************************************************************ Call for Papers/Participation ECAI-2000 Workshop on Local Search for Planning & Scheduling Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany, August 21, 2000 ************************************************************ With the increasing deployment of planning and scheduling systems, developers are often faced with requirements such as very large search spaces, real-time performance demands and dynamic environments. Complete refinement methods do not scale very good, leaving local search methods as the only practical alternative. A dynamic environment promotes an application of local search as well, because the search heuristics are not normally affected by modifications of the search space. Furthermore, local search is very appropriate for anytime requirements as the optimization goal is improved in an iterative way. Such advantages are offset by the incompleteness of most local search methods, resulting in lack of proof of inconsistency or optimality of the solutions generated. Popular local search approaches include evolutionary algorithms, simulated annealing, tabu search, min-conflicts, GSAT and Walksat. There exists a significant overlap in the issues addressed by solution techniques for planning and scheduling, such as reasoning about temporal and resource aspects. The workshop will bring together researchers from the planning and scheduling communities to explore these issues with respect to local search procedures. The workshop may also be of interest to a broader audience interested in general issues in local search. Workshop topics will include: * Neighborhoods for planning & scheduling * Search-space analysis * Techniques to avoid local minima and plateaus * Reasoning about temporal, spatial and other resources * Integration of planning & scheduling * Comparisons to complete search * Combinations of local search and complete search The workshop will be divided into several tracks, which focus on specific aspects of the workshop subject. Every track will consist of technical paper presentations with affiliated discussion rounds. The tracks will be formed according to the distribution of accepted papers. We will organize invited talks for some of the tracks. --- ATTENDANCE --- Participants will be selected based on refereed submissions. If you wish to attend but are not submitting a paper, please send a one-page statement of interest by the submission deadline. --- SUBMISSIONS --- Paper submissions should be no longer than six pages. Guidelines for the submission format can be found at http://www.aaai.org/Publications/Templates/macros-link.html Papers may be submitted by e-mailing a document's URL to the workshop chair. If this is not possible, please contact the workshop chair. Accepted submissions will be included in the workshop's working notes. After the workshop, authors will be expected to submit revised papers for a volume in the Springer series Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI). EXTENDED Submission Deadline: May 15, 2000 Notification Date: May 29, 2000 Final Submission Due: June 12, 2000 Workshop Held: August 21, 2000 --- CHAIR --- Alexander Nareyek GMD FIRST Kekuléstraße 7 D - 12489 Berlin Germany Tel: +49 177 792 37 36 Fax: +49 30 6392 1805 E-mail: alex@ai-center.com --- COMMITTEE --- Emile H. L. Aarts Philips Research José Luis Ambite University of Southern California Blai Bonet University of California Ronen I. Brafman Ben-Gurion University Steve Chien NASA JPL Andrew Davenport IBM T. J. Watson Research Center Alfonso Gerevini Università di Brescia Holger H. Hoos University of British Columbia Alexander Nareyek GMD FIRST Angelo Oddi IP-CNR María C. Riff Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María Bart Selman Cornell University Edward Tsang University of Essex --- ADDITIONAL INFORMATION --- ECAI-2000 Homepage: http://www.ecai2000.hu-berlin.de/ Workshop Homepage: http://www.ai-center.com/events/ecai-2000-ws/