CFP: LBSA 2009 - Workshop on Location-based services (LBS) and applications

Call for Papers:
Workshop on:

"Location-based services (LBS) and applications"

To be held in conjunction with ICPP'09 -
The 2009 International Conference on Parallel Processing
(ICPP-2009)
Co-Sponsored by
The International Association for Computers and Communications (IACC)
The Austrian Computer Society
In cooperation with
The Vienna University of Technology, Austria
The Ohio State University, USA

(Proceedings of the conference and workshops will be published by the IEEE Computer Society)

Description of workshop

The Location-based services (LBS) and applications workshop aims to bring together pervasive concepts starting from the integration of mobility based services and not limited to the techniques concerning the data management and services, which are at the core of such systems. Data organization and management, as well as system interoperability of wireless systems in order to provide location aware services, are of the prime focuses of this workshop. With the development of mobile communication, location-based services and applications represent a novel challenge both conceptually and technically. On demand and reactive applications is a part of everyday's life running on computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), phones and on personal blackboards. This workshop aims to examine recent advances in this field and promote the optimization of the existence of standards, as well as present efficient computing power consumption techniques for enabling the survivability of such enterprises. In addition, this workshop aims at presenting recent advances in the technical description of LBS, and in a research way present the various concepts that serve as a support to mobile LBS. The Location-based services (LBS) and applications workshop primarily aims to be a research forum for the exchange of ideas, techniques, and applications among practitioners of wireless service in industry, government, and academia.

The present workshop will be concerned with the issues that are important to modern wireless and/or wired communications related to Location-based services and establishment techniques as well as monitor a distributed way of providing these services. Dynamic adverts and services provision and middleware adaptation strategies for providing LBS and the necessity for more sophisticated prediction of actions for providing these services are in essence a main part of this workshop. Also the distributed and diagnostic analysis with model-driven approaches to LBS issues will be a special focus of the workshop.

Original research contributions in all areas of LBS and/or applications are welcome.
Particularly the papers aim to present work in the following topical areas:

Workshop is particularly seeking papers in the following topical areas:


§ Object-Oriented LBS in distributed environments
§ Navigation Systems and spatial database perspectives
§ Languages, Tools, and Environments for enabling Location-based services
§ Web interface and Web-based Modelling for Location-based services
§ Navigation systems meta-modelling in distributed environments
§ Middleware for Location-Based Services in distributed systems
§ LBS Interoperability through Standards
§ Data Collection for Location-Based Services in distributed systems
§ Data Transmission in Mobile Communication Systems
§ LBA Distributed Systems and Databases
§ LBA Parallel Processing Systems
§ Wireless systems' simulation based Performance Analysis
§ Network Modelling and Simulation
§ Sensor Location-based service Networks
§ Service provision in Wireless and Mobile Networking and Computing
§ Large Scale Systems Location-based services provision (metropolitan coverage but not limited to)
§ Clusters and Grids for Location-based services in distributed environments
§ Applications of Location-based services in distributed systems
§ Parallel and Distributed Applications and Algorithms for Location-based services
§ Power-aware location-based services
§ Distributed and parallel support systems for Location-based services
§ Resource Management and Scheduling in distributed systems
§ Mobile Peer-to-Peer reliability and connectivity
§ Web-based Computing and service-oriented distributed architectures

Workshop Chair
Prof. Helen Karatza
Department of Informatics
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
54124 Thessaloniki
Greece

Tel. : +30 (2310) 997974
Fax : +30 (2310) 998419
Email: karatza@csd.auth.gr


Workshop co-chair
Dr. Constandinos X. Mavromoustakis
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Nicosia
46 Makedonitissas Avenue, P.O.Box 24005
1700 Nicosia
CYPRUS

Tel. : +357-22-841730
Fax : +357-22-357481
Email: mavromoustakis.c@unic.ac.cy


Technical Program Committee members:

Antonio Marcos Alberti, Inatel, National Inst. of Telecommunications, Brazil
Christos Bouras, University of Patras and Research Academic Computer
Technology Institute, Greece
Yinong Chen, Arizona State University, USA
Wai Chen, Telcordia Technologies, New Jersey, U.S.A
Giovanni Chiola, University of Genoa, Italy
Dimitrios Filippopoulos, Technological Educational Institute of Larissa,
Greece
George Mastorakis, Technological Educational Institute of Crete, Greece
Angelo Furfaro, University of Calabria, Italy
Orhan Gemikonakli, Middlesex University, United Kingdom
Carlos Juiz, Universitat de les Illes Balears, Spain
George Papadopoulos, University of Cyprus, Cyprus
Cameron Kiddle, University of Calgary, Canada
Manolis Koubarakis, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
Geyong Min, University of Bradford, United Kingdom
Athena Stassopoulou, University of Nicosia, Cyprus
Libero Nigro, University of Calabria, Italy
Sotiris Nikoletseas, University of Patras and CTI, Greece
Irfan Awan, University of Bradford, United Kingdom
Murtuza Shabbir Jadliwala, Laboratory for Computer Communications and
Applications, EPFL, Switzerland
Michael Devetsikiotis, North Carolina State University, USA
Georgios Papadimitriou, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Frode Eika Sandnes, Oslo University College, Norway
Fabricio Alves Barbosa da Silva, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal
Robert Simon, George Mason University, USA
Charalabos Skianis, University of the Aegean, Greece
Lynda Mokdad, Universite Paris Dauphine, France
Tomeu Serra, Universitat de les Illes Balears, Spain
Nikos Antonopoulos, University of Surrey, United Kingdom
Evgenia Smirni, College of William & Mary, USA
Peter Triantafillou, University of Patras, Greece
Vasos Vasiliou, University of Cyprus, Cyprus
Manos Varvarigos, University of Patras, Greece
Philip Wilsey, Cliftonlabs, USA
Jing ZHOU, University of China, China


Important dates:

Workshop day: 22nd Sept. 2009
Paper Submission Deadline: 28th February 2009
Acceptance Notification: 15th of April 2009
Camera-Ready Paper: 15th of June 2009



PAPER SUBMISSION

Authors are invited to submit original research manuscripts (unpublished research and recent developments) in the topics related to the workshop.

