special: traffic planning andlogistics · 2016. 9. 13. · 13 w3c workshop on web of services for...

European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematicswww.ercim.org

Number 68, January 2007

Special :Traffic Planningand Logistics

European Scene:

Support of theResearch Process

ERCIM NEWS 68 January 2007

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4 InterLink: International Cooperation Activities in Future and Emerging ICTsby Constantine Stephanidis and Jessica Michel

5 ERCIM at IST 2006 - En Route to FP7

6 The 3rd Grid@Asia and GFK 2006 InternationalJoint Workshopby Bruno Le Dantec

6 New ERCIM Working Group on 'Smart Environments and Systems for Ambient Intelligence' by Anthony Savidis and Norbert Streitz

7 ERCIM Working Group 'User Interfaces for All': A Success Story Draws to a Closeby Constantine Stephanidis

8 9th ERCIM Workshop 'User Interfaces for All'by Constantine Stephanidis and Michael Pieper

9 Cor Baayen Award 2007

10 MUSCLE CIS Coin Competition 2006by Allan Hanbury and Michael Nölle

11 Workshop on Multidisciplinary Simulation in Biomedical Applicationsby Marc Thiriet

11 New Projects managed by ERCIM

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12 W3C Celebrates Ten Years with Style

13 W3C Workshop on Web of Services for EnterpriseComputing

13 Third W3C Workshop on Internationalising theSpeech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML)

13 Markup Validator, Link Checker Updated

13 W3C10 Asia: Tenth Anniversary of W3C in Asia

13 Latest W3C Recommendations

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14 The European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructuresby John Wood

16 Europe: The Place to Be!by Peter Nijkamp

17 CERIF - the Common European Research Information Formatby Keith G Jeffery

18 Managing Research and Knowledge Based Organisationsby Günter Koch

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20 Introduction to the Special Themeby Jo van Nunen

22 Mathematics for Railway Timetablingby Leo Kroon

23 Railyard Shunting: A Challenge for CombinatorialOptimisationby Per Kreuger and Martin Aronsson

25 The Art of Stackingby Martin Aronsson and Per Kreuger

27 Freeway Applications Based on the MacroscopicModel of Traffic Flowby Tamás Luspay, István Varga and Balázs Kulcsár

28 Performance Evaluation of Heterogeneous Motorized Traffic at Urban Single-Lane Junctionsand Roundaboutsby Puspita Deo and Heather J. Ruskin

30 Fluid-Dynamic Approach to Traffic Flow Problemsby Gabriella Bretti, Roberto Natalini and BenedettoPiccoli

31 Dynamic Routing of Rail Vehiclesby Anders Holst and Markus Bohlin

32 Statistical Models for Urban Traveller Informationand Traffic Management Systemsby Poulicos Prastacos and Yiannis Kamarianakis

Cover photo: Schenker AG.

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33 Mobile Environmental Sensor Systems Across a Grid Environment - the MESSAGE Projectby John Polak

34 Statistical Physics Algorithms for Traffic Reconstructionby Arnaud de La Fortelle, Jean-Marc Lasgouttes andCyril Furtlehner

35 From Traffic Prediction to Collaborative NavigationSolutionsby Arnaud de La Fortelle, Angel Talamona and MikaëlKais

37 Logistics Planning Using the POEM Language Systemby Jianyang Zhou, Jianyi Zhou, Jiande Zhou, YannCourtet, Weiping Wu, Hua Ni

39 Using GIS for Optimisation in Transportation Planningby Günter Kiechle

40 GIS Technology for Maritime Traffic Systemsby Cyril Ray, Thomas Devogele, Valérie Noyon, Mathieu Petit, Sebastien Fournier and Christophe Claramunt

42 PeerMart: Decentralized Auctions for BandwidthTrading on Demandby David Hausheer and Burkhard Stiller

44 Net-WMS - A New Generation of Warehouse Management Systems Networked Servicesby Francois Fages and Abder Aggoun

45 The IBM Secure Trade Lane Solutionby Francois Dolivo

47 Clipped RFID Tags Protect Consumer Privacyby Günter Karjoth and Paul Moskowitz

48 TraSer – Identity-Based Tracking and Web Servicesfor SMEsby Zsolt Kemény and Marcell Szathmári

50 Distributed Engine for Advanced Logisticsby Tamás Máhr and Alfons Salden

51 Supporting City Planning with Traffic Monitoring in Image Sequencesby Matthieu Molinier

52 Traffic Planning and Logistics: A View from the Edge by Antonio Lucas

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54 Software Travels in the Fast Lane: Good News or Bad?by Fabrizio Fabbrini, Mario Fusani and Giuseppe Lami

55 Coping with System Complexity: IdentifyingDichotomic Architectural Alternativesby Gerhard Chroust

56 Power on Tap by Lars Rasmusson

58 New Hungarian National Cancer Registryby László Kovács and Máté Pataki

59 Efficiency and Quality of Service of Internet Service Providersby Oliver Heckmann

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60 CONCUR 2006 - The 17th International Conferenceon Concurrency Theoryby Christel Baier and Holger Hermanns

61 25 Years of the IFSR: A Milestone in the SystemsSciencesby Gerhard Chroust

62 PATAT 2006 Conferenceby Hana Rudová

63 ESFORS – NESSI Workshop Addresses NewResearch Priorities in Trust, Security and Depend-ability in Software Systems and Servicesby Aljosa Pasic and Jim Clarke

64 Announcements

66 Editorial Information

66 In Brief

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Following the very successful Coordination Action ‘Beyondthe Horizon’, the purpose of the newly launched EU Coor-dination Action ‘InterLink’ is to promote collaboration andpartnerships in a number of strategic research areas in futureand emerging Information and Communication Technology(ICT). InterLink aims at advancing Europe’s knowledge inthese areas, at promoting European solutions and knowl-edge worldwide, and at influencing the way in whichresearch in these areas will evolve internationally. It willtherefore carry out activities and provide means and supportmechanisms to encourage cooperation between Europeanand non-European research communities in strategic basicresearch areas related to Information Society Technology(IST).

Three thematic areas have been carefully selected. These arebased on the need to address both the evolution of the infor-mation society in the next ten to fifteen years, and the chal-lenges this will impose on research in computing, softwareengineering, cognition and intelligence. These thematicareas, which are also closely linked to ERCIM’s areas ofstrength, are:

1) Software intensive systems and new computing para-digms: the continuing decrease in the cost of microproces-sors and storage is leading to the development of increas-ingly distributed and decentralized systems. Society’sdependence on software-intensive systems is increasing rap-idly, both in the economic sector and in daily life. Applica-tions will be assembled as dynamic federations ofautonomous and evolving components. In this context, newcomputing paradigms and techniques are required to buildsoftware-intensive systems.

2) Ambient computing and communication environ-ments: the evolution of the information society is character-ized by the development of personalized individual and col-lective services. These exploit infrastructures situated insmart environments and are based on a range of ubiquitousand pervasive communication networks that provide ambi-ent computing at multiple levels. The underlying vision ofpervasive and ambient computing assumes very large num-

bers of ‘invisibly’ small computing devices embedded in theenvironment. Such devices would interact with multipleusers in a wide range of dynamically changing situations,and be supported by an infrastructure of intelligent sensors(and actuators) embedded in the built environment. The real-isation of this vision requires advances in various areas ofICT, and necessitates highly multidisciplinary research.

3) Intelligent and cognitive systems: cognitive systemsshould be able to interpret data arising from real-worldevents and processes, acquire situated knowledge of theirenvironment, act, make or suggest decisions, and communi-cate with people on human terms. The design of cognitiveartificial systems requires coordinated and integratedresearch efforts that span a wide range of disciplines andrequire collaborative resources that can be achieved onlythrough long-term, multidisciplinary research activities.

The main aims of InterLink in the three selected thematicareas are:• to identify and address world-scale, basic research pro-

blems of an emerging global information and knowledgesociety, where significant added value is expected to begained from world-wide cooperation

• to establish communication and cooperation mechanismswithin and beyond Europe in order to support the formati-on and functioning of a related scientific community

• to identify complementarities in the selected areas bet-ween EU and other involved countries that could give riseto exchanges of knowledge and technology

• to define joint basic research agendas, outlining researchpriorities and defining roadmaps and joint Research andTechnological Development (RTD) initiatives.

InterLink is based on three working groups, one for each the-matic area, that will work in a coordinated fashion. Workinggroups will consist of international teams of researchers withinternationally recognized expertise in their fields ofresearch. To support the Working Groups in conducting theirwork, advanced communication tools will be provided, aim-ing at a global networking of research communities. Severalworkshops will be organised during the project to fosterRTD dialogue and promote interaction within each WorkingGroup. Ultimately, InterLink will lead to the elaboration of atechnology roadmap on an international scale in each the-matic area.

The opening workshop for InterLink will take place from10-12 May in the South of France (most likely in Nice,Antibes or Cannes). Detailed information will be availableon the InterLink web site.

Link: http://interlink.ics.forth.gr/

Please contact:Constantine Stephanidis (scientific coordinator)ICS-FORTH, Greece E-mail: [email protected]

Jessica Michel (administrative coordinator)ERCIM officeE-mail: [email protected]



4

ERCIM NEWS 68 January 2007 55

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The European Commission announced that it would investover €9 billion in research on Information and Communica-tions Technologies (ICT) within FP7 that will run until 2013.By allocating the largest single budget item in FP7 to thispriority, the European Commission is acknowledging thestrategic importance of ICT for Europe’s growth and com-petitiveness.

Over 4,500 members of the IST research community werepresent in Helsinki to discuss the new framework pro-gramme and the strategic priorities for fundamental andapplied ICT research throughout FP7.

EERRCCIIMM EEuurrooppeeaann PPrroojjeeccttss aatt IISSTT 22000066Several ERCIM projects were presented during IST 2006, inparticular CoreGRID and ACGT. These two leading IST ini-tiatives had a dedicated booth in the main exhibition hall.

CoreGRID (the European Research Network on Founda-tions, Software Infrastructures and Applications for largescale distributed, GRID and Peer-to-Peer Technologies),considered as a model for Networks of Excellence (NoE),promoted its activities and highlighted a strategic shift inGrid technology development, with Grid computingresearch effort progressively moving towards the industryand industrial applications.

The ACGT project (Advancing Clinico Genomic Trials onCancer) was hosted on the 'HealthGrid'' booth. The projectpromoted the use of Grid technologies to support biomedicalapplications. A dedicated networking session was alsoorganised to meet with other IST actors in e-health, with aspecial focus on grid applications to fight cancer.

ENGAGE (Encouraging and Stimulating future RTD coop-eration in the field of Information Society Technologiesbetween Europe and Asia-Pacific region) was presented onthe EU-Asia Cooperation booth. This initiative supports thedevelopment of deeper IST research collaboration with Asiaand Southeast Asia.

Other ERCIM initiatives had organised specific and wellattended networking sessions, in particular:• MUSCLE: The Network dedicated to multimedia data

mining and machine learning specifically presented its e-teams research integration effort (virtual labs) and its newshowcasing activity destined to present MUSCLE techno-logy to the industry.

• DELOS: The NoE on Digital Libraries presented its acti-vities and plans concerning architecture development ofdigital libraries of the future; search in multiple languageson data bases; and collaboration on digital archives, whichwill be initiated with CVCE (Centre Virtuel de la Connais-sance sur l’Europe, a public undertaking on Europe’s heri-tage).

The IST 2006 conference has reinforced ERCIM’s image asa key player in the IST research community, not only inEurope, but also worldwide.

ERCIM is now looking forward to new partnerships andprojects in FP7, and seems to be particularly well positionedacross a wide array of IST priorities.

Links: IST 2006: http://europa.eu.int/information_society/istevent/2006/index_en.htm

ERCIM projects: http://www.ercim.org/activity/projects/

Please contact: Bruno Le Dantec, ERCIM officeE-mail: [email protected] General view of the IST 2006 exhibition.

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Ambient intelligence represents a vision of the near future inwhich ‘intelligent’ or ‘smart’ environments and systemsreact in an attentive, adaptive, and active (sometimes evenproactive) way to the presence and activities of humans andobjects in order to provide intelligent/smart services to theinhabitants of these environments.

Ambient intelligence technology integrates sensing capabil-ities, processing power, reasoning mechanisms, networkingfacilities, applications and services, digital content, and actu-ating capabilities distributed in the surrounding environ-ment. While a wide variety of technology is involved, thegoal of ambient intelligence is to hide its presence fromusers by providing implicit, unobtrusive interaction para-digms. People and their social situations, ranging from indi-viduals to groups, be they work groups, families or friendsand their corresponding environments (office buildings,homes, public spaces etc), are at the centre of the design.

The scope of the ERCIM Working Group SESAMI includesthe facilitation of collaborations in this area, on the groundsof on-going, potentially cross-domain, basic and appliedresearch and development. In this context, SESAMI willpursue novel insights on designing, implementing, managing

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The workshop was opened by Jysoo Lee from the KoreaInstitute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI),followed by Joo-Han Kim from the Korean Ministry of Sci-ence and Technology who gave an overview of the coopera-tion status and driving plan for science and technologybetween Korea and the European Union. Jorge Gasos from

the European Commission completed the opening sessionwith a presentation of the the European Commission's GridTechnologies Unit. The workshop sessions of the first dayaddressed the role of Grid technologies in the 7th EU FP andsome Grid research projects funded under the 6th FP werepresented.

The second day was dedicated to specific Grid-related tech-nologies such as Grid infrastructure, Grid systems and mid-dleware with presentations of European and Korean proj-ects. Satoshi Sekiguchi from the National Institute ofAdvance Industrial Science and Technology, Japan provideda keynote speech about Asian Grid projects. Speeches ofWon-Sik Kim, Deputy Minister, Korean Ministry of Infor-mation and Communicaition, Byung-tae Yang, president ofKISTI, and the presentation 'Past, Present and Future of Grid

in Korea' given by Jysoo Lee, KISTI, Korea closed the sec-ond workshop day.

Grid applications were discussed the third day. Some 15 pre-sentations addressed e-Science applications (ie, bio infor-matics, meteorology, etc) and business Grid applications (ie,onlime game services, ASP services, etc.). Presentations areavailable for download from the Grid Forum Korea and theGrid@Asia web sites

Link: http://www.gridatasia.net/

Please contact: Bruno Le Dantec, ERCIM officeE-mail: [email protected]

Won-Sik Kim, Deputy Minister, Ubiquituous Society Strategy Office,Ministry of Information and Communication, Republic of Korea,addresses the workshop .

Photo: Ignacio Soler Jubert.


July 2007 in Beijing, China (http://www.hcii2007.org/). Theseare SESAMI–I: Interaction Design and Evaluation, chaired byNorbert Streitz, and SESAMI–II: Tools, Architectures andInfrastructures, chaired by Anthony Savidis. An open call forpapers has been made for both sessions, resulting in a total offourteen accepted papers, with seven per session. All paperswill be published as part of the Springer LNCS proceedings ofthe UAHCI 2007 conference.

A Special Theme issue will be published by Elsevier in theirinternational, refereed, interdisciplinary journal ‘Interactingwith Computers’ (IwC). The issue is entitled ‘Interaction inAmbient Intelligence: Methods, Tools and Applications’ andis guest-edited by Anthony Savidis, Norbert Streitz, CarstenMagerkurth and Constantine Stephanidis. The selectionprocess for the papers has been initiated by the guest editors.

