Changes'04
International Workshop on Constraint Solving
under Change and Uncertainty
A CP2004 workshop
Toronto, Canada
September 27th, 2004
NEW: Provisional Schedule and Working Notes
Description of the workshop
Problem solving under change and uncertainty is a significant issue for many practical applications. Solutions must be obtained before the full problem is known, and often must be executed as the environment changes. Many of the application areas have been tackled by constraint based methods, but current constraint solving tools offer little support for uncertain dynamic problems. Possible enhancements could include rapid reaction to problem changes, robust solutions, prediction of future changes and contingent solutions, time guarantees or exploitation of known time limits.This workshop will continue the series of CP workshops on online solving, change and uncertainty, and in particular following on from Online-2003 held at Kinsale during CP2003. The workshop will bring together researchers interested in the general topic, to consider how existing techniques can be enhanced, and to explore combinations of the different techniques. We strongly encourage participation from researchers in related fields, including change and uncertainty management in planning and scheduling, sequential decision-making under uncertainty (MDPs), uncertainty in AI, stochastic programming, stochastic satisfiability and constraint programming (SSAT and SCSP), and resource and time-bounded reasoning.
Submissions may be full papers (up to 15 pages) or short position papers (up to 2 pages). Full paper submissions will be reviewed by the international program committee, and will be selected on the basis of their contribution to the workshop topic. Position papers should describe a problem, a solution method or a proposed approach to constraint solving under change and uncertainty; they will be reviewed by the workshop organisers (and program committee as necessary). All accepted papers will appear in the workshop notes. The aim of the workshop is to generate discussion and the flow of ideas. Therefore, a number of full papers will be selected for full presentation; all other accepted submissions, including the position papers, will be given a short slot for presentation during discussion sessions.
We invite submissions which address any of the following topics, or which deal with any other aspect of constraint solving under change or uncertainty:
- online problem solving
- fast reaction to problem changes
- reacting to problem changes by searching for similar solutions
- preparing to react by storing solutions or justifications
- predicting changes to constraints, variables, assignments or objectives
- finding robust, flexible or contingent solutions
- anytime solving
- resource and time-bounded solving
- refining solutions as problem structure is revealed
- multi-level modelling and solving
- multi-step or sequential solving
- interactive or distributed problem solving
- comparison of techniques
- solving with controllable and uncontrollable variables
- solving with stochastic variables
- practical applications of constraint solving under change and uncertainty
Invited Talk
The workshop will feature an invited talk by Pascal van Hentenryck.Submission guidelines
Final papers for the workshop notes will be limited to either 15 or 2 pages in the Springer Verlag LNCS style (font size 10). We recommend submissions should be in the proper format to save time. Please email all submissions as either postscript, MS Word 6.0 or pdf to Ken Brown (k.brown@cs.ucc.ie) by the submission deadline. Each submission should have a title page with the name, address, and email address for each author. One of the authors should be identified as the contact author.Attendance Details
At least one author of each accepted submission must attend the workshop. All workshop attendees must pay the CP workshop registration fee in addition to the CP registration fee.Important Dates
Email submission: Friday 9th July Notification: Tuesday 3rd August Submission of position papers: Monday 16th August Final versions: Monday 16th August Workshop: Monday 27th SeptemberWorkshop Organisers
Chris Beck, 4C, Ireland, c.beck @ 4c.ucc.ieKen Brown, 4C, Ireland, k.brown @ cs.ucc.ie Primary contact
Gérard Verfaillie, CNRS-LAAS, France, gverfail @ laas.fr
Program Committee
Roman Bartak, Charles University, Czech RepublicAmedeo Cesta, ISTC-CNR, Italy
Markus Fromherz, Parc, USA
Simon de Givry, INRA, France
Bill Havens, Simon Fraser University, Canada
Narendra Jussien, Ecole de Mines de Nantes, France
Ian Miguel, University of York, UK
Jon Spragg, Vidus Limited, UK
Thierry Vidal, ENIT, France
Toby Walsh, 4C, Ireland