Only papers that have not been previously published or presented should be submitted.


Refer to Workshop's web page at:
http://www.cs.unic.ac.cy/cmavrom/ICPPw/

GRC to Give Cloud Computing/Social Networking Demo at SC08

I will be giving a demonstration of some of the research the Grid Research Centre (GRC) is working on at SC08 in Austin next week. Below are the details.

Where: Compute Canada Booth #2439 (at SC08 in Austin, Texas)

When:

• Tuesday November 18, 2008: 3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
• Wednesday November 19, 2008: 3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
  

Title: Leveraging Social Networking and Cloud Computing Technologies in the Development of Collaborative Computing Environments

Abstract: Social networking and cloud computing technologies are revolutionizing the way computing resources are accessed and managed. At the Grid Research Centre at the University of Calgary, and in collaboration with HP Labs, we are exploring how these technologies can be leveraged to develop comprehensive and collaborative computing environments. We have developed a cloud-based infrastructure called the Automated Service Provisioning ENvironment (ASPEN) that dynamically allocates virtualized resources to different services based on demand. Two prototype collaborative computing environments will be demonstrated. One uses the Facebook social networking platform to provide users with one-stop shop access to the Fire Dynamics Simulator and affiliated services. The other uses the Ning social networking platform to provide access to an animation rendering service. Services for both environments are hosted on the ASPEN cloud-based infrastructure.

GRC at Cybera Summit 08

I recently attended Cybera Summit 08 in Banff (September 29-30, 2008) where I gave a couple of presentations on projects we are working on at the Grid Research Centre (GRC). The presentations were as follows:

• Cloud Computing on the HP Labs Data Centre at the University of Calgary


• This presentation gave an overview of cloud computing and highlighted the GRCs cloud computing research efforts on the HP Labs Data Centre at the University of Calgary. We are working on the development of ASPEN, an Automated Service Provisioning ENvironment. It is aimed at effectively utilizing virtual machine technologies to enable data centre automation and to support dynamic and scalable provisioning of cloud services. We are also exploring the use of social networking platforms in providing access to cloud services. This work is being done in collaboration with HP Labs.


• Rendering on the Cloud: A Cybera Industry Pilot Project with EDM Studio


• This presentation gave an overview of a Cybera Industry Pilot Project with EDM Studio Inc. that the GRC is working on. The goal of the project is to create an on-demand cloud-based rendering service for generating animations. In the completed phase 1 of the project a static environment in the HP Labs Data Centre at the University of Calgary for rendering images was created. Phase 2 of the project, currently in progress, is aimed at the development of an on-demand, dynamic rendering service that will be supported using ASPEN described above. Other aims of phase 2 include the use of data management tools to more efficiently move and manage data and the development of a collaborative user portal, that leverages social networking technologies, for accessing the data management and rendering services.
  

Both of these presentations, as well as other presentations from the Cybera Summit are available on slideshare.

HPC/Grid/Cloud Computing Conferences

Below is a public google calendar I have created that contains submission deadlines and dates for upcoming HPC, grid computing, cloud computing and other related conferences. I will try and keep the calendar up to date with new conferences and deadlines as I come across them. The calendar is certainly not complete, so if you know of any conferences that I have missed please let me know and I will add them to the calendar.

Using Cloud Computing and Web 2.0 Technologies to Create Comprehensive User Environments

At the Grid Research Centre at the University of Calgary, and in collaboration with HP Labs, we have been exploring how cloud computing and Web 2.0 technologies can be used in academic and enterprise settings to provide users with comprehensive and transparent environments for accessing applications. Web 2.0 technologies such as social networking platforms (e.g., Facebook) allow users to keep connected and provide easy access to a wide variety of applications. We feel that the use of social networking platforms in academia and enterprise will allow researchers and employees to more easily collaborate and share information with each other. They could also provide a more unified and transparent interface for accessing applications. As demand for applications can vary significantly and is difficult to determine before they are deployed, it would be advantageous to run applications on cloud computing infrastructures where they can be scaled easily according to demand.

To illustrate the effectiveness of this approach we have developed a demonstrator that provides users with a comprehensive and transparent environment for accessing the Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) , an application developed by NIST. Facebook was used as a social networking platform to provide access to FDS. Users are able to upload and edit input files, submit and resubmit simulations, visualize results, share and discuss results with other users, etc., all in a single integrated environment. Virtual machine technology was used to develop a cloud computing infrastructure to host the simulations and visualizations. The infrastructure is able to dynamically adapt and scale according to demand.

Below is a video of the demonstrator including some introductory slides. A version of the video in much larger resolution is available here.



Some papers we have published related to this work include:

• R. Curry, C. Kiddle, N. Markatchev, R. Simmonds, T. Tan, M. Arlitt, and B. Walker. ASPEN: An Automated Service Provisioning ENvironment for Data Centres. In Proceedings of the 15th HP Software University Association Workshop (HP-SUA), 2008.


• R. Curry, C. Kiddle, N. Markatchev, R. Simmonds, T. Tan, M. Arlitt, and B. Walker. Facebook Meets the Virtualized Enterprise. To appear in Proceedings of the 12th International IEEE Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference (EDOC), 2008. (An extended version of this paper appears as an HP Labs Technical Report: HPL-2008-72.)