Link:http://www.ics.forth.gr/sesami

Please contact:Anthony Savidis, SESAMI Chair, ICS-FORTH, GreeceTel. +30-2810-391749E- mail: [email protected]

Norbert Streitz, SESAMI Co-Chair Fraunhofer IPSI, GermanyTel: +49 6151 869-919E-mail: [email protected]

and maintaining smart computational environments on anyscale. This will enable to enhance and go beyond traditionalcomputational support of human activities for any given sit-uation, context or role.

BBaacckkggrroouunnddAmbient intelligence and smart environments represent anemerging field of research and development that is rapidlygaining attention from an increasing number of researchers andpractitioners worldwide. There are several reasons for this.

Ambient intelligence brings a special perspective to researchassociated with technical fields such as ubiquitous comput-ing, pervasive and proactive computing, ambient computing,embedded computing and smart objects. In addition, thenotion of ambient intelligence is becoming a de facto keydimension of the emerging Information Society, since manynext-generation industrial digital products and services areshifting towards a smart computing environment.

FFooccuuss ooff TThheemmaattiicc AArreeaassWork related to ambient intelligence is concerned with mod-elling and supporting people and their activities, sensing andlocating people and objects, managing and interpreting con-texts, providing awareness and notification, and enablingpeople to interact naturally and intuitively with their envi-ronments via multiple modalities and coupled devices. Addi-tionally, a key issue regarding smart environments is thedelivery of extensible infrastructures with varying intelligentcomputational resources exploiting underlying informationsources, corresponding software platforms and architecturesable to provide and handle intelligent services. The orches-tration and integration of computational elements that com-prise distributed applications serving multiple users, bothmobile and stationary, is another important aspect of ambi-ent intelligence. Relevant applications are expected to pro-vide value-added services via smart artefacts that aresmoothly integrated with the surrounding environment andcan also be accessed remotely in distributed environments.

Potential thematic topics of the SESAMI Working Groupinclude, but are not limited to, the following:• modelling and support of human activity• context models, management and interpretation• sensing paradigms and technology• awareness and notification• tangible, multimodal and implicit interaction• universal access• mobile and stationary artefacts• distribution and orchestration• service infrastructures• multimedia and adaptation• coordination and collaboration• social aspects, reflecting the ‘human in the loop’• security and privacy• applications, eg office/work, home, public spaces, health

care, education and leisure/entertainment.

CCuurrrreenntt AAccttiivviittiieess Two special thematic sessions are to be held as part of the 4thInternational Conference for Universal Access in HumanComputer Interaction (UAHCI), jointly with the 12th Interna-tional Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, on 22–27

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Since its establishment in 1995, the ERCIM Working Group‘User Interfaces for All’ (http://www.ui4all.gr/) has system-atically promoted the Design for All principles in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). The concept of ‘User Interfacesfor All’ involves developing user interfaces for interactiveapplications and e-services that will provide universal accessto interactive applications and services. The activities of theWorking Group have included the organisation of a series ofvery successful workshops, which have helped consolidaterecent work and stimulate discussion in the field. Theseworkshops have brought together researchers from ERCIMinstitutions and other organisations worldwide, who sharethe common aspiration of making the information societyequally accessible to all citizens.



The work of the ERCIM WG UI4ALL led in 2001 to theestablishment of the International Conference on UniversalAccess in Human-Computer Interaction (UAHCI), which ispart of the HCI International Conference series(http://www.hci-international.org/). UAHCI has establishedan international forum attracting participants from a broadrange of disciplines and fields of expertise. Its purpose is tosupport the dissemination and exchange of results of theoret-ical, methodological and empirical research that addressesissues related to the attainment of universal access in thedevelopment of interactive software.

The Working Group has also contributed to the establish-ment of the international, interdisciplinary refereed journal‘Universal Access in the Information Society’ (UAIS;http://www.springeronline.com/journal/10209/about), pub-lished by Springer. UAIS provides an archival publicationchannel for the discussion and advancement of theoreticaland practical aspects of universal access in the informationsociety, and stimulates cross-fertilization between the vari-ous contributing disciplines.

Many members of the ERCIM WG UI4ALL have also con-tributed to the edited book ‘User Interfaces for All – con-cepts, methods and tools’. This is first book to have beendedicated to issues of universal design and universal accessin HCI, and was published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associatesin 2001 (http://www.ics.forth.gr/hci/publications/book.html,ISBN 0-8058-2967-9). It is a collection of thirty chapterswritten by leading international authorities who are affiliatedwith academic, research and industrial organisations andnon-market institutions. It provides a comprehensiveoverview of the state of the art in the field, and includes con-tributions from a variety of theoretical and applied disci-plines and research themes.

Furthermore, the work of the ERCIM WG UI4ALL has con-tributed to the establishment of the International ScientificForum ‘Towards an Information Society for All’ (ISF-IS4ALL; 1997-2000), an international ad hoc group ofexperts who were the first to recognize the need for a globalapproach to an information society that is accessible, usableand acceptable by all citizens (http://www.ui4all.gr/isf_is4all/). Two White Papers have been published in theInternational Journal of Human-Computer Interaction andwere also submitted to the European Commission, reportingon an evolving international R&D agenda in the field ofHCI. Since then, the vision of an Information Society for Alland the necessity for universal access to information societytechnology have acquired widespread acceptance and impor-tance. This is the case not only at a scientific and technolog-ical level, but also at a European policy level, as demon-strated by the eEurope ‘Information Society for All’ initia-tive of the European Commission. The activities initiated bythe ISF-IS4ALL continue in the framework of the ThematicNetwork (Working Group) ‘Information Society for All’(IST-1999-14101 - IS4ALL, http://www.ui4all.gr/isf_is4all/),which has consolidated knowledge on universal access in thecontext of information society technology into a comprehen-sive validated code of design practice. This led to the publi-cation in 2005 by Springer of the edited book ‘UniversalAccess in Health Telematics - A Design Code of Practice’(http://www.springeronline.com/3-540-26167-2, ISBN: 3-

540-26167-2). An online training course in Design for All(http://is4all-tc.ics.forth.gr) has also been developed.

As a result of the twelve years of activities of the UI4ALLWorking Group, the field of ‘Universal Access and Designfor All’ has made significant progress towards consolidatingtheoretical approaches, methods, tools and technologies, aswell as exploring new application domains. The WorkingGroup was the recipient of the ERCIM Working GroupAward in 2000, and can be considered an example of a ded-icated, prolific and successful research and developmentcommunity that has contributed greatly to the establishmentin Europe of a new scientific field.

As of the end of 2006, following the successful 9th Work-shop, the time has come to consider the mission of thisWorking Group fully accomplished. At the same time, theemergence of ambient intelligence is raising new and fasci-nating research challenges, which are rapidly gaining atten-tion from an increasing number of researchers and practi-tioners in Europe and worldwide. The notions of universalaccess and User Interfaces for All are central to this vision,since ambient intelligence aims at providing implicit, unob-trusive interaction by putting people, their social situations,and the corresponding environments at the centre of designconsiderations. These issues will be addressed by the newERCIM Working Group ‘Smart Environments and Systemsfor AMbient Intelligence’ (SESAMI, http://www.ics.forth.gr/sesami/), which was established in 2006 (see article in thisissue). The research community founded by the ERCIMWorking Group UI4ALL will therefore continue its collabo-rative efforts in the context of SESAMI.

Link: http://www.ui4all.gr/

Please contact:Constantine StephanidisICS-FORTH, GreeceERCIM UI4All Working Group coordinatorTel: +30 2810 391741E-mail: [email protected]://www.ics.forth.gr/stephanidis/index.shtml

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The last of the workshops on ‘User Interfaces for All’ washeld in Königswinter (Bonn), Germany, 27-28 September2006. It was locally organised by Michael Pieper from


Fraunhofer-FIT, and built upon the results of the eight previ-ous workshops, the first of which was held in Crete in 1995.Since 2001, the UI4ALL Working Group Workshop hasalternated with the ‘Universal Access in Human-ComputerInteraction’ (UAHCI) conference, which is held every twoyears in the context of the HCI International and affiliatedconferences. In July 2007, Beijing will host the fourthUAHCI conference.

The emphasis of the 2006 event was on ‘Universal Access inAmbient Intelligence Environments’. As a result of theincreasing demand for ubiquitous and continuous access toinformation and services, it is anticipated that informationsociety technology will evolve towards a new paradigmreferred to as ambient intelligence. Such an environment willbe characterized by invisible (ie embedded) computationalpower in everyday appliances and other common physicalobjects, and populated by intelligent mobile and wearabledevices. Ambient intelligence will have a profound effect onthe type, content and functionality of emerging products andservices, and on the way people will interact with them. Thiswill inevitably lead to multiple new requirements for thedevelopment of information society technologies.

In this process, the notion of universal access, which aimstowards the accessibility and usability of Information Soci-ety Technologies by anyone, anywhere and at anytime – iscritically important. The complex networks and interactiv-ity involved in an ambient intelligence environment willpresent a number of challenges for universal access. The 9thERCIM Workshop ‘User Interfaces for All’ thereforefocused on these challenges, envisaging new and diversescenarios of use of ambient intelligence technology, andidentifying critical issues that will have to be addressed dur-ing the development life-cycle of interactive applicationsand services.

The Workshop offered two keynote speeches: ‘FromHuman–Computer Interaction to Human–EnvironmentInteraction: Ambient Intelligence and the DisappearingComputer’ by Norbert Streitz (Fraunhofer IPSI, Germany);and ‘Human Computer Confluence’ by Alois Ferscha (Insti-tut für Pervasive Computing, Johannes Kepler UniversitätLinz, Austria). Twenty-seven long papers and nine posterson topics related to ambient intelligence and universal accesswere presented during the Workshop, which attracted partic-ipation from all over the world.

The official Workshop proceedings will be published bySpringer as part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Scienceseries (LNCS 4397) and will be embedded in the LNCS dig-ital library.

Link: http://www.ui4all.gr/workshop2006/index.html

Please contact:Constantine StephanidisICS-FORTH, GreeceERCIM UI4All Working Group coordinatorTel: +30 2810 391741E-mail: [email protected]://www.ics.forth.gr/stephanidis/index.shtml

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The award consists of a cheque for €5000 together with anaward certificate. The award winner will be invited to thefall ERCIM meetings.

CCoonnddiittiioonnss• nominees must have carried out their work in one of the

'ERCIM countries', currently: Austria, Belgium, CzechRepublic, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary,Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Spain, Sweden,Switzerland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom

• nominees must have been awarded their PhD (or equiva-lent) after 15 April 2004

• a person can only be nominated once for the Cor BaayenAward.

Nominations should be made by a staff member of the uni-versity or research institute where the nominee is undertak-ing research. Self nominations are not accepted. A nomina-tion must be submitted online (see 'Link' below). Deadlinefor nominations is 15 April 2007.

Link:http://www.ercim.org/activity/cor-baayen.html

Please contact: László MonostoriSZTAKI, HungaryERCIM Cor Baayen Award coordinatorE-mail: [email protected]

The 2006 Cor Baayen Award winner Oliver Heckmann receives theaward from ERCIM President Keith Jeffery at a ceremony duringthe ERCIM fall meetings in November 2006. Read about OliverHeckmann's work in the article 'Efficiency and Quality of Service ofInternet Service Providers' in this issue (page 59).



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The training and test images for the competition are from theCoin Images Seibersdorf (CIS) database. This database wascreated as a result of the changeover from twelve Europeancurrencies to the Euro, when large volumes of mixed coincollections collected by charitable organisations had to be

returned properly sorted to the national banks of the originat-ing countries. During an automatic sorting process carriedout at the Austrian Research Centers GmbH - ARC, the CISdatabase with manually verified classification of coin typeswas created.

The training data provided to the participants consists of30000 coins, corresponding to 60000 images (as the frontand back of each coin is imaged). These are divided into 692coin classes with 2270 different coin face classes. There aremore coin face classes than coin classes as some coinschanged their appearance over time, when new coin serieswere issued or designs to mark special occasions were intro-duced.

The task of each participant in the competition was to writea coin classification program and submit it to the organisers.Each program was then run on an unreleased competitiondataset consisting of 10000 coins. Coins belonging to 362 ofthe 692 coin classes in the training data were present in thecompetition dataset, as well as 242 coins not belonging toany of these classes. The latter were to be classified asunknown. To simulate the demand by the national banks thatonly 1 in 10000 coins be classified incorrectly, an incorrectclassification was penalised more heavily than a classifica-tion into the class of unknown coins.

Of the seven initial registrations for the competition, threeprograms were submitted. Two of these ran correctly on thecompetition data. The prize went to Marco Reisert, OlafRonneberger and Hans Burkhardt, University of Freiburg,Germany. Their program classified 9724 of the 10000 coinscorrectly and no coins incorrectly (all others were classifiedas unknown). The algorithm used is based on the analysis ofthe direction of gradient vectors.

More details on the competition, the algorithms submittedand the results can be found on the coin competition web-page. It is also possible to download the training set. Thecompetition dataset, along with coin classifications, will beavailable here soon.

A second MUSCLE CIS Coin Competition is planned totake place in 2007. The details can be found on the coin com-petition webpage.

MUSCLE (Multimedia Understanding through Semantics, Computation and Learning) is a Network of Excellence managed by ERCIM.

Links:MUSCLE NoE page: http://www.muscle-noe.org

MUSCLE coin competition page:http://muscle.prip.tuwien.ac.at/coin_prize_2006.php

Chair of Pattern Recognition and Image Processing, University of Freiburg: http://lmb.informatik.uni-freiburg.de

Seibersdorf Coin Recognition Machine: http://www.smart-systems.at/products/products_image_processing_coin_en.html

Please contact:Allan HanburyTechnical University Vienna, AustriaTel: +43 1 58801 18359E-mail: [email protected]

Michael NölleAustrian Research Centers GmbH - ARC / AARIT, AustriaE-mail: [email protected]

Marco Reisert (centre) receives the prize from competition organi-sers Michael Nölle (left) and Allan Hanbury (right).

Photo: Fraunhofer IPK Berlin.


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The focus of the workshop was on multiphysics simulation,ie the use of different solvers, particularly coupled simula-tion methods mainly using MpCCI (Mesh-based parallelCode Coupling Interface), developed by the FraunhoferSCAI team. MpCCI is the common feature of most of thework presented during the workshop:

• Gerhard Link, Sensor Technology, University of Erlangen,gave a talk on substitute voice by the pharyngeal-esopha-geal segment (PES) and the effect of geometry on voicequality.

• Christoph Müller, CADFEM GmbH - Ansys, presented a"patient-individual dental implant simulation", after brief-ly giving other simulation examples (spine column, boneimplant planning, computation of muscle forces duringbody motions, gait analysis, surgery planning such as jawremodelling, and forced extension of palate).

• JG Schmidt, NEC Research Lab, St Augustin, spoke on"integrated biomedical informatics for the management ofcerebral aneurisms". The multi-centre study involvingmany academic and industrial partners and supported bythe EU is aimed at combining data (genetics, morphody-namics, etc.) for rupture risk assessment.

• Andreas Burblies, Fraunhofer IFAM, Bremen, spoke on"material design for medical applications", the main appli-cation being the orthopedic field. The common goals areweight reduction and structure optimisation using hybridmultiphase structures.

• Johannes Meenen, Abaqus GmbH, gave a presentation onstenting and drug delivery from coated stents. Abaquscontains a standard implicit solver, suitable for slow masstransfer and also used to solve fluid-structure interaction,and an explicit dynamic solver, used when discontinuitiesoccur (contact etc), especially for stent expansion andcatheter retraction.

