architecture, elemental technology, and applications as for the state of the art CDN, P2P, and the other application-level overlay networking system that enables to be an infrastructure technology for future industrial networking usage.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
 - Application level contents distribution
 - Managed content delivery network
 - P2P protocols
 - P2P applications
 - P2P Information retrieval
 - Self-organization in P2P systems
 - P2P multimedia streaming
 - Delay Tolerant P2P systems
 - Overlay networking
 - IP broadcast network

The aim of this session is to present new approaches and methods for the design of automation systems software which follow the latest trends from the software engineering domain. Software becomes the most complex, expensive, error-prone and inflexible part of industrial systems and trends are observed at all layers of enterprise IT, from the factory floor, up to the business logic and management support.
Advanced software engineering solutions have a great impact on the efficiency of automation systems design. In particular, the session will be focusing on (but not limited to) the following topics:
 - New programming languages and tools
 - Visual programming
 - Artificial intelligence methods in languages
 - Model-based engineering
 - Equivalent code transformations, Refactoring
 - Extreme programming
 - Quality assurance methods: testing, simulation, formal verification
 - Automatic code synthesis
 - Execution semantics of automation software
 - Latest developments of standards (IEC 61131-3, IEC 61499)