Feb 29, 2008 - Hephaestus meets The Olympiansâ. 6. Professor Bertrand Meyer, ETH Zurich and Eiffel Software who would be giving a keynote talk entitled ...
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Phitsanulok, Thailand, 26-29 February 2008
Phitsanulok, Thailand, 26-29 February 2008
Second IEEE International Conference on Digital Ecosystems and Technologies (IEEE DEST 2008)
PREFACE FROM THE GENERAL CHAIRS The world has moved through various phases from the Stone age, Agriculture age, Industrial age through to the Information age. Now we are right into the Digital age, where the digital networked economy dominates our lives and appears to be staying with us for a long time to come. This Digital Paradigm is characterised by the advent of internet technologies, starting from the initial hyperlinked web sites and progressing towards pervasive internet applications. In the last few years, we have seen the advent of Peer-to-Peer systems, and Grid networks, where no centralised control unit is necessary. Also, the emergence of Web Service technology and Service-Oriented architectures has provided a sound basis for e-Services which, in turn, have become a major theme for business process digitalisation. The service-oriented view integrates the concepts of ‘centralised’ and ‘loosely coupled’ into a single unified framework through the provision of a middleware framework. On top of it, we are seeing an increasing use of Agent technology on the internet, both mobile agents, as well as software agents in developing Social Networks. A key issue that has started to manifest itself is the coalescing of key domains and their activities with the internet. This has led to a new paradigm, which is Social Networking, that takes Agent Paradigms one step further toward supporting dynamic coalitions which are becoming the primary drivers of the internet. We are moving beyond agents that act either independently or autonomously, or purely through dependence on other agents to fulfil more complex tasks utilising notions of social dependence. Now, Agents observe the behaviour of each other and, based on that behaviour, rate the quality of information, output and outcome that is coming from that Agent. This is the crucial factor that defines the Social Networks as opposed to the networks of socially dependent agents. The next generation of the internet will pull together a number of the previously existing paradigms towards an approach of self-organisation, leading to ad-hoc communities which are domain specific, demand driven, or application centric. This approach called Digital Ecosystem represents a quantum leap to the next generation of the internet. Digital Ecosystems have been chosen as a key strategic issue for European research, and are being investigated by researchers worldwide. The Digital Ecosystem approach should not be confused with the use of digital technology to support environmental or biological ecosystems. Digital Ecosystems represent groups within the Digital Space which have the characteristics of an ecosystem and these characteristics include loosely coupled individuals coming together to form temporary coalitions or more permanent coalitions, where there is a benefit to the individuals. They self-organise in the way they interact with each other. They are frequently domain centric. The groups within these ecosystems are often referred to as species. Each species may use a different communication infrastructure to another species in Digital Ecosystem. This new paradigm, originally put forward in the European Union, is now being recognised by the IEEE, which represent the North American input. It is also an important paradigm for the Asia Pacific area, with the recent service industry success in India and manufacturing success in China.
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success in India and manufacturing success in China. The advantage of Digital Ecosystems is that we are going to merge a lot of features and ideas for further developing service oriented environments, not just match the service providers for service delivery to service recipients, but bringing in the element of Social Networks in the way it uses Agent Technology. This will carry Agent Technology to the next stage in being adaptive and self-organising with respect to the way the agent is functioning. They will not just have a single fixed static function, which is predefined but have the possibility of evolving functions and roles that each agent can perform and offer to other agents or the specific digital community. We have been highly successful in attracting eminent speakers for keynotes including: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
6.
Dr. Francesco Nachira, who is the head of “Technologies for Digital Ecosystems” research area at European Commission, and who would be giving a keynote entitled “Digital Business Ecosystems: EU research perspectives and regional deployments”. Professor Carles Sierra, who is a Professor at the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute of the Spanish Research Council, and who would be giving a keynote entitled “Agents, Information, and Negotiation”. Dr. George A Fodor, from ABB AB Sweden, who would be giving a keynote talk entitled “The Value of Information as a Theoretical Foundation for Digital Ecosystems”. Dr. Jon Timmis, who is a reader at the University of York in a joint appointment with the Department of Computer Science and Department of Electronics, and who would be presenting a keynote talk entitied “Engineering Artificial Immunity”. Dr. Michael L. Brodie , who is the chief Scientist of Verizon Services Operations in Verizon Communications, which is one of the world's leading providers of communications services.His keynote talk is entitled “The End of the Computing Era: Hephaestus meets The Olympians”. Professor Bertrand Meyer, ETH Zurich and Eiffel Software who would be giving a keynote talk entitled, “Distributed Software Engineering: Research and Education Challenges”.
The very fact we that have been able to attract such eminent speakers, underlines the importance of this conference’s themes. This conference represents a step towards maturity in Digital Ecosystem Technology. We are overwhelmed by the response to this conference. We received over 190 papers and selected 90 papers for presentation. Some of the themes of the conference are: •
Models of Open Transactions in Digital Ecosystems
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Performance and Evaluation of Digital Ecosystems
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Intelligent Digital Ecosystems and Technologies
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Emerging Concepts in the Field of Ecosystems
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Collaborative Systems for Digital Ecosystems
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Service-oriented Collaborative Platforms
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Interdisciplinary Ecosystems Research
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Infrastructure for Digital Ecosystems
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Digital Business Ecosystems
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Self Organisation of Agents
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e-Learning Ecosystems
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Security and Privacy
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Health Ecosystems
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Social Networks
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Trust and Risk
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e-Humanities
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It is important to remember that these themes represent not only our vision of Digital Ecosystems, but (in the true spirit of the ecosystem approach) it also represents the way the papers submitted aligned themselves. We welcome you to a very exciting intellectual occasion where we will exchange ideas and information and debate issues, and will help provide input into the next generation of computing and the internet.
Professor Tharam S Dillon Conference General Chair of IEEE DEST 2008
Professor Ernesto Damiani Conference General Chair of IEEE DEST 2008
Preface from the Conference Chairs International Organisation Committee Sponsors of IEEE DEST 2008 Editors’ Page Keynotes Tutorials Tracks Index Authors Index
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