• Ralf Kröger, Ansys/Fluent, talked on microfluidics, focu-sing on neutral hydrodynamics (as opposed to electrohy-drodynamics). Illustrations on surface tension effects weregiven, as well as on droplet production.

• Friedhelm Schönfeld, Institut für Microtechnik, Mainz, tal-ked on biomicrofluidics (surface-tension-driven liquid flowswhich involve new physics, rarefied gas dynamics, etc) andthe development of a modular chip-based lab platform.

• Jürgen Berieter-Hahn, Institut für Zellbiologie und Neuro-wissenschaft, Center of BioMedical Engineering

(CBME), Frankfurt am Main, introduced the CBME.Decubitus, aneurisms and stent design are the main targetsof research in CBME.

• Klaus Wolf, Fraunhofer SCAI, focused his talk on codecoupling, using the neutral open interface MpCCI tool. Ittreats FSI, aeroacoustics, magnetohydrodynamics etc.

• Marc Thiriet, INRIA, presented numerical results inimage-based models of physiological flows. He demon-strated how helpful computational results can be in medi-cal practice. He also pointed out the main drawbacks ofthe methodology, leading to qualification rather thanquantification. He then talked about modelling strategies,and the ancient version of ‘reductionism’ leading tomodern ‘integrative approaches’ of complex physiologicalsystems.

A half-day session meeting was devoted to the 7FP, in orderto define a proposal skeleton for ICT second calls in 2007.

Please contact: Marc ThirietINRIA, FranceERCIM IM2IM Working Group coordinatorE-mail: [email protected]

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VITALAS (Video & image Indexing and Retrieval in theLarge Scale) is an 'Integrated Project' that will deliver a pro-totype system for accessing professional multimediaarchives. The challenges addressed by VITALAS includecross-media indexing and retrieval, large scale search tech-niques, and visualisation and context adapting. The projectconsortium consists of eleven partners from research organ-isations and industry, including the ERCIM members CWI,Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft and INRIA. The project has anoverall budget of €8 million for three years.

EchoGRID (European and Chinese Cooperation on Grid) isa so-called 'Specific Support Action' to foster collaborationin Grid research and technologies by defining a short-, mid-and long-term vision in the field. A set of thematic work-shops on strategic topics defined by a group of experts willbe organised in the frame of this projects. A researchexchange and fellowship programme will also be set up toencourage the exchange of personnel across countries andinstitutions.

Links:http://www.ercim.org/activity/projects/

Please contact: Bruno Le Dantec, ERCIM officeE-mail: [email protected]


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WW33CC CCeelleebbrraatteess TTeenn YYeeaarrss wwiitthh SSttyylleeTen years ago, on 17 December 1996, W3C published thefirst standard for style on the Web: Cascading Style Sheets(CSS), level 1. CSS Web designers have since enjoyed fine-grain control of page appearance (fonts, colors, layout, mar-gins, etc.) and easier page design and maintenance. CSS canalso help make pages more adaptable to more users, includ-ing users with mobile devices and some users with disabili-ties.

“The design community has confirmed that using CSS, andseparating markup from presentation, promotes beauty whilemaking it easier and less expensive to build sites, ” said Bert

Bos, W3C Style Activity Lead and one of the original co-authors of the specification that became CSS level 1, pub-lished on 17 December 1996.

To celebrate this tenth anniversary, W3C invites developersto propose their favorite CSS designs for the CSS10 Gallery.Bert Bos and Håkon Lie, the other original co-author ofCSS, will select designs for the gallery based on originality,utility, and aesthetics. Proposals are welcome until Decem-ber 2007; we expect to add to the gallery at least oncemonthly. The proposed designs are to be sent [email protected].

In addition, thanks to the efforts of users, developers, andtranslators, W3C has released a new version of the CSS val-idator in time for CSS10.

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conventions differ from one written language to another.CSS supports an increasing number of different typographictraditions and has made significant progress toward beingable to display multilingual documents.

The second benefit is reuse. Style sheets can be shared bymultiple pages, making it easy to update an entire site bychanging a single line of CSS. Because style sheets can becached, this can mean improved performance as well.

CSS promotes accessibility in a number of ways, withoutcompromising design. Separating markup from style enablesaccessibility agents to convey information according to theneeds of users with disabilities. The CSS design strikes agood balance between author and user needs, enabling usersto make use of more pages. Style sheets also reduce depend-ency on using HTML tables for layout, which can be a bar-rier to some users with disabilities using assistive technolo-gies such as screen readers.

A related CSS benefit is easier cross-media publishing; thesame document may be viewed with different devices (fromlarge color monitors to mobile phones to printers) simply byapplying the appropriate style sheet. Software can choose themost appropriate style sheet automatically (as suggested bythe style sheet author), and allow the user to choose fromamong available style sheets to meet that individual's needs.

CSS is commonly used to style HTML and can also be usedwith XML documents as a complement to W3C's XSL.

CCSSSS33 TTaarrggeettss MMuullttiimmeeddiiaa,, MMuullttiimmooddaallCSS has various levels and profiles. In general, desktopbrowsers implement level 1, 2 or 3. Other programs imple-ment the appropriate profile for their platform, whethermobile phone, PDA, television, printer, speech synthesizer,or other device.

CSS level 1 defines properties for fonts, margins, colors, andother tools for style that are common to nearly all profiles ofCSS. An early example of CSS use is the original CSSgallery (written when Microsoft's Internet Explorer 3 addedCSS support). W3C has compiled more CSS history as partof this celebration.

CSS level 2 revision 1 (CSS 2.1) includes all of CSS level 1and adds absolutely positioned elements, automatic number-ing, page breaks, right to left text and other features.

CSS level 3 (CSS3), still in development, promises morepower features at the same time it will make CSS easier toimplement and use. CSS3 includes all of level 2 and addsnew selectors, rich hypertext, more powerful borders andbackgrounds, vertical text, user interaction (e.g., styling ofXForms), speech, rendering on multimedia devices, andmore; see the CSS Working Group charter for details.

Links:CSS10: http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS10/CSS10 Gallery:http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS10/reactions.htmlW3C Style Activity: http://www.w3.org/Style CSS Validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

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The W3C Style home page around 1997 and around 2002.


WW33CC WWoorrkksshhoopp oonn WWeebb ooff SSeerrvviicceess ffoorr EEnntteerrpprriissee CCoommppuuttiinnggW3C is holding a Workshop hosted by MITRE, 27-28 Feb-ruary 2007 in Bedford, MA, USA, to discuss how to facili-tate the processing of business transactions and interactionswith systems that pre-date the Web, and to address the needto interconnect intranet and/or extranet services using Webtechnologies.

The Workshop is free and open to both W3C Members andnon-members. Space is limited and participation may be lim-ited by organisation. Interested parties are required to submitposition papers no later than 10 January 2007.

Link:CfP: http://www.w3.org/2006/10/wos-ec-cfp.html

TThhiirrdd WW33CC WWoorrkksshhoopp oonn IInntteerrnnaattiioonnaalliissiinngg tthhee SSppeeeecchh SSyynntthheessiissMMaarrkkuupp LLaanngguuaaggee ((SSSSMMLL))W3C held its third Workshop on Internationalizing theSpeech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML). The Work-shop was held at International Institute of Information Tech-nology (IIIT) in Hyderabad, India, jointly hosted by BhrigusSoftware and IIIT. As a result, various requirements onSSML extensions for Asian, Eastern European, and MiddleEastern speech synthesis were identified and prioritized.

Link: CfP: http://www.w3.org/2006/10/SSML/cfp.html

MMaarrkkuupp VVaalliiddaattoorr,, LLiinnkkCChheecckkeerr UUppddaatteeddW3C has updated its W3C Markup Validation Service andLink Checker with bug fixes, documentation and usabilityimprovements, and a new Validator API for developers.Along with W3C's other Web Quality Tools, the MarkupValidator and Link Checker are developed as open sourcesoftware with the participation of volunteers and support ofa large community, and are among W3C's most popular anduseful resources.

Links:Validation service: http://validator.w3.org/Link checker: http://validator.w3.org/checklinkW3C Web Quality Tools: http://www.w3.org/QA/Tools/

WW33CC1100 AAssiiaa:: TTeenntthh AAnnnniivveerrssaarryy ooff WW33CC iinn AAssiiaaW3C10 Asia is the celebration of the tenth anniversary of thefounding of W3C's Asian host at Keio University in Japan inSeptember 1996. A public celebration was held on 28November in Tokyo, Japan.

The one-day W3C10 Asia symposium consisted of threepanel discussions with luminaries from Japan and Asiawhose contributions have played a key role in promoting theWeb, ensuring that the Web is open and accessible to every-

one, and helping the Web to reach its full potential in Asia.The program included "Role of W3C at Keio - From Foun-dations to the Future," "How Japanese Industry Works withWeb Standards," "How Asia Will Influence the Future Web,"discussions.

The symposium closed with reflections and projections in adialog with Dr. Jun Murai, Vice-President of Keio Univer-sity, and Tim Berners-Lee, KBE, inventor of the World WideWeb and founder of W3C.

Link:W3C10 Asia: http://www.w3.org/2006/11/W3C10/

LLaatteesstt WW33CC RReeccoommmmeennddaattiioonnExtensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) Version 1.15 December 2006, Anders Berglund

Link:A complete list of all W3C Technical Reports: http://www.w3.org/TR/

Celebrating W3C10 Asia with Sake Breaking Ceremony


In my letter to them as chair of ESFRI, Istate that “Some are evolving projectswhile others need firm financial com-mitments from the start. The role ofESFRI in fostering incubation and stim-ulation will be exercised to bring asmany of these projects to a point wheredecisions by ministers are possible. Thisrequires in the first place, discussionsand decisions at national level in partic-ular as regards the lead role one countryor several countries may wish to take forcertain projects.” This point underlinesthe key role of member states in takingthe initiative. Many external observershave cherished the mistaken belief thatthe roadmap is a list of projects that theEU will fund. The European Commis-sion wishes to aid research and is look-ing at ways of partly funding the costs ofproject set-up or development. How-ever, the vast majority of funding mustcome from member states where theyfeel a particular project should be ofhigh priority. The process of creatingthis document is a remarkable achieve-ment, and demonstrates the truly inter-national perspective of mostresearchers. Nevertheless, a number ofissues had to be put to one side in orderto deliver a document that would becredible and on time.

One that needs further elaboration ishow e-science and computing infra-structure fit with these specific distinctEuropean facilities. Before looking atthe implications of this, it is worthreflecting on what ESFRI was set up todo, what it does not do, how it functionsand how the roadmap was put together.This will highlight clearly the sort ofapproach that needs to be integratedwith the actions of e-IRG (EC e-Infra-structure Reflection Group) and itsfuture aspirations in developing e-sci-ence and supercomputing capability. InFebruary 2002, a high-level expertgroup comprising representatives fromall member states issued a report recom-

mending the creation of ESFRI. Fol-lowing this, M. Busquin wrote to sci-ence ministers of the fifteen memberstates asking for national nominees toattend the Forum and offering opera-tional support from the Commission.

The first meeting took place in April2002. Delegates are appointed for atwo-year renewable term and must havea direct link to funding bodies and deci-sion makers in their respective coun-

tries. In addition, there are observersfrom potential accession and associatecountries, representatives from a num-ber of European organisations, andinvited speakers. This means thatForum meetings can have up to a hun-dred attendees. The Forum's principalobjectives are to support a coherentapproach to developing policy onresearch infrastructure in Europe, andto facilitate multi-lateral discussionsleading to their better use and develop-ment.. The Forum acts as an informalbody on issues raised by one or moredelegations. It does not make decisionson priorities, funding or the ways inwhich research infrastructure is subse-quently managed. ESFRI gives nationalauthorities the opportunity to beinformed of and to explore initiatives

concerning the development or upgrad-ing of research infrastructure in areas ofEuropean significance. In this way ittakes on the role of an incubator.ESFRI is also concerned with otheraspects of research development. Forinstance, it looks at models that haveand could be used for pan-Europeanfunding and management, at suitablemetrics for assessing the value-for-money and socio-economic aspects ofsuch investments, and at how trans-

national opportunities for youngresearchers can best be encouraged. Itbecame apparent in 2004 that a numberof countries – European and non-Euro-pean – were developing long-term (tento twenty year) roadmaps for researchinfrastructure. These showed policymakers and funding bodies the areas inwhich specific research communitiesaspired to develop, and the approximatefunding required. As a result, during theDutch presidency of the EU, ESFRIwas asked to undertake a similar exer-cise, building on national strategieswhere possible.

This was a formidable exercise and hasdominated the activities of ESFRI untilpublication. It was decided that all areasof research should be covered including

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Key challenges facing Europe inthe XXI century: the contributionof Research Infrastructures.


social sciences and humanities. Therewere discussions on how the exerciseshould be undertaken. It was decidedthat three working groups should be setup to investigate specific areas alongtraditional discipline lines. Manyargued for themes such as the environ-ment, pointing out that these cut acrossdisciplines. It was also noted that sev-eral areas of research infrastructure sup-ported more than one discipline.

The modus operandi and criteria arefully outlined in the published roadmap.A number of expert groups reporting tothe working groups were formed andover a thousand researchers took part inthe exercise of analysing proposals.Around two hundred were involved inthe peer review of individual projectsthat were proposed by ESFRI delegatesor recognized European organisations. Iwas delighted by how quickly thereemerged a consensus on the key proj-ects that were considered matureenough to be incorporated onto theroadmap, and the final list was unani-mously approved by the ESFRI dele-gates.

For ease of use by policy makers, theareas of infrastructure were subse-quently listed under key themes(energy, materials science etc). How-ever, these are somewhat arbitrary, anda series of commentaries is thereforeincluded to elaborate on how each areawill contribute to the important chal-lenges facing society. During the con-struction of the roadmap, discussionsstarted with e-IRG and DG-INFSO onthe integration of their developingideas. Initially it was felt that theremight be competition, but with goodchairmanship of e-IRG and an opennessof ESFRI to get things right, e-IRG del-egates attended the Physical Scienceand Engineering working group. Thechair of e-IRG is now permanentlyinvited to the ESFRI meetings.

There is no doubt that the role of e-infrastructure is all pervasive, espe-cially as we move towards remotelydriven experiments. However the rangeof issues is much larger. First, there isthe development of massive Europeandatabases following population studies,future developments in biosciences andso on. This raises several points. Thefirst surrounds archiving, curation andaccess to these data. The second relatesto verification or provenance, which is

a more pressing issue than manyrealise. The question of how to prove aset of data/metadata is true and has notbeen corrupted needs to be activelyaddressed. I often talk about the situa-tion where structural biological datacould be corrupted and subsequentlyused in the design of drugs for fieldtesting. Who will responsible for themillions of euros spent? What about thecost to human lives and to the reputa-tion of the company subsequentlyemploying the results? We do not needto look too far into the recent past to seethat data has been published that isuntrue. How do we check, who is thefinal arbiter? As the volume of pub-lished data increases, the seriousness ofthe situation increases. A third point isthe linking of simulations with the real-time control of experiments. Some ofthe infrastructure areas will result in thedata flows of millions of pixels on near-femtosecond timescales. As the datacomes in it will be necessary to alter theexperimental conditions in similar timeregimes in order to gain maximum out-put from a very expensive plant. Com-puter simulations are required that takein the real data, adapt the models andthen issue instructions to the equipmenton a time scale of which no humanexperimenter can conceive. The neces-sary operating systems, codes and feed-back loops need to be developed toensure that this can take place.

