Scheduling and Planning Applications woRKshop (SPARK)

Application domains that contain planning and scheduling (P&S) problems pose a combination of issues, from modelling to technological to institutional, that present challenges to the AI planning and scheduling community. New domains and real-world problems are becoming increasingly affordable for AI. The international Scheduling and Planning Applications woRKshop (SPARK) series was established to help address the gap between developments in the AI P&S community and application of these advances.

Workshop Aim

The workshop aims to provide a stable forum on relevant topics connected to application-focused research and the deployment of P&S systems. The immediate legacy began in 2007 with the ICAPS'07 Workshop on Moving Planning and Scheduling Systems into the Real World, and continued in 2008-2015 with successful yearly editions.

The websites of the previous editions of the workshop series are available at http://decsai.ugr.es/~lcv/SPARK/. These workshops presented a stimulating environment where researchers could discuss the opportunity and challenges in moving P&S developments into practice, and analyze domains and problem instances under study for, or closely inspired by, real industrial/commercial deployment of P&S techniques.

This is the 10th edition of SPARK. The previous editions saw substantial attendance with respect to other collocated events (about 30+ people every year since 2007). This success, together with the recent creation of the Novel Applications track at ICAPS make SPARK:

The ideal incubator to test, discuss, mature and improve potential papers for that main track with the feedback of an excellent audience
A great place for the inception of new applications and challenges

The challenges and discussions that emerged in the last years' editions set the baseline for this year's SPARK workshop. A goal of the workshop series is the definition of a longer term set of challenges that could be of benefit for the research community as well as practitioners.

Authors of accepted papers will be encouraged to share their domains and instances, or parts of them, towards a library of practical benchmarking problems that could also be useful for the community.

Format

The workshop will retain the successful format of previous SPARK editions. In order to foster discussion amongst speakers and attendees, reviewers of submissions will be asked to write a public critique of each paper composed by a set of public questions or thoughts, in addition to regular private comments to the authors and confidential comments to the organizers. These critiques will also be provided to the authors in advance of the workshop and distributed among the workshop attendees.

Each session will consist of presentations of technical papers, their commentaries, and a short discussion on the topic of papers.

Topics

Starting from the results of the previous editions, SPARK'16 will deepen the debate on application-relevant aspects of P&S theory and practice, with the aim of reporting and discussing experiences relating to deploying P&S systems.

Topics of the workshop include, but are not limited to:

Novel domains and benchmark or challenge problems
Experiences in deploying P&S systems, from their conception to their maturity in practice
Comparison with previously existing technologies and/or systems
Integration of operational knowledge from existing legacy components
Integration of multiple sources of knowledge and reasoning schemes (actions, time, resources)
Modelling and domain model acquisition
Handling dynamic and uncertain sources of knowledge
Algorithmic and technological issues
Plan execution and replanning
Mixed initiative approaches
User interface design, visualization and explanation
Machine learning methodologies applied to P&S systems
Engineering, deployment, and maintenance
Evaluation, testing, and validation
Assessment of impact on end users

Schedule

Tuesday (June 14, 2016)

8:50	Session 1: Space
	Managing Spacecraft Memory Buffers with Overlapping Store and Dump Operations Gregg Rabideau, Steve Chien, Federico Nespoli and Marc Costa
	Using Operations Scheduling to Optimize Constellation Design Steve Schaffer, Andrew Branch, Steve Chien, Stephen Broschart, Sonia Hernandez, Konstantin Belov, Joseph Lazio, Loren Clare, Philip Tsao, Julie Castillo-Rogez and E. Jay Wyatt
	TIAGO – Tool for Intelligent Allocation of Ground Operations on Cluster-II Simone Fratini, Nicolas Faerber, Nicola Policella and Bruno Teixeira De Sousa
	Prioritization and Oversubscribed Scheduling for NASA’s Deep Space Network Caroline Shouraboura, Mark Johnston and Daniel Tran
10:30	Coffee Break
11:00	Session 2: Security & Web
	Efficient High Quality Plan Exploration for Network Security Anton Riabov, Shirin Sohrabi, Octavian Udrea and Oktie Hassanzadeh
	Constructing Plan Trees for Simulated Penetration Testing Guy Shani, Joerg Hoffmann, Dorin Shmaryahu and Marcel Steinmetz
	Automatic Resolution of Policy Conflicts in IoT Environments Through Planning Emre Goynugur, Kartik Talamadupula, Geeth De Mel and Murat Sensoy
12:15	Lunch
13:50	Session 3: Marine
	Evaluating Scientific Coverage Strategies for A Heterogeneous Fleet of Marine Assets Using a Predictive Model of Ocean Currents Andrew Branch, Martina Troesch, Steve Chien, Yi Chao, John Farrara and Andrew Thompson
	Planning Autonomous Underwater Reconnaissance Operations Sara Bernardini, Maria Fox, Derek Long and Bram Ridder
14:40	Session 4: Natural Language & Biology
	Search Challenges in Natural Language Generation with Complex Optimization Objectives Vera Demberg, Joerg Hoffmann, David M. Howcroft, Dietrich Klakow and Álvaro Torralba
	Exploring Organic Synthesis with State-of-the-Art Planning Techniques Rami Matloob and Mikhail Soutchanski
15:30	Coffee Break
16:00	Session 5: Reguirement Analysis & Manufacturing
	Deploying a Schedule Optimization Tool for Vehicle Testing Jeremy Ludwig, Annaka Kalton, Robert Richards, Brian Bautsch, Craig Markusic and Cyndi Jones
	Planning Machine Activity Between Manufacturing Operations: Maintaining Accuracy While Reducing Energy Consumption Simon Parkinson, Andrew Longstaff, Simon Fletcher, Mauro Vallati and Lukas Chrpa
	Using Hierarchical Models for Requirement Analysis of Real World Problems in Automated Planning Rosimarci Tonaco-Basbaum, Javier Silva and Reinaldo Silva

Important Dates

Submission deadline for papers: ~~March 4, 2016.~~ Extended to March 11, 2016
Notification of acceptance/rejection: ~~April 6, 2016~~
Camera-ready version due: ~~May 11, 2016~~
Workshop Date: 14 June 2016

Organization

Sara Bernardini, Royal Holloway University of London, UK.
Steve Chien, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, USA
Shirin Sohrabi, IBM, USA
Simon Parkinson, University of Huddersfield, UK

Programme Committee

Bram Ridder, King's College London
Riccardo De Benedictis, CNR - National Research Council o Italy
Riccardo Rasconi, ISTC-CNR
Mark Johnston, JPL/California Inst. of Technology
Minh Do, NASA Ames Research Center
Simone Fratini, European Space Agency - ESA/ESOC
Adrien Maillard, ONERA
Angelo Oddi, ISTC-CNR, Italian National Research Council
Tiago Stegun Vaquero, MIT and Caltech
Alexandre Albore, Onera & INRA
Kartik Talamadupula, IBM Research, USA
Christophe Guettier, SAGEM
Ramiro Varela, University of Oviedo
Patrik Haslum, ANU
Nicola Policella, ESA/ESOC
Bryan O’gorman, NASA Ames Research Center