CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture, Natural Resources,
and Environmental Sciences
Workshop to be held in conjunction with IJCAI-93
(International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence)
Chambery, FRANCE, August 29 - September 3, 1993.
Application of AI to domains involving natural and managed ecosystems
offers novel challenges for AI researchers. However, relatively few
members of the AI community have been attracted to these problems
despite the fact that several research laboratories have been founded
in the last decade around the world dedicated to the application of AI
to agriculture, forestry, wetlands, national parks, etc.
This workshop is intended to be an international forum in which to
identify and discuss the common problems faced by researchers applying
AI to natural and managed ecosystems -- systems in which both deep and
surface knowledge are highly imprecise and/or uncertain, experts often
disagree, data may be incomplete or unreliable, temporal and spatial
reasoning are critical for modeling physical processes and individual
or social behavior (including adaptability), and in which planning and
management tools for governments, agencies, farmers, foresters, and the
general public are sorely needed. Some of these characteristics are
directly related to difficult current AI issues. The workshop will then
also serve as a vehicle to make other researchers in the AI community
more aware of the needs and opportunities coming out of the specific
context provided by the natural systems considered here.
This workshop is primarily concerned with the practical use and
development of advanced AI methods for modelling and managing systems
in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Environmental Sciences. In
particular, contributions on the following topics are welcome:
1. uncertainty in deep knowledge models
- qualitative models
- model-based reasoning
- truth maintenance
- numerical approaches to uncertainty (fuzzy logic, Bayesian
methods), and integration with symbolic approaches
2. representation of spatial and/or dynamic knowledge
- spatio-temporal reasoning
- integration of spatial reasoning with GIS
- process integration across multiple temporal and spatial scales
- simulation of adaptive behavior and application of artificial
life to applied biology
3. decision support
- comparing/combining constraint satisfaction, operations research,
and expert systems approaches
- real-time systems
- scheduling, planning, and control
- object-oriented modeling and representation for managing
complexity and representing interactions
Presentation of applied systems is encouraged, but the focus of the
contributions should be on:
- specific aspects of problematic issues that are relevant across the
three domains, namely agricultural, natural resource, and
ecological systems,
or
- novel application or development of AI techniques to problems in these
domains.
Submission Requirements:
Individuals interested in making a presentation should submit a
preliminary paper (3-5 pages, single-spaced) fully explaining the
intended content of the presentation and its relevance to the workshop.
Persons wishing to participate but who do not wish to give a
presentation should submit an abstract (1 page) describing their
research and/or interest in the subject area and their expected
contributions to the workshop. Preliminary papers and abstracts should
be submitted (email and fax accepted) by 15 March 1993 to both:
Dr. Nicholas D. Stone
Information Systems & Insect Studies Lab
Department of Entomology
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, VA 24061
USA
Tel: (+1-703) 231-6885
Fax: (+1-703) 231-9131
email: nstone@vtvm1.cc.vt.edu
and,
Dr. Roger Martin-Clouaire
Laboratoire d'Intelligence Artificielle
Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique
Auzeville, B.P. 27
31326 Castanet-Tolosan Cedex
FRANCE
Tel: (+33) 61285286
Fax: (+33) 61285335
email: rmc@toulouse.inra.fr
Participants selected will be notified by 15 April, and final papers
will be due 4 June 1993.
Schedule:
A full day will be divided into three sets of presentations for a total
of twelve to fifteen papers. Discussion time will be included at the
end of each section. Following formal presentations, participants will
break into groups to discuss and summarize the three topic areas. Each
group will present its findings to the overall group for final
discussion. Group summaries will be used as the basis for a final
report on the workshop. Papers from the workshop will tentatively be
published in a special issue of AI Applications: Natural Resources.
Important notice:
Participants must register to the main IJCAI'93 conference. They will
have to pay an additional fee (300 FF, about $60) for the attendance to
the workshop.
Organizing Committee:
Dr. Nicholas D. Stone, Virginia Tech; Dr. Richard L. Olson, USDA-ARS;
Dr. Hannu Saarenmaa, Finnish Forest Research Institute; and Dr. Roger
Martin-Clouaire, Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique
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