Then we come to the hierarchy of com-puters needed to support such research.How many supercomputers does theEU need? Here we face the dilemma ofjuxtaposing the need for capacity (ie afast number cruncher) with the need formachines designed for specific models.Prof. Tetsuya Sato, the Director-Gen-eral of the Earth Simulator Center inJapan, argues that both are neededwithin physical proximity of a few hun-dred metres. The dedicated machinesdevelop the models which are thenhanded over to the number crunchers. Isthis the right way for Europe? TheESFRI roadmap highlights these issues,but as yet has not resolved them otherthan to say a hierarchy is needed. Theexact words are: “The facility: A Euro-pean strategic approach to high-per-formance computing concentrating theresources in a limited number of worldtop-tier centres in an overall infrastruc-ture connected with associated national,regional and local centres forming a sci-entific computing network to utilise the

top-level machines. This overall archi-tecture will respond both to the Capa-bility (high performance) and CapacityComputing (high throughput) needs.Different machine architectures willfulfil the requirements of different sci-entific domains and applications. Thiscan be represented as a pyramid wherelocal centres would constitute the baseof the pyramid, national and regionalcentres would constitute the middlelayer and the high-end HPC centreswould constitute the top.” The questionthat must now be answered is how bestto develop and implement these ideas insuch a way as to deliver meaningfulsolutions to European society in thefuture.

Link: http://www.cordis.europa.eu/esfri/

Please contact: John Wood, CCLRC, Chair of ESFRIE-mail: [email protected]

ESFRI is very proud to present the firstEuropean roadmap for new, large-scaleResearch Infrastructures, based on an inter-national peer-review.

John Wood.


While in the past Europe has developeda patchwork of nationally-based researchfunding systems, it is increasingly recog-nizing the need to sharpen its focus inR&D, in order to cope with emergingglobal scientific challenges. Europe can-not afford to lose its research talent in aglobal science market and must thereforetake effective action in order to becomea favourite research region for promisingtalent.

TThhee EEuurrooppeeaann RReessppoonnsseeThere is a clear need for a more coherentand effective joint research policy inEurope. Recent decades have alreadywitnessed a gradual transition towardsgreater cooperation, mainly in the con-text of the various FPs. However, a rigor-ous attempt to achieve coordinationbetween cutting-edge European researchprogrammes has so far been missing, andnew initiatives are necessary. The linkingand integration of national research pro-grammes funded by the EU and bynational funds is a potentially powerfulmechanism for revitalizing the ERA, pro-vided such a mechanism aids scientificperformance and administrative effi-ciency. This requires that R&D organisa-tions maintain a level of independence; inaddition, the coordination of nationalresearch programmes should be transpar-ent and peer-reviewed, and demonstrate aclear value to science. Only if these con-ditions are met will it be possible toattract the best scientists to Europe, as iswitnessed in CERN or EMBL.

TThhee EEuurrooppeeaann PPaarrttnneerrsshhiippssThere are many advantages to a partner-ship among R&D stakeholders inEurope. For instance, it will be able topromote:• the optimal nurture and growth of

excellence • flexible career paths for (young) promi-

sing researchers from all over the world • efficient coordination of research pro-

gramming and funding in Europe, andin other countries

• cross-border cooperation and jointpublications among European scien-tists

• funding of projects and programmeswith European impact and strategicintent (added value)

• scale and scope at the European level,thus strengthening the role of Europein the global arena

• learning from (and making use of)each other´s funding systems (access)

• the creation and strengthening of criti-cal mass for the protection of the via-bility and vitality of 'small disciplines'

• the setting up of a European system forreview, benchmarking and best practice

• better integration between (formerly)Eastern and Western Europe.

Common multilateral R&D activitiesare also necessary for the revival of theERA from a strategic long-range Euro-pean perspective. Even with a EuropeanResearch Council (ERC) established inFP7, frontier, innovative and high-riskresearch will for the next decade tend tobe relatively under-represented in EUfunding. In addition, there is still too lit-tle funding for bottom-up, internationalcooperation in frontier research, sinceFPs are traditionally aimed at strategicresearch in areas of societal or indus-trial priority. Europe must thereforeseek a balanced research policy.

TThhee EEuurrooHHOORRCCss IInniittiiaattiivveessEuroHORCs has developed a rich port-folio of research initiatives to serve theneeds of the scientific community inEurope. These include:• An ongoing dialogue with the Euro-

pean Commission on the modalitiesand tasks of the ERC. This permanentinteraction – in a very constructiveatmosphere – has been of decisiveimportance in shaping the ERC.

• The creation of the EURYI (EuropeanYoung Investigator) scheme, whichserved to scout and facilitate top-level young researchers. This schemehas an excellent reputation and has

laid the foundation for the StartingIndependent Researcher grand sche-me of the ERC.

• The linking of nationally fundedresearch programmes in Europe (suchas Eurocores and Eranets) in order toreduce fragmentation. This scheme haslaid the cornerstones for further coope-ration among research funding agen-cies in Europe. Further, future perspec-tives on new forms of cooperationhave been developed in close collabo-ration with the European Commission.

• Mutual service provision by Europeanresearch councils and institutes in avariety of areas. Examples includejoint initiatives on research infrastruc-tures, stimulation of internationalmobility through Money-Follows-Researcher schemes, development ofcommon ideas on IPR, linking ofdatabases of referees, and develop-ment of common standards for peerreview systems. Many EuroHORCsinitiatives are jointly undertaken withthe operating arm of EuroHORCs, theEuropean Science Foundation (ESF).

In conclusion, EuroHORCs has a boom-ing action agenda, and it is foreseeablethat its role in the ERA will becomeeven more critical in years to come.

Link: http://www.eurohorcs.org/

Please contact: Peter Nijkamp, President NWO, President EuroHORCsE-mail: [email protected]

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The Common European Research Infor-mation Format (CERIF) was developedwith the support of the European Com-mission (EC) in two major phases: from1987-1990 and 1997-1999. It is a stan-dard; technically it is a recommendationby the European Union to its memberstates. Since 2002, care and custody ofCERIF has been handed by the Euro-pean Commission to euroCRIS, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to thepromotion of CRIS (Current ResearchInformation Systems).

The rationale behind CERIF is as fol-lows. Most nation-states maintain pub-licly supported research programmes. Itis realized that public sponsorship ofresearch and development leads towealth creation and improvement in thequality of life. Because public funding isinvolved, it is necessary for there to beappropriate governance, and also for theinformation to be made available to thepublic. Broadly, each nation state has asimilar research process, which involvesstrategic planning, programme announce-ment, a call for proposals, proposal eval-uation and awarding, project result mon-itoring, and project result exploitation.

However, research is international. Aresearch project in country A is likely tobe based on previous research in severalother countries. Many research projectsare now transnational: well-knownexamples include the human genomeand climate change but there are manyothers, especially where expensiveinfrastructure is utilized such as particlephysics or space science. Furthermore,knowledge of the research activity incountry A may influence the researchstrategy – including priorities andresources provided – of country B.

Thus there is a need to share researchinformation across countries, or even

between different funding agencies inthe same country. The information isused by researchers (to find partners, totrack competitors, to form collabora-tions); research managers (to assessperformance and research outputs and

to find reviewers for research propos-als); research strategists (to decide onpriorities and resourcing compared withother countries); publication editors (tofind reviewers and potential authors);intermediaries/brokers (to find researchproducts and ideas that can - withknowledge transfer - be transformed towealth-creation); the media (to commu-nicate the results of R&D in a socio-economic context) and the general pub-lic (for interest).

Within Europe the importance of shar-ing information has long been recog-nised. In the early eighties, the heads ofsome national research funding organi-sations initiated a project namedIDEAS to investigate linking databasesof research information. The follow-onproject EXIRPTS (1987-1989)

extended this – based on the G7 coun-tries - to include USA and Japan. Bothprojects successfully demonstrated: (a)resolution of schema differencesbetween heterogeneous distributeddatabases; (b) translation and distribu-

tion of queries as subqueries to the dif-ferent target systems; and (c) integra-tion of the results of the distributed sub-queries and presentation back to thequeryier. The technology utilized a spe-cially developed protocol, run overemail and file transfer. It should benoted that this was well before theemergence of the World Wide Web.

It is from this work that CERIFemerged, first as a simple standard (notunlike a library catalogue card or thepresent Dublin Core Metadata Stan-dard). It was intended as a dataexchange format, and was based onrecords describing projects, with per-sons and organisational units as attrib-utes. However, it was soon realized thatin practice this CERIF91 standard wasinadequate: it was too rigid in format,

CERIF-CRIS

Finance

HumanResources

Project Management

Publications

Patents

Products

CERIF CRIS can beused to relate theresearch output productto any CERIF entitysuch as project, personor organisational unitor publications.


In the past, the typical profile of leadersin research was that they had to qualifyas scientists following the specificcareer rules of the community, and per-haps also had talent or intuition toeffectively manage intellectual teams ororganisations. Good managementmeans a) providing conditions thatenable employees to fully develop anddemonstrate their potential, and b)preparing decisions and having themimplemented. In recent years it hasbecome evident that academic institu-tions, specifically in the Anglo-Ameri-can world, can benefit from manage-ment potential developed in businessenvironments. The constitutions ofmodern universities (eg as expressed inthe Austrian University Law of 2002)even explicitly foresee the mandate for

employees with backgrounds other thanscience or research (ie business andmanagement) to take leading roles.

Nevertheless, there are some remark-able differences between companiesand educational or research organisa-tions. The most evident is that compa-nies are usually devoted to makingprofits in monetary terms, whereas the‘currency’ of the science community isthe scientific publication. Diggingdeeper into this subject, it turns out thatthere are many more indicators thansimply profit, by which an educationalor research organisation should bemeasured. These include the satisfac-tion and intellectual productivity ofemployees, the culture of the organisa-tion, involvement in networks, the

did not handle repeating groups ofinformation, did not support multiplelanguages and character sets, and didnot represent in a sufficiently rich waythe universe of interest.

In response, a new group of experts wasconvened and CERIF2000 was gener-ated. The latest version (CERIF2006) isdescribed in detail at http://www.euro-cris.org/, with its essential featuresbeing:• it has the concept of objects or enti-

ties such as project, person, or organi-sational unit with attributes

• it supports n:m relationships betweenthem (and recursively on any ofthem) using ‘linking relations’, thusproviding rich semantics includingroles and time

• it is fully internationalized in langua-ge and character set

• it is extensible without prejudicing thecore datamodel, thus providing gua-ranteed interoperability at least at thecore level while not precluding evenricher intercommunication. It is desi-gned both for data exchange (data filetransfer) and for heterogeneous distri-buted query/result environments.

CERIF is now in use in numerousorganisations. One commercial com-pany (uniCRIS AG, http://www.uni-cris.com/) offers CERIF-compatiblesystems and three others have stated thatthey will evolve their system offeringsto do so. The European Science Founda-tion has specified CERIF in its new ITsystem and CORDIS, the EU R&D Website, is evaluating how best to beCERIF-compatible. Several ERA-NETsfunded by the EC use CERIF to allowinteroperation of information onresearch in each member state. The proj-ects IST-World and CISTRANA, bothaimed at providing an overview cata-logue of European research, use CERIF.

Within euroCRIS, an active task groupis developing CERIF and providesadvice on how best to use it. To partici-pate, anyone interested is requested tocontact EuroCRIS.


MMaannaaggiinngg RReesseeaarrcchh aanndd KKnnoowwlleeddggee BBaasseedd OOrrggaanniissaattiioonnssbbyy GGüünntteerr KKoocchh

AAss ccoommppeettiittiioonn ffoorr rreesseeaarrcchh ffuunnddss bbeeccoommeess ttoouugghheerr,, pprrooffeessssiioonnaall mmaannaaggeemmeenntt ooff sscciieennccee aannddRR&&DD ppllaayyss aann iinnccrreeaassiinnggllyy ccrruucciiaall rroollee..

Keith Jeffery

Links: EuroCRIS: http://www.eurocris.orgKeith G Jeffery, Anne Asserson: ‘Sup-porting the Research Process with aCRIS’: http://epubs.cclrc.ac.uk/work-details?w=35466

Keith G Jeffery, Anne Asserson: ‘CRISCentral Relating Information System’:http://epubs.cclrc.ac.uk/work-details?w=35484

Please contact: Keith JefferyCCLRC, UKPresident of euroCRISPresident of ERCIME-mail: [email protected]

Figure 1: The RICARDIS Report, availble athttp://ec.europa.eu/invest-in-research/pdf/download_en/2006-2977_web1.pdf


existence of quality management, andthe ‘production’ of academics for asociety. All these metrics contribute tothe quality, and in the end, to the excel-lence and profile of a research institu-tion. This is usually reflected by rank-ings (eg of universities), which havebecome popular and influential over thelast decade.

In the 1990s, the idea that an organisa-tion may be characterized not only byeconomic performance but also by itspotential in knowledge and know-howwas demonstrated by the definition ofthe role of Chief Knowledge Officer(CKO), first installed at the Scandina-vian insurance company Skandia in1994. This idea, combined with qualitymodels taken over from SoftwareProcess Quality & Maturity as reflectedin standards such as ISO 15504/SPICE,was taken up by R&D managers every-where. The trend was also observed in amajority of large organisations inapplied research, such as the ERCIMmembers VTT, Fraunhofer, SINTEF andARC, all of which are assembled in theEuropean Association of Research andTechnology Organisations (EARTO).

As requested by the European Commis-sion, they constituted a ‘high-level expertgroup’, which recently came up with theRICARDIS report (see Figure 1). In sub-stance, this report is a compendium ofmethods for managing research- andknowledge-based organisations, bothpublic and private. (As the case of Aus-tria proves, even universities haveaccepted such methods of professional

knowledge management and now issuean annual ‘intellectual capital report’).Figure 2 illustrates the importantaspects of management in an R&Dorganisation. This reference modelcombines all the relevant dimensions ofa knowledge organisation in one frame-work and, at least in the German-speak-ing countries, has become a kind ofstandard. In Germany, the governmentis promoting intellectual capital report-ing in order to motivate knowledge-based companies to advertise theirpotential and to make knowledge man-agement a strategic objective.

The ultimate goals of such a ‘Knowledge= R&D Management’ framework are toraise the quality of R&D management,and to put R&D organisations in a posi-tion to become ‘benchmarkable’ by theirown criteria, rather than by rankingsimposed on them from the outside.

It is estimated that already around 500organisations in Europe apply intellec-tual capital reporting and the associatedmanagement methods. There are indi-cations that the EC will soon extend theexisting EU standard in financialreporting (IFRS) through a directiveasking for additional information on theability of an organisation to produce,aggregate and exploit knowledge gener-ated from R&D.

In 2006, ERCIM’s Board of Directorsdecided for the first time to provide anintellectual capital report as an adden-dum to its Annual Report, to be issuedin 2007.

Link: RICARDIS report: http://ec.europa.eu/invest-in-research/pdf/download_en/2006-2977_web1.pdf

Please contact: Günter Koch, execupery @ TechGate /AARIT, AustriaE-mail: [email protected]

Figure 2: The "Standard Model" of aknowledge and researchbased organisation.

Günter Koch

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within designated trade lanes, and forthe flows to be designed in such a wayas to minimize environmental impacts.

If the cargo can be monitored on a real-time basis, additional opportunities toimprove logistics processes becomepossible. Providing subsequent partiesin the supply chain with advance infor-mation on the progress of a logisticalprocess enables those parties to opti-mally plan their operations. In this issueseveral examples are discussed, varyingfrom tracking and tracing of informa-tion to collaborative navigation solu-tions. If we extend the definition oflogistics to include the productionphase at the front end of the chain cou-pled with the treatment of the productsafter they are used, we enter the field ofreverse logistics and closed-loop supplychains. Research in this area focuses onthe possibilities of reusing, refurbish-ing, remanufacturing and recyclingproducts and materials in a sustainableway. European research is at the fore-front of this field and offers manyopportunities for new economic activ-ity. Reverse logistics research is basedon the concept that “there is no waste,all products and materials areresources”, something that fits wellwith the European value system.

Closed-loop supply networks, in whichproducts and carriers can be monitoredover their complete lifetime leads tothe concept of installed base manage-ment. Cars, copiers, computers andmachines, as well as objects such as

TThhee aammbbiittiioonn ooff tthhee EEuurrooppeeaann UUnniioonn iiss ttoo ttaakkee aa lleeaaddiinngg ppoossiittiioonn iinn tthhee wwoorrlldd eeccoonnoommyy.. CCrruucciiaallttoo tthhee bbuussiinneessss pprroocceesssseess tthhaatt ccaann bbrriinngg ssuucchh pprroossppeerriittyy ttoo EEuurrooppeeaann cciittiizzeennss aarree ssuussttaaiinnaabblleettrraannssppoorrtt aanndd llooggiissttiiccss ssyysstteemmss.. SSuucccceessssffuullllyy ddeevveellooppiinngg ssuucchh ssyysstteemmss rreeqquuiirreess aa bbaallaanncceebbeettwweeeenn tthhee tthhrreeee ''PPss'' ooff ssuussttaaiinnaabbiilliittyy – PPllaanneett,, PPeeooppllee aanndd PPrrooffiitt.. TThhiiss iiss nnoott eeaassyy,, ssiinncceettrraannssppoorrttaattiioonn hhaass aa nnuummbbeerr ooff nneeggaattiivvee ccoonnsseeqquueenncceess,, iinncclluuddiinngg ccoonnggeessttiioonn aanndd uunnddeessiirraabblleeeemmiissssiioonnss.. IInn tthhiiss iissssuuee ooff EERRCCIIMM NNeewwss,, sscciieennttiissttss iinn tthhee ffiieelldd ooff ttrraaffffiicc mmaannaaggeemmeenntt,, ttrraannssppoorrttaanndd llooggiissttiiccss ddeemmoonnssttrraattee hhooww mmaatthheemmaattiiccaall mmooddeelllliinngg ccaann hheellpp ttoo ffiinndd tthhee rriigghhtt bbaallaanncceebbeettwweeeenn tthhee 33 ''PPss'' wwhhiillee ccrreeaattiinngg aa ssuussttaaiinnaabbllee ffuuttuurree ffoorr tthhee ttrraannssppoorrtt aanndd llooggiissttiiccss sseeccttoorr.. TThheerroollee ooff iinnffoorrmmaattiioonn tteecchhnnoollooggyy iiss aallssoo ddiissccuusssseedd,, ssiinnccee iitt iiss iinnccrreeaassiinnggllyy iimmppoorrttaanntt iinn pprroovviiddiinnggtthhee iinnffrraassttrruuccttuurree ffoorr mmoonniittoorriinngg ttrraaffffiicc aanndd llooggiissttiiccss ssyysstteemmss,, ffoorr hhaannddlliinngg ccoolllleecctteedd iinnffoorrmmaattiioonnaanndd ffoorr pprroovviiddiinngg tthhee aallggoorriitthhmmss aanndd mmeetthhooddss nneecceessssaarryy ttoo aannaallyyssee tthhee llaarrggee aammoouunnttss ooff ddaattaatthhaatt aarree nnooww aavvaaiillaabbllee..

First, consider the possibilities of usingdifferent devices for sensing logisticflows. Passive RFID-tags (radio fre-quency identification tags) mounted oncargo allow the flow of goods to bemeasured every time the cargo passesan RFID reading device. By usingactive RFID tags combined with GPRSdevices, cargo flows can even be fol-lowed continuously. The information

stored in the tag typically includes thetype of product, the producer, theplanned destination, the consignee andso on. During the transport process thisinformation can be used to optimize theflow of goods, for security controls bycustoms at transshipment points and forsorting goods with similar destinationsinto combined shipments. This allowssafe and secure flows to be created

IInnttrroodduuccttiioonn ttoo tthhee SSppeecciiaall TThheemmee

TTrraaffffiicc PPllaannnniinngg aanndd LLooggiissttiiccssbbyy JJoo vvaann NNuunneenn

Special Theme: Traffic Planning and Logistics

Screenshot of TRAFMON, a tool for interactive traffic moni-toring (see article on page 51). Information technology isbecoming evermore crucial in providing the infrastructurefor monitoring traffic and logistics.

Links:http://www.euro-online.org/ http://www.rsm.nl/department1

Please contact: Jo van NunenRSM Erasmus University RotterdamThe NetherlandsE-mail: [email protected]


tyres or lamps, can be monitored in realtime. Processes such as repair andreuse can be triggered by the actual sta-tus of the installed product, whichcould even lead to a control shift “fromtracking and tracing to sensing andpacing”. As a consequence of this,work is needed on the phenomena ofdemand-driven and distributed control.Often virtual agent-based approachescan be used for this type of application.Within logistics research we are there-fore seeing a shift from the solution ofplanning problems to online controlapproaches for which new models mustbe developed.

The problem of monitoring the flow ofgoods has many similarities to the mon-itoring of traffic and passenger flows.Personal mobile phones enable interac-tions between users of traffic infrastruc-ture. Navigation systems with two-waycommunication, already common intruck transport, will be introduced forpassenger transport. This will enable usto design intelligent transport systemsthat provide users with customized routeselection choices in order to capturetheir preferred balance between Planet,People and Profit. Road-pricing andrewards for avoiding rush hour peaks

Cargo flow can be followed continuouslywith an active RFID tag combined withGPRS devices.

can be dynamically incorporated in thesecustomized systems. The models used inthese cases incorporate multiple criteriain making decisions.

The navigation systems of the nearfuture will use real-time information onroad congestion based on mobile phoneinformation from telecom operators.Using this information effectivelyrequires that new methods be developedin order to forecast congestion, andresearch continues into advanced statis-tics-based methods for these types ofapplications. Further innovations inportable navigation systems will allowmulti-modal transport solutions to beconstructed, incorporating bike, bus,train and/or taxi in one trip and allowingusers to select sustainable solutions tomeet their needs.

At an aggregated level, the use of real-time information from all users of theinfrastructure will lead to new forms ofdynamic traffic management.

It is a challenge for us as researchers inthis innovative field to contribute to thesedevelopments. In this issue of ERCIMNews, you will read about a wide rangeof responses to this challenge.

Pho

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A new railway timetable was introducedin the Netherlands on December 10,2006. This timetable is cyclic andinvolves both passenger and freighttrains. One hour of the new timetablebetween the cities Gouda and Utrecht isshown in Figure 1. In this paper wedescribe several combinatorial optimi-sation models that were developed forgenerating cyclic timetables. Thesemodels played an indispensable role inthe planning process of the new Dutchtimetable.

CCyycclliicc TTiimmeettaabblleeSchrijver and Steenbeek (CWI) devel-oped a model for generating the basicstructure of a cyclic timetable. Theirmodel assumes that the infrastructureand the line system are given, as well asthe connections for passengers or rollingstock that have to be realized betweencertain lines at certain stations. More-over, for all processes in the timetable(like running between stations, andheadways between trains), minimumand/or maximum process times aredefined. The model then looks forappropriate departure and arrival timesfor all trains at the corresponding sta-tions.

The problem of generating the basicstructure of a cyclic railway timetablecan be described as a Periodic EventScheduling Problem. It can be repre-sented by a directed constraint graph,where the nodes are the departure andarrival times and the arcs are theprocesses between the departure andarrival times.

The Periodic Event Scheduling Problemcan be solved by applying constraintpropagation techniques. These tech-niques are adequate if the railway infra-structure is utilized intensively, as is thesituation in the Netherlands. In that case,having fixed certain well-chosen partsof the timetable, the remaining solutionspace for the rest of the timetable issmall, resulting in relatively short com-putation times.

RRoouuttiinngg TTrraaiinnss tthhrroouugghh SSttaattiioonnssIn the first timetabling step, the stationsare considered more or less as blackboxes: the details of the routes of thetrains through the stations are consid-ered only in an aggregated way. There-fore, in a second step, it must bechecked in detail whether, given thearrival and departure times that weregenerated in the first step, the trains canbe routed through the stations and allo-cated to platforms.

The problem of routing a set of trainsthrough a station can be solved by first

listing for each train the feasible routesthrough the station. Next, each combi-nation of a train and a feasible route canbe represented by a node in a graph.Two nodes are connected by an edge ifthey belong to the same train, or if thecorresponding combinations of trainsand routes are conflicting. The routingproblem thus reduces to the problem offinding a maximum weighted nodepacking in this graph.

This weighted node packing problemcan be solved by applying the commer-cial mathematical programming opti-



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Figure 1: One hour of the new timetable between Gouda (Gd) and Utrecht (Ut).

Figure 2: A platform allocation chart for tracks 7 to 11 in Gouda.

mizer CPLEX, after several pre-pro-cessing techniques have been appliedfor reducing the size of the graph. Fig-ure 2 shows part of the platform alloca-tion chart for Gouda station in the newtimetable.

RRoobbuussttnneessssIn the first timetabling steps, it isassumed that the process times in thetimetable are deterministic. However,the real-time process times in the oper-ations are stochastic. The robustness ofthe timetable against small disturbancescan be improved by optimally allocat-ing time supplements and buffer timesin the timetable.

This optimisation can be supported bya stochastic optimisation model thatconsiders the processes both outsideand inside the stations. The modelmodifies an initially given cyclictimetable and, at the same time, evalu-ates the modifications by simulatingthe trains in the timetable under sto-

chastic disturbances. The aim is to min-imize the average delay of the trains.This model can be considered as a sym-biosis of an optimisation model and asimulation model.

CCoonncclluussiioonnssThe models described here were usedintensively in the development of theDutch timetable for 2007. The sameholds for the multi-commodity flowmodel that was developed for planningthe corresponding rolling stock circula-tions and for the set-covering modelthat was developed for generating thecrew schedules.

Altogether, mathematics played anindispensable role in the generation ofthe new timetable, the rolling stock cir-culation and the crew schedules. Themathematical models allowed severalscenarios to be generated, and explicittrade-offs to be made between conflict-ing optimisation criteria. This leads to ahigher overall quality of the plans, as

well as to a reduction of the lead-timeof the planning process.Currently, we are investigating whetherthese models can also be applied to sup-port real-time control processes. Thatis, how can plans be adapted in the caseof a real-time disruption of the railwaysystem such that the passenger serviceremains as good as possible? Here thetime needed for computing appropriatesolutions is more important than near-optimality of the solutions: heuristicmethods will be required.

Links:http://www.ecopt.nlhttp://www.cwi.nl/pna1 http://www.ns.nl

Please contact:Leo KroonNS Reizigers, Utrecht and ErasmusUniversity Rotterdam, the NetherlandsTel: +31 30 2356658 or +31 10 4082421E-mail: [email protected]


RRaaiillyyaarrdd SShhuunnttiinngg:: AA CChhaalllleennggee ffoorr CCoommbbiinnaattoorriiaall OOppttiimmiissaattiioonnbbyy PPeerr KKrreeuuggeerr aanndd MMaarrttiinn AArroonnssssoonn

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Sweden’s largest rail cargo operator,Green Cargo, performs mainly threetypes of cargo transport: postal servicesconsisting of fast point-to-point trans-ports; system train services dedicated tolarge flows for particular customers; andwagon-load services. Railyard shuntingoccurs mainly for the third type.

In the wagon-load system, individualwagons are routed from point to pointthrough a rail network generally consist-ing of five shunting yards of varying

sizes throughout Sweden. Wagons aretransported in trains that are assembledand disassembled at the shunting yards,each of which typically handles three orfour incoming trains per hour. The flowof wagons through the network variesfrom day to day depending on demand.

RRaaiillyyaarrdd SShhuunnttiinnggAt the shunting yard, incoming trainsare scheduled to arrive at fixed times butcan use the entry group as a buffer andpreparation area. Each incoming train is

Figure 1: Schematic topography of a simple shunting yard.

pushed over the barrier, where wagonsare separated and roll down to the shunt-ing group. Here switches are operated soas to distribute the wagons to a numberof destination tracks. Figure 1 shows thelayout of the medium-sized shuntingyard.

There are several limited resources atthe shunting yard:• the entry group must be able to

accommodate all incoming trains• the barrier has a fixed capacity in

terms of wagons per hour• the shunting group limits the number

of trains that can simultaneously beassembled.

Under ‘normal’ operation, a uniquedeparting train is assembled at each des-tination track and departs at a predeter-mined time. In practice, this is notalways feasible, since the capacity of the

shunting group is in most cases toosmall for peak hour loads. To handlethis, temporary trains are assembled androuted back to the entry group for re-shunting. This solution, however, leavesus with the following two considera-tions: which wagons should be com-bined into a temporary train, and whenshould this be routed back to the entrygroup and re-shunted?

RReessoouurrccee CCoonnssiiddeerraattiioonnssWe note that without temporary trains,the flow from incoming trains to outgo-ing trains is fixed. Figure 2 shows asmall example of a typical flow and thecorresponding Gantt chart and resourceusage histogram.

With temporary trains, wagons destinedfor distinct departing trains may berouted to a single temporary train toreduce the capacity utilisation of shunt-

ing group. In order for this to be feasi-ble, there must be sufficient time to thescheduled departure of each wagon toallow it to be re-shunted. The entrygroup and barrier must also be able toaccommodate the corresponding addi-tional tasks. Figure 3 shows the originalflow, the modified flow with an addi-tional temporary train and the resultingreduction in track resource utilisation.

AA TTeennttaattiivvee SSoolluuttiioonnOne possible model is to use a multi-commodity flow model as follows.Encode the destination train of eachwagon as its commodity and allowincoming wagons to flow either directlyto their destination or to a temporarytrain.

An outgoing train has potential inflowsfrom each incoming train containingwagons destined for it and from all tem-

porary trains. Temporary trains haveindividual flow conditions for eachcommodity. For each incoming trainand commodity the sum of flowsdirectly to the destination and to thetemporary trains must be equal to thattransported by the train. For each out-going train the sum of flows fromincoming and temporary trains mustequal that transported by the train.

The scheduling constraints are aug-mented with tasks for each potentialtemporary train. Departure and durationfor such tasks are constrained by thetransferred commodities. Flow throughtemporary trains is restricted by the lat-est departure, which is in turn con-strained by transferred commodities.

The model is implemented as a con-straint program enforcing the multi-commodity flow conditions and sched-uling constraints. In addition, the solverensures that at any given time, at mostone temporary train can be active.

PPrreelliimmiinnaarryy RReessuullttssTrial runs have been performed usingreal case data from a number of actualshunting sites in Sweden. For each suchcase the expected arrival and departuretimes were used. A small number ofpotential temporary trains with largearrival and departure time windows wasintroduced. The original flows in thecase data were relaxed to allow eachwagon to either flow directly to its des-tination or to a temporary train, whichin turn has possible flows to each out-going train.

For one temporary train and eight out-going trains, correct solutions are com-puted in the order of seconds and for upto three temporary trains and on theorder of forty outgoing trains, correct



Figure 2: Flow and resource allocation for a case without temporary trains.

Figure 3: Flow and resource allocation for a case with temporary trains.

Figure 4: Sävnäs shunting yard without and with temporary trains.

solutions are computed in the order ofminutes.

Figure 4 shows the resulting scheduleswithout and with temporary trains. Theupper parts are Gantt diagrams of thearrival group (green), barrier (violet)and shunting group tracks (orange).The lower parts show histograms of thenumber of shunting-group trackssimultaneously being occupied bytrains. In the right part of the figure,temporary trains are represented byblue bars. Note how the histogram is

spread out (levelled) in time at the costof a slightly higher load on the entrygroup and barrier resources used for re-shunting.

CCoonncclluussiioonnssThe proposed model is quite tentativeand despite the fact that so far it hasscaled fairly well, it is not clear thatconstraint programming is the bestapproach to solve this type of problem.Local search heuristics or an integerprograming model may in the end turnout to be more practical. It has also been

pointed out to us that the problem hascertain similarities with register alloca-tion problems in compiler design.

Link:http://www.sics.se/iam/

Please contact: Martin Aronsson and Per KreugerSICS, SwedenTel: +46 8 6331500E-mail: [email protected] [email protected]


TThhee AArrtt ooff SSttaacckkiinnggbbyy MMaarrttiinn AArroonnssssoonn aanndd PPeerr KKrreeuuggeerr

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Large container ports around the worldare major hubs in the global cargo trans-port system. Efficient management ofresources in and around a port is essen-tial since investments in port facilities,vessels and support systems are substan-tial.

SICS has performed a pilot study toinvestigate how the efficiency of portoperations could be improved. The cho-sen focus was on the container stacks.SICS developed a general model for thehandling of the stacks as stores, a simpledemonstration that uses and comparestwo implementations with differentproperties.

A container stack is a type of temporarystore where containers await furthertransport by truck, train or vessel. Themain efficiency problem for an individ-ual stack is to ensure easy access to con-tainers at the expected time of transfer.Since stacks are ‘last–in, last–out’, andthe cranes used to relocate containerswithin the stack are heavily used, thestacks must be maintained in a state thatminimizes on-demand relocations.

SSttaacckkiinngg PPrroobblleemm RReeqquuiirreemmeennttss aanndd OObbjjeeccttiivveeLoading and offloading containers onthe stack is performed by stack cranes.In order to access a container which isnot at the top of its pile, those above itmust be relocated. This reduces the pro-

ductivity of the cranes. Figure 2 shows ascheme of a port indicating the resourcesinvolved.

Maximizing the efficiency of this processleads to several requirements. First, eachincoming container should be allocateda place in the stack which should be freeand supported at the time of arrival. Sec-ond, each outgoing container should be

easily accessible, and preferably close toits unloading position, at the time of itsdeparture. In addition, the stability ofthe stack puts certain limits on, forexample, differences in heights in adja-cent areas, the placement of empty and‘half’ containers and so on.

The objective of this work is therefore toplan the movement of the cranes so as to

Figure 1: Stack cranes are tight resources in the port.

fulfil these requirements with a minimumnumber of movements and/or a minimalwaiting time for vehicles and vessels.

MMeetthhooddss ffoorr BBaattcchh RReellooccaattiioonn ooff CCoonnttaaiinneerrssAssuming that each outgoing containerin the stack has a fixed departure time, apriority can be assigned to each con-tainer. This is essentially the duration indays to its departure.

The following two sections describe twomodels developed in the pilot study. Thefirst is a constraint programming (CP)model that characterizes the desirableproperties of a solution to the relocationproblem; the second is a heuristic wherethe properties of desirable states areinstead captured by a more sophisticatedcost function than that used in the CPmodel.

TThhee CCoonnssttrraaiinntt MMooddeellThis model formulates a number of hardconstraints which limit the search for animproved goal state. That is, it formu-lates the properties of a ‘sufficiently’desirable goal state and then searchesfor a sequence of moves that will takethe stack in a direction of such a state.These constraints are:• feasibility - any allocation must be

supported, i.e. stand directly on theground or on top of another container

• consistency - only one container canbe allocated to each position at anygiven time

• priority - all piles should be sorted sothose highest priority containers arealways on top of lower or equal prio-rity containers.

When searching for sequences ofmoves to achieve such a state, only con-tainers with the highest priority andcontainers above them are consideredfor moving.

With the addition of a simple cost func-tion, priority can be given to movesthat tend to take the containers towardsthe ‘right’ area of the stack, clear anarea where we expect incoming con-tainers, and/or are quick or ‘cheap’ toperform.

LLooccaall SSeeaarrcchhThe method is a ‘greedy’ algorithm thatcould easily be incorporated into a moregeneral local search mechanism but canalso, as in the cases considered in thepilot study, be used directly to improveany given stack configuration.

Let the penalty of a single pile be aweighted sum of its ‘unsortedness’, thedistance of each container in the pilefrom its ideal x,y-position in the stackand, finally, the distance in its z-posi-tion from its ideal z-position. Then, ineach iteration:• choose the pile with the worst contri-

bution to the penalty• compute the best new placement for

the top container of that pile• if this improves the overall penalty,

perform the move and iterate• if not, choose the second worst pile

etc• when no more improving moves can

be found, terminate.

The method is quite sensitive to theexact weights assigned to each factor in

the penalty function and, especially forstack configurations with close to fullallocation, can easily get stuck in localminima.

RReessuullttssUsing the ideas described above, thestudy showed that, even using compar-atively simple methods from localsearch and constraint programming, wecould reduce the total penalty for typi-cal stacks by 10-50% depending on, forexample, the degree of utilisation of thetotal stack capacity.

Since the allocation of positions to con-tainers is currently done more or lessmanually, this has convinced us that itshould be possible to achieve signifi-cant improvements of lead times, stor-age utilisation and throughput usingimproved techniques of the type indi-cated. Even though the pilot study wasbased on rather simplistic models,which didn’t take into account factorssuch as stack stability or container con-tent, we are confident that improvingthe management of the container stacksin a more realistic setting would alsoyield significant improvements in sev-eral of the most important measures oftranshipment efficiency.

Link:http://www.sics.se/iam/

Please contact: Martin Aronsson and Per KreugerSICS, SwedenTel: +46 8 6331500E-mail: [email protected],[email protected]



Figure 2: A scheme of a port, wherelarge cranes load and offload cargofrom the vessels, unmanned vehiclestransport the individual containers bet-ween stacks and vessels, and stack cra-nes are used to load the containersboth onto the stacks and from thestacks onto trucks.

The basis of freeway control is a math-ematical description of traffic flow thatincorporates as many traffic character-istics as possible. We first summarizedand analysed existing models, andfound the second-order macroscopictraffic model to be the most accurateand appropriate for our aims. Thismodel is based on the analogy betweenfluid mechanics and traffic behaviour,and this can be extended to include spe-cial traffic phenomena such as conges-tion. The model works with the trafficvariables of density, flow and spacemean speed. Although the model equa-tions are precise, there are severalunknown parameters that must be prop-erly tuned in order to achieve the bestperformance.

MMooddeell CCaalliibbrraattiioonnWe modelled a 4.5 kilometre stretch ofa Hungarian freeway with on-rampsand off-ramps and with different geo-metric properties (ie slope, rising,curves). This allowed us to study theeffects of these road properties on thetraffic flow. These are reflected in thevalues of the above mentionedunknown parameters. We studied thedetermination of the parameters, andworked out three different methods.

The first method is a classical traffic-engineering approach: based on themeasurement data, calculate the param-eters using the theory of nonlinear kine-matic waves. The second is a classicalsystem-engineering approach: based onthe measurement data, identify theparameters with nonlinear optimisationtheory. Both these methods gave similarresults.

During optimisation we also analysedthe scope of the model equations. Thestate limitation of the model was foundto be half a kilometre, so our observedsection of freeway can be divided intosegments. These can be described withequations and then connected to each

other according to the boundary rela-tions indicated in the equations.

FFrreeeewwaayy ttrraaffffiicc eessttiimmaattoorrBy determining the parameters, we get acompact nonlinear state-space represen-tation of the stretch of freeway. Basedon this, algorithms can be developed toimprove the capacity of highways. Ourmain idea was the following: the infor-mation provided by traffic flow detec-tors on freeways is limited to theirinstallation locations. In order to acquire

information about conditions betweendetectors, a freeway traffic estimator isnecessary. Since the model equationsare highly nonlinear, we chose a well-known nonlinear estimation techniqueto do this: the Extended Kalman Filter.Our freeway traffic estimator estimatesthe states – the traffic variables – of eachfreeway segment, by modelling thenoise actuating on the process and dis-turbing the measurements. The estima-tor uses real measurement data collectedby inductive loop detectors located atthe beginning and end of the examinedsection, and the simulation is evaluatedby comparing the estimated variableswith real data gathered from a 'control'loop detector located in the middle of

the 4,5 km long section. The resultsshow good state estimation under bothnormal and changing conditions.

The main drawback of these parameterdetermination methods is that in realtraffic, the parameters (and the noisevariance) can vary in time and space.Consequently, using constant parametervalues is an oversimplification. Toovercome this we extended our estima-tor to give parallel estimation of param-eter values and to allow the parameters

to vary. This also gives significantlymore information about traffic condi-tions; for example, sharp changes indi-cate an incident (see figure).

Several applications can now be devel-oped based on this dynamic model andwith the usage of the traffic estimator.In our research we designed a newAutomatic Incident Detection algo-rithm to perceive accidents that haveoccurred on freeways. Our methodworks with the estimated variables andchecks changes in the speed-curve ofthe section. In this way we can identifyaccidents between detector stationswith an accuracy of 500 metres. Thealgorithm was successfully tested with


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Estimation ofimportant modelparameters.

real data. We also drafted the principlesof freeway control strategies and simu-lated them with our model.

Our further research will focus on:• correction of our dynamic model• the application of LPV (Linear Para-

meter Varying) technique to modeltraffic flow

• MHE (Moving Horizon Estimation)estimation of traffic variables

• adaptive filtering techniques to allowchanging noise variance

• developing coordinated freeway con-trol including ramp metering and theusage of variable speed limits

• testing the developed systems in realtime.

Traffic control design is one of the maintasks of the long-term project ‘AdvancedVehicles and Vehicle-Control Knowl-edge Centre’, managed by SZTAKI,Systems and Control Laboratory incooperation with the Department ofControl and Transport Automation at

the Budapest University of Technologyand Economics.

Links: http://www.sztaki.hu/sclhttp://www.ejjt.bme.hu

Please contact:Tamás Luspay and István VargaSZTAKI, HungaryTel: +36 1 279 7266; +36 1 279 6227E-mail: [email protected];[email protected]



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Traffic in Western or developed coun-tries is characterized by a variety ofmotorized vehicles such as cars, buses,trucks and motorcycles. This differsfrom the situation in developing coun-tries, which have diverse mixes ofmotorized and non-motorized vehicles,including bicycles, cargo tricycles andhuman- and animal-drawn carts (seeFigures 1a and b). Control methods canalso vary widely (Figure 1c), andtogether with the traffic mix, stronglyinfluence urban network flows.

Traffic growth forecasts for Ireland forthe period 2002-2040, made by theNational Roads Authority (NRA), predictdramatic increases in both LGVs (carsand Light Goods Vehicles combined) andHGVs (Heavy Goods Vehicles). With

large traffic volumes, breakdown of traf-fic flow is likely to occur, particularly onsingle-lane roads where all vehicles –regardless of whether they are turning orcontinuing on – wait in a single queue.(For example, see Figure 1c, depicting alocal roundabout where few vehicles canbe accommodated at any one time.)Nonetheless, most European cities stillrely to some extent on single-lane con-nections to major arterial routes.

Our aim is to address questions relatingto the effect of long vehicles on theoperation of single-lane junctions androundabouts. Field observations on traf-fic patterns can be difficult and time-consuming to obtain, meaning computersimulation models offer a viable alterna-tive for in-depth study and can aid

understanding of traffic dynamics. Inthis context, cellular automata (CA)have emerged as an efficient tool inmodelling traffic flow at the individualunit level. Cellular automata approachesare based on discretisation of the contin-uous variables that describe the trafficflow, in order to define simple vehiclemovement rules.

TTwwoo--CCoommppoonneenntt CCeelllluullaarr AAuuttoommaattaa((22--CCAA)) MMooddeell ffoorr HHeetteerrooggeenneeoouussMMoottoorriizzeedd TTrraaffffiiccIn this study, heterogeneous motorizedtraffic flow is modelled at a single-lanejunction and roundabout using 2-CA. Thestate of a road is described in terms of aset of linked cells occupied by at most oneparticle, corresponding to a standard carof length less than or equal to 7.5 metres.

Figure 1: Typical traffic in the developing and developed worlds. For example, from left, (a) India;(b) Ireland; (c) a local roundabout.

For simplicity, a long vehicle (LV) istaken to be double the length of a stan-dard car (ie two cells are required for oneLV). Thus, a short vehicle (SV) is under-stood to have a length of one cell, whilean LV has a length of two. Both SV andLV will move exactly one cell in the nexttime step if the cell in front is vacant. Forintersection and roundabout manoeuvres,an LV requires two time steps and an SVone time step to complete the manoeuvrefrom entry road onto the intersection orroundabout without causing interruptionto flow. The model requires informationsuch as length of entry roads, arrival rate,proportion of each vehicle type, turningrate and simulation time. In this approach,the developed models have been testedwith local field data collected manuallyby Dublin City Council.

SSiimmuullaattiioonnss ffoorr RRooaadd CCoonnffiigguurraattiioonnssThe purpose of the study is to ascertainthe effect of long vehicles in the trafficmix on the throughput of signalized

intersections and roundabouts. Figures2 and 3 illustrate some results at differ-ent types of intersections for varyingarrival rates (AR).

Based on these results, a number ofpoints can be made:• With arrival rates taken to be equal on

all entry roads, average overallthroughput increases with arrival rate(AR) for homogeneous cases (SVtraffic only) up to a critical AR.However, on increasing the proporti-on of LVs, this critical value is lowe-red significantly. In all cases (ie T-intersections, crossroad intersectionsand roundabouts), average throughputis reduced dramatically for large pro-portions of LVs (see Figure 2).

• An increasing number of LVs in exi-sting traffic streams is expected toworsen the already severe congestionproblems present in many cities.From data collected by Dublin CityCouncil, the approximate percentage

of LVs is currently around 6%, crea-ting roughly a 12% fall in capacitycompared to homogeneous traffic.

• When a network is already operatingclose to capacity (eg in peak hours),any increase in the proportion of LVsleads to severe bottlenecking and, inextreme cases, gridlock.

• In the simple model described here,additional factors such as longerstart-up times are not specificallyincorporated, but would also add todelays caused by LV manoeuvres.

• Even simple models can give reaso-nably good agreement with real data.

• It is clear that investigations into thenature and impact of long vehicles inexclusively single-lane traffic arevital to understanding urban flows.Such shared roads constitute bottlen-ecks and dictate feeder traffic flow tolarger arterial routes; the proportionof LVs in the local traffic has a signi-ficant impact on this.

• Only one type of LV is consideredhere. Clearly, very large buses andtrucks will have a different impact onroad capacity.

The results of this research suggest thatin the case of busy single-lane junctionsand roundabouts, restrictions on LVmovement will improve throughput tosome extent. In the situations studiedhere, the primary justification for ban-ning LVs is capacity and throughputrather than safety.

FFuuttuurree WWoorrkkStudies to date have led to a computa-tionally efficient way of modelling het-erogeneous (binary SV:LV mix) motor-ized traffic flow. Future work willexplore vehicular behaviour and othertypes of LV for a variety of road geome-tries.

Links: http://www.springerlink.com/content/274846j686gg0426/

http://www.n3.ie/Transportation/DownloadableDocumentation/file,862,en.PDF

Please contact:Puspita DeoDublin City University, IrelandE-mail: [email protected]

Heather J. RuskinDublin City University, IrelandE-mail: [email protected]


Figure 3: Model validation (comparison of observed and simulated traffic data).

Figure 2: Changes in

throughput due toLV:SV mix in

through traffic (from top):

(a) T-intersection; (b) crossroad inter-

section; (c) roundabout.



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At the Istituto per le Applicazioni delCalcolo (IAC-CNR) in Rome, we havebuilt a simulation tool reproducing thebehaviour of traffic within a road net-work. The simulator prototype candescribe the evolution of traffic overtime, assigning as input data the initialand boundary conditions on the roadscomprising the network, and taking inter-actions at junctions into consideration.One of the strengths of this tool is the lowlevel of information needed to detect theload on the whole network. This is partic-ularly important for urban traffic control,since actual traffic measurements rely oninstruments placed at specific points inthe network, typically measuring averagefluxes per minute or similar.

There are many motivations for thestudy of traffic problems, includingtown planning, investment support, andreduction of congestion, car accidentsand pollution. However, modelling traf-fic is a non-trivial task, and traffic jamsin particular are difficult to reproduce.

Vehicular traffic can be treated by dif-ferent models. We focus on macroscopicfluid-dynamic models, since they mimicphenomena such as the creation ofshocks and their backward propagationalong roads. Our reference mathemati-cal model is based on conservation lawsand represents an extension to road net-works of the classical LWR model(Lighthill-Whitham-Richards) for a sin-gle road. A road network is a finite set ofroads that are modelled by intervals andconnected to each other by junctions. Itis schematized as an oriented graph,where roads are modelled as arcs andjunctions as nodes.

From a numerical point of view, thealgorithm is based on approximationmethods such as the Godunov schemeand kinetic schemes with suitableboundary conditions at junctions. It hasbeen applied to sample cases and to a

variety of real sections of urban net-works such as bottlenecks, traffic circlesand intersections (see Figures 2 and 3).We have investigated the numericalvalidity of the approximation algorithm.It has proven to be very fast, providingsolutions on networks with a few thou-sands arcs in less than a second of CPUtime on a PC, with ten discretizationpoints per arc.

We then tested the model’s effectivenesson the whole road network of the city ofSalerno. Using the simulation tool weconstructed an algorithm that wouldtrace the position of a car moving into aroad network, and give an estimate ofthe time taken to traverse its route. Wealso ran tests to reproduce the effects of

traffic jams on the trajectory of a singlecar (Figure 3). In this way, an optimalpath can be calculated through a loadednetwork, taking into account the evolu-tion of traffic over the whole network.

The fast numerical algorithms describedabove render the relative optimisationproblem treatable. Furthermore, via theacquisition of experimental data meas-ured by sensors located along roads(courtesy of Atac S.p.a. in Rome), wedeveloped a procedure for calibratingtraffic parameters on a segment of urbannetwork in the centre of the city of Rome(Figure 4). This procedure is based onthe comparison between measured dataand the simulated solutions produced bythe algorithm, and gives a percentageerror of around 19% in the congestedperiod. This is comparable with the aver-age measurement errors of the sensorsused and is therefore satisfactory.

The visualisation of simulations is pro-vided by online animation. It is also pos-sible to link the information to a GISsystem as shown in Figures 1 and 2.

In the future, we intend to test the cali-bration procedure on whole networks,and to construct a real-time interface forthe automatic representation and visual-isation of density curves. Simulations onthe network of the city of Salerno wereperformed in collaboration with theDepartment of Information Engineeringand Applied Mathematics (DIIMA) atthe University of Salerno.

Links:http://www.iac.rm.cnr.it/~bretti/Fluid-dynamic.htmlhttp://www.iac.rm.cnr.it/~natalinihttp://www.iac.rm.cnr.it/~piccoli

Please contact:Gabriella Bretti, IAC-CNR, ItalyTel: +39 06 88470271E-mail: [email protected]

Figure 3: Car moving towards a congestion point.

Figure 2: A traffic circle – Piazza Re in Rome.

Figure 1: Segment Salerno-Fratte on A3 highway.


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In rail transport, preventive maintenanceis typically planned using fixed intervalsin units of distance travelled and calen-dar time. For practical reasons, mainte-

nance is grouped into packages with thesame interval. An advantage of fixedinterval maintenance is that plans formaintenance can be made in advance

with relative precision at the same timeas vehicle movements are planned. Thisis possible because in theory, the vehiclemovement plan gives the exact con-sumption in calendar time and distancetravelled for a vehicle at any point in thefuture.

The vehicle movement plan is typicallybased on fixed vehicle cycles. Thecycles are laid out in such a way thateach vehicle should be able to pass aworkshop at least as often as the mostfrequent service package requires.Whenever an unplanned service demandoccurs, the operator tries to let the vehi-cle switch routes with another vehicle inorder to get it into the workshop asquickly as possible. After maintenanceof the faulty vehicle, the two vehicleswill typically switch back with eachother again, so as not to disturb the vehi-cle cycles too much.

However, with the introduction of con-dition-based and predictive mainte-nance, the use of predetermined servicepackages and fixed service intervals isno longer appropriate. The drawbacks ofsuch traditional maintenance are that itis inflexible, sub-optimal and – sincemaintenance is often done unnecessarilyand parts are prematurely changed –wastes money. At the same time, otherparts may wear out and break before theplanned maintenance stop.

To minimize maintenance costs whileavoiding expensive breakdowns, trainsshould be maintained at the best possi-ble moment, considering factors such asvehicle condition, maintenance staff,workshop load, availability of spareparts, co-allocation benefits, downtimecosts etc. Because many of these factorsconstantly change, short-notice planningand optimisation are necessary. Also,since the condition of the vehicles variesconsiderably with time, the componentcondition would have to be monitoredcontinuously so that predictions regard-ing the future status of the vehicle arealways available. With this information,

Figure 1: The vehicle circuit view of the prototype software. The operator can either let thecomputer decide a favourable plan, or can plan vehicular movements manually. The plan isrebuilt automatically to suit the current condition of the vehicles.

Figure 2: The workshop view of the prototype software. The Gantt chart shows train arrivalsand allocated maintenance jobs.

As vehicular traffic congestion hasincreased in recent decades, so haveefforts to improve data collection,analysis and modelling, and thereby theefficiency of transportation systems.Advanced traveller information systemsare now used in cities worldwide. Mostof them are based on historical and real-

time data, and post current travel-timeestimations and future travel-time pre-dictions both on the Web and on mes-sage signs at major urban arterials.

Practically every urban traveller infor-mation or traffic management system isbased on traffic data collected by point

sensors (eg single or double loop detec-tors, overhead video cameras). Theseprovide estimates of flow, volume, occu-pancy and speed, averaged over timeintervals that vary from thirty to ninetyseconds. Part of the point-sensor data isusually calibrated with the use of float-ing car data. Figure 1 depicts a samplefrom a set of approximately 500 pointsensors located in the Athens (Greece)road network. Representative subsets ofthe database provided by these sensorshave been used in testing most of the sta-tistical models developed in RAD.

Unfortunately, most of the point sensorsemployed worldwide are single loopdetectors. These can only estimate traf-fic volume and occupancy and do notdirectly measure velocity, the most use-ful variable for traffic control and trav-eller information systems. Researchersin RAD are using recently developedmethods that estimate velocity fromsingle loop data: like a number ofrelated methods these techniques arebased on the preceding estimation ofmean vehicle length. Moreover, to cor-rect for unstable speed behaviour, espe-

it is possible to recreate with sufficientnotice maintenance plans that fit withprediction and at the same time mini-mize costs.

To illustrate the potential of this con-cept, prototype software for integratingrailroad vehicle diagnosis and operativevehicle circuit planning has been devel-oped at SICS. This prototype combinesthe advantage of exact knowledge ofindividual train component conditionswith planning algorithms, ensuring thatvehicles arrive at the maintenance work-shop at the best possible moment. Thesystem simulates and evaluates trainmovements and wear and tear on com-

ponents, and dynamically adjusts thevehicle circuits to automatically routevehicles in need of maintenance to thenearest workshop. In addition, sponta-neous faults and failures are introducedduring the simulation, the appearanceof which also triggers re-planning andmaintenance stops. The system hasproven to be very robust in terms ofmeeting maintenance deadlines, whichnaturally is a critical property of amaintenance system.

In short, to take maximum advantage ofknowing the exact condition of a tech-nical system, eg a railway vehicle, thisinformation must be connected directly

to the company's operative planningstrategy. We have shown that such aconnection between condition monitor-ing and operations planning can indeedbe established, with very beneficialresults.

Link:http://www.sics.se/iam/index.php?section=timm

Please contact: Anders Holst and Markus BohlinSICS, Sweden Tel: +46 8 633 1500E-mail: [email protected], [email protected]



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Figure 1: A sample of the point sensors placed in the Athens road network to provide volume,occupancy and speed estimates.


cially during light traffic, smoothingspline algorithms are applied beforetravel-time estimations (Figure 2, left).To identify locations with similar trafficpatterns, curve-clustering methods areapplied at an exploratory stage (Figure2, right). Holes in the data due to miss-ing or bad observations are filled withimputed values; for that purpose, thenonlinear space-time models originallydeveloped for forecasting are employed.

Perhaps the most challenging statisticalissue in advanced traveller informationsystems is travel-time forecasting.Researchers in RAD are pioneers in thedevelopment and application of nonlin-ear space-time models for speed fore-casting, and their models display a fore-casting performance superior to existingmethods. Models are spatial in the sense

that they incorporate information relatedto the road network topology by usingsuitably defined spatial weight matrices.Models are nonlinear in the sense thatrelationships between upstream/down-stream locations are not constant but areallowed to vary according to time andtraffic state (free-flow/congestion). Forinstance, during free flow an upstreamdetector may have better predictivepower than a downstream one, while theopposite may be true during congestion.Forecasting models are also nonlinear inthe sense that error variance is not con-sidered constant: separate autoregres-sive models provide variable confidenceintervals for the forecasts based on timeand traffic state.

The current research interests of theRAD group focus mostly on the appli-

cation of the aforementioned methodsto a new traffic information system forAthens. The system will provide real-time information via the Web and cellu-lar phone services. The research is par-tially supported by LIAISON, a 42-month project co-funded by the Euro-pean commission under the 6th Frame-work Programme and led by AlcatelAlenia Space.

Links:http://www.iacm.forth.gr/regional/http://liaison.newapplication.it

Please contact:Poulicos PrastacosIACM-FORTH, GreeceTel: +30 2810 391767 E-mail:[email protected]

Figure 2: (left) Smoothing spline algorithm applied to speed estimated from a point sensor; (right) curve clustering applied to smoothed point sensor data.

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The variety, pervasiveness and scale ofthese sensor data will increase signifi-cantly in the future as sensors becomecheaper, smaller and lower in powerconsumption. This has the potential toimprove our understanding of urban airpollution and hence urban air quality.However, handling the vast quantities ofreal-time data that will be generated by

these sensors will be a formidable task.In the case of static sensor grids, signif-icant progress has already been made inthe application of e-Science technologyto the challenges of real-time data min-ing and distributed processing.

However, Grids comprising vehicle-based and person-based environmental

sensors will be inherently mobile anddynamic in nature, and as such raisesignificant new challenges. These willrequire the integration of e-Sciencewith communication and positioningtechnology, and the linking of all threewith domain-specific transport andenvironmental modelling tools andmethods.

Such an integration is the objectiveof the recently established MES-SAGE project (Mobile Environmen-tal Sensor Systems Across a GridEnvironment). The project is fundedby the UK Engineering and PhysicalSciences Research Council and theUK Department for Transport, andinvolves collaboration between amultidisciplinary team ofresearchers based at Imperial Col-lege London and the Universities ofCambridge, Leeds, Newcastle andSouthampton.

There are two main aims of the project.The first is to harness the potential ofdiverse, low-cost and ubiquitous envi-ronmental sensors. These will providedata to address key scientific chal-lenges in the field of transport andenvironmental monitoring, and model-ling and analysis. The second is todevelop a flexible and reusable e-Sci-ence infrastructure. This will support awide range of scientific, policy-relatedand commercial uses and applicationsfor the resultant data, and demonstratethe operation and utility of this infra-structure in a number of case studyapplications.

The project will develop the capability toequip vehicles and pedestrians with arange of environmental sensors, to trackthe position of these sensors in the urbanenvironment (using a combination ofGPS and wireless network positioning),to retrieve data from them in real time, tointegrate these data with those frommore conventional (static) environmen-tal and traffic sensors and to estimatepollutant concentrations and individualexposure. The project will build on andextend a number of outputs from the UKe-Science programme, including theDiscoveryNet project (http://www.dis-covery-on-the.net) and the OGSA-DAIand OGSA-DQP projects (http://www.ogsadai.org.uk), as well as taking advan-tage of extensive experience across theconsortium in measuring and modellingthe environmental impacts of traffic.

The case-study applications will be car-ried out in London, Cambridge,Gateshead and Leicester. They willbuild on the Universities’ existing col-laborative arrangements with the rele-vant local authorities in each site, draw-ing on substantial existing dataresources, sensor networks and ongoingEPSRC and industrially funded research

activities. These applications willaddress important problems that to datehave been difficult or impossible tosolve due to a lack of relevant data.These problems are of three main types:(i) measuring human exposure to pollu-tants, (ii) the validation of variousdetailed models of traffic behaviour andpollutant emission and dispersion, and(iii) the development of transport net-work management and control strategiesthat take account not just of traffic butalso air quality impacts. The variouscase studies will look at differentaspects of these questions and use avariety of different types of sensor sys-tem to do so. In particular, existing sen-sor networks in each city will beenhanced by the selective deploymentof a number of new sensor types (bothroadside and on-vehicle/person) toincrease the diversity of sensor inputs.

Links: http://www.message-project.org http://www.imperial.ac.uk/cts

Please contact: John PolakImperial College London, UKE-mail:[email protected]



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The idea behind this development is thatcurrent models, while suited to trafficreconstruction and prediction on amotorway, have severe drawbacks inother areas. In the first place, the infor-mation available is heterogeneous: sen-sors can be magnetic loops, video cam-eras or floating car data (the dataretrieved and sent by a car to a server).This generates a lot of noise for analysis.

Second, while some existing urban andinter-urban areas have traffic manage-ment and advice systems that collect andanalyse data from stationary sensors,many do not. This is the case particu-larly in rural areas, where crashes

account for more than 60% of all roadfatalities recorded in OECD countries.Hence, the need for a system that cancover these roads is compelling if a sig-nificant reduction in traffic-relateddeaths is to be achieved.

TThhee SSttoocchhaassttiicc MMooddeellMost current traffic models are deter-ministic, that is, described at a macro-scopic level by a set of differential equa-tions linking variables such as flow anddensity. Such models are quite welladapted and efficient on motorwayswhere a fluid approximation of the traf-fic is reasonable. However, they tend tofail for cities or rural roads, since the

velocity flow field is subject to muchgreater fluctuations. These are inducedby the nature of the network (presenceof intersections and short distancebetween two intersections) rather thanby the traffic itself. This requires a sto-chastic model.

These considerations have led to ahybrid approach, taking full advantageof the statistical nature of the informa-tion. In order to reconstruct the trafficand make predictions, we propose amodel – the Bethe approximation – toencode the statistical fluctuations andstochastic evolution of the traffic, and analgorithm – the belief propagation algo-


rithm – to decode the information.These concepts are familiar to the com-puter science and statistical physicscommunities, since it has been shownthat the output of belief propagation is ingeneral the Bethe approximation.

The model is shown in the figure. Thenetwork of roads is classically repre-sented as a graph, and traffic state on anedge (a road) is described by a binaryvalue: 0 for fluid and 1 for congested.The important feature of the model is thattraffic states are correlated only throughthe coupling of neighbours. This is theBethe approximation, a method for find-ing the exact solutions of certain quan-tum many-body models. A model such asthe Ising model, a simple model used instatistical mechanics, displays a phasetransition phenomenon with respect tothe value of the coupling. From the pointof view of a traffic network, this meansthat the model is able to describe binarytraffic regimes on the whole network:either fluid (most of the spins up) or con-gested (most of the spins down). Thisrepresents the traffic quite accurately:when one part of a road network is con-gested, it is common that all parts are alsocongested (and vice versa).

The algorithm used for reconstruction,the belief propagation, reconstructs aBethe approximation from real data. Infact, the data collected from the probe

vehicles is used in two different ways.First, data is collected over long periodsin order to estimate the model, ie match-ing the correlations with historical data.This operation is expensive but can bedone once, and updated only if the gen-eral behaviour of the network changes.Second, at every period of predictionrefreshing (typically five minutes), areconstruction is performed to match thecurrent data with the model, using thecorrelations calculated first. This leadsboth to reconstruction and prediction,since we use a space-time graph.

This algorithm has been implemented,and initial tests using a traffic simulator

to generate traffic data show that it isfast (real time for a medium network).The main issue now is stability and pre-cision. The next step is therefore to testit with real data.

Please contact: Arnaud de La FortelleEcole des Mines de Paris, FranceE-mail: [email protected]

Jean-Marc Lasgouttes and Cyril FurtlehnerINRIA, FranceE-mail: {Jean-Marc.Lasgouttes,Cyril.Furtlehner}@inria.fr

Traffic is modelled as a binary-valued graph.

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Working together with European indus-trial and research partners like TNO,Motorola and Intempora, the Europeanproject REACT (Realizing EnhancedSafety and Efficiency in European RoadTransport) has demonstrated break-through technology based on integratedin-car sensing and a traffic managementcentre. SENDA, an INRIA spin-offcompany that is licensing LaRA's trafficmodelling technology, has built on thework of REACT to overcome technical

issues for the cooperative system'sdeployment.

The goal of cooperative systems likeREACT is to increase the efficiency ofEuropean road transport by providingdrivers with up-to-date information onroad conditions. For this, vehiclessense real-time natural and infrastruc-ture conditions both within themselvesand in their vicinity, and transmitthese data to a central server. There

they are aggregated and analysed byan integrated set of models to generateboth vehicle-specific recommenda-tions and information for relevantauthorities.

AAnnaallyyssiinngg TTrraaffffiicc wwiitthh PPrroobbee VVeehhiicclleess ttoo GGeenneerraattee CCuussttoommiizzeedd RRooaadd AAddvviicceeThe analysis of the traffic conditionsand safety risks of different routes canonly be performed by a central server,

which collects and analyses data com-ing from a large number of geographi-cally distributed vehicles. REACT haskey advantages over current systems,including:• mobile rather than stationary sensors,

covering all routes where vehiclestravel

• measurement of relevant natural andinfrastructure conditions

• customized, model-based recommen-dations transmitted to individualvehicles.

The REACT technology has been inte-grated into a fleet of instrumented cars,

used by LaRA for cooperative vehicletechnology research (see Figure 1).

TTeecchhnnoollooggyy TTrraannssffeerr IIssssuueessWhile a proof of concept might beenough to validate research activities,actual innovation, in the sense of theeconomic exploitation of new technol-ogy, needs to go further. There are threemain lessons to be learnt from theREACT project. First, a large numberof players is necessary to put in place arunning cooperative system based onprobe vehicles (eg public road opera-tors, software companies, equipmentproviders), and the aims and motives ofthese parties may not be the same. Sec-ond, the integration and successfulcommunication of a ‘proof of concept’initiative is an excellent tool for makingthese concepts comprehensible andencouraging stakeholders to reach oper-ational solutions. Third, a relativelyhigh threshold of deployment is neces-sary (3-5 % of vehicles in the entireroad network must be equipped) to

make traffic technology based on probevehicles exploitable.

SSEENNDDAA''ss AAlltteerrnnaattiivvee,, IInntteerrnneett PPeerrssoonnaall NNaavviiggaattiioonn DDeevviiccee ffoorr CCoollllaabboorraattiivvee NNaavviiggaattiioonnSENDA is a mobility-oriented softwarecompany and a spin-off from INRIA. Itlicenses LaRA’s statistical model fortraffic prediction based on probe vehi-cles, which was developed during theresearch project REACT. Combiningthe technical constraints for the deploy-ment of such breakthrough technologywith the need to reduce the number ofplayers in the value chain, SENDA con-

ceived an alternative approach: a col-laborative GPS navigation device. Thishigh-end navigation device correspondsto European drivers’ demands forimproved route guidance, based on bet-ter-quality road traffic information andhigher coverage of the road network.The principle is simple: the GPS navi-gator is supplied with an embeddedwireless Internet interface and the abil-ity to act as a mobile traffic sensor. Thenavigator’s position and speed areanonymously transmitted to a central

management server that statisticallyprocesses this information and thenconsolidates it with the data comingfrom the road operator’s traffic infor-mation centre

This concept for innovative navigationis derived from INRIA’s previous workin the European projects Cybercars andOzone, and from the SENDA prescrip-tive navigation. The latter was a finalistin the European Commission’s GSTService Submission Contest. SENDA’sfirst collaborative navigator prototypewas introduced during the ITS WorldConference 2006. Commercial vehiclerenting companies are already inter-ested in such an approach and are dis-cussing with SENDA the implementa-tion of high-end GPS navigation pilotdevices for professional drivers.

SENDA has exploited LaRA’s researchto produce innovations in traffic predic-tion technology for the next generationof traffic management systems. TheREACT experiments helped SENDAmove ahead on their reflections, andsynthesize a convenient product target-ing an emerging market. Deployment oftraffic prediction solutions by SENDAwill provide valuable real-world feed-back to LaRA’s research, which in turnwill lead to improvements in and testingof predictive models.

Link:http://www.react-project.org/

Please contact: Arnaud de La FortelleEcole des Mines de Paris, FranceE-mail:[email protected]

Angel Talamona, Mikaël KaisSENDA, FranceE-mail: [email protected],[email protected]



Figure 1: REACT sensor vehicles (4 LaRA C3).

Figure 2: SENDA's personalnavigation device for collabo-rative navigation.

3

Figure 2: SENDA's Personal Navigation Device for Collaborative Navigation

This concept for innovative navigation is derived from INRIA’s previous works in European projects Cybercars and Ozone, and from SENDA prescriptive navigation. The latter was selected finalist at the European Commission’s GST Service Submission Contest. SENDA’sfirst prototype of collaborative navigator was introduced during the ITS World Conference 2006. Commercial vehicle renting companies are already interested in such approach and discuss with SENDA about the implementation of pilots of high-end GPS navigation for professional drivers.

SENDA benefits from LaRA’s research outputs to innovate in traffic prediction technology that is necessary for the next generation of traffic management systems. Lessons learned outof REACT experimentations helped SENDA move ahead on their reflections, and synthesize a convenient product targeting an emerging market. Deployment of traffic prediction solutions by SENDA will provide valuable real-world feedback to LaRA’s research in termsof empirical evidence, to improve and test predictive models.

Link:http://www.react-project.org/

Please contact: Arnaud de La Forterelle, Ecole des Mines de Paris, France E-mail: [email protected]

Angel Talamona, Mikaël Kais, SENDA (INRIA spin-off company), France E-mail: [email protected], [email protected]


POEM (Programming in Operationaland Expressive Models) is a planningand scheduling solution-building sys-tem. The POEM Solution Builder iscomposed of a core technology and anauxiliary one: Natural Constraint Lan-guage (NCL) and Visual Script.

NCL is a descriptive language for busi-ness modelling and problem-solving

based on conventional mathematicallogic. Visual Script in POEM is a GUIscript that supports solution visualisa-tion (basic graphics/map/time) andinteraction management. In an all-in-one style, POEM embeds OR algo-rithms, logic, heuristic rules and GUI ina single system to offer users a cost-effi-cient choice with benefits in training,management, development, deploymentand maintenance.

As a development tool, POEM narrowsthe gap between developers and endusers thanks to its visual modelling anddebugging interface. Figure 1 shows the

visual nature of POEM modelling anddiagnosing.

POEM is also designed to be an appli-cation platform. In order that a singlesolver can support a variety of applica-tions, POEM advocates the develop-ment of modular solutions for differentbusinesses. For instance, productionplanning and scheduling, distribution

optimisation and personnel planningcan all be performed on the POEM plat-form. To illustrate this point, twoPOEM solutions for logistics planningare presented below.

MMuullttii--MMooddaall TTrraannssppoorrtt PPllaannnniinnggMulti-Modal Transport Planning(MMTP) involves planning the flow ofgoods and services along a supplychain. For example, fourth-party logis-tics requires that transport costs be opti-mized for on-time delivery of goodsfrom vendors to customers. Transportoccurs through multi-modal trade lanes,such as air, rail, road and shipping, with

each of these incurring a different cost.In addition, a feasible transport planmust simultaneously satisfy constraintssuch as vendor (production) capacity,vehicle (route) capacity, transportationschedules (eg an air company may offerseveral flights per day), and cross dock-ing and service times. Everyday exam-ples of MMTP applications includemail/parcel delivery, freight forwardingand so forth.

Compared to vehicle routing, MMTP isa capacitated freight-routing problem.Each route may have several shifts perday; for example, air transportationmay have one flight at 9:00am and asecond at 2:00pm each day, with eachflight having a limited capacity (quan-tity/volume/weight). For each customerorder, freight routing determines anitinerary from origin to destination thatidentifies each form of transport usedand the overall schedule, and satisfiesall the delivery constraints. SeeFigure 2 for an illustration of multi-modal transport plans.

VVeehhiiccllee RRoouuttiinngg aanndd SScchheedduulliinnggVehicle routing and scheduling is theoptimisation of delivery routes, whichmay be subject to constraints as diverseas vehicle capacity (quantity/volume/weight), work regulations (time/break/makespan), time windows (eg a cus-tomer may prefer a morning to an after-noon delivery), distance, route accessi-bility and coupling (ie certain cus-tomers should or should not be servicedby the same truck). There may also bemultiple objectives: for example, tominimize the number of vehicles, work-time, makespan and mileage.

In real life, vehicle loading can be a sig-nificant concern for logistics compa-nies: trucks are expected to be fullyloaded for most of their routes (see the

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Figure 1: POEM Solution Builder - modelling and diagnosing in a visual manner.

statistics in Figure 3: almost all thetrucks are well loaded). This makes itnecessary to first work out the truckplans so as to balance truck loading andtake into account time constraints. Aftertruck planning, the system computesthe best route and schedule for each tripsubject to work regulations and deliveryconstraints.

RRee--PPllaannnniinngg aanndd RRee--SScchheedduulliinnggFor practical solutions, planning flexi-bility is of great importance. Circum-stances will arise where it is necessaryto modify transport modes, deliveryschedules, or to shift customer ordersfrom one route to another. In otherwords, operators may need to intervenein the system’s planning solution basedon their expertise or experience. Forboth freight and vehicle routing, the

system allows flexible re-planning andre-scheduling to meet the requirementsof customer changes and interaction.

This research has been undertaken byENGINEST. The company is a spin-offfrom INRIA and is working in the areaof logic programming and operationsresearch, with particular interest inresource optimisation for logistics,manufacturing, and human resources.

The ‘POEM Modular Solutions’ projectwas started in 2000, and is beingextended to better deal with industrialapplications in different domains.Future work will look into more power-ful OR algorithms and more user-friendly interfaces for the modular solu-tions. Cooperation with renowned labo-ratories in these areas is expected.

Link:http://www.enginest.com

Please contact:Jianyang ZhouEnginest, FranceTel: +33 3 83 55 12 99E-mail: [email protected]



Figure 2: Multi-Modal TransportPlanning (example for 200 custo-mer orders).

Figure 3: Vehicle Routing and Scheduling (examplefor 328 customer orders). Notation explanation: Qtystands for quantity, Vol for volume, Wgt for weight


Vehicle Routing Problems (VRPs) are awidely investigated class of problems incombinatorial optimisation, and includemany transportation tasks (eg parcelservices). In general, a VRP consists ofa set of customers that must be servedvia a fleet of vehicles, each of whichleaves from and returns to a centraldepot. The type of VRP determineswhether customers have goods deliv-ered to them, are transported from onelocation to another, or are served insome other way.

UUssiinngg GGIISS ffoorr RReeaall--WWoorrlldd IInnppuutt DDaattaaIn research, most solution techniques forthis class of problem are designed andtested by means of synthetic problemstructures. However, the tackling ofreal-world VRPs requires a thoroughlyelaborated data basis in order to providereasonable outcomes. If this is not thecase, even the best solution techniquesare of no use for practical applications.

Essential input data for real-world VRPsis gathered by using Geographic Infor-mation Systems (GIS). Whereas mostresearchers use Euclidean distancesbetween customers and depots for theiroptimisation algorithms, a GIS can pro-vide real distance information derivedfrom a digital road network.

Experiences in former projects showedthat using distance data of limited qual-ity in optimisation algorithms leads toresults of even more limited quality. Inthe worst case, a valid solution for agiven input dataset might actually beunfeasible in reality.

To get distance information of sufficientquality, the most detailed street networkcommercially available for the consid-ered region should be used. Unfortu-nately static distance information from adigital road network does not correlatedirectly with real travel times because ofdynamic influences like traffic jams,road works and weather conditions.

Travel times also depend on parameterssuch as driving style and vehicle type,which are particularly hard to quantify.

EEmmppiirriiccaall EEvvaalluuaattiioonn ooff TTrraavveell TTiimmeessIn a former project, the quality of calcu-lated driving times was evaluated bycomparing them with actual drivingtimes for 91 trips within a range of 20 to250 kilometres in eastern Austria. Theaverage, maximum, minimum and stan-dard deviation of actual minus calcu-lacted driving times in minutesrecorded by tachographs is given inTable 1.

This analysis comprised trips to morethan forty locations carried out by morethan twenty drivers on several days andat all times of day. All the vehicles wereof the same type and were able toexceed the allowed speed limit on allthe roads used. These results enable usto specify safety margins that are suit-able to counteract these observed varia-tions in driving time. The results of thisevaluation were used to define reason-able buffer values for optimisation pro-cedures in order to achieve highly

robust solutions for use in practical sce-narios.

IInntteeggrraattiioonn ooff GGIISS aanndd OOppttiimmiissaattiioonnIn general, optimisation algorithms areimplemented in a highly separated soft-ware component and used via a well-defined interface. GIS are not onlyneeded for input data processing but insome cases also for enclosing the userinterface of a decision support systemthat guides decision makers by allowingthem to schedule vehicles visually. Inthe following example, GIS plays anintegrating role by handling user inter-actions as a graphical user interface onthe one hand and managing communi-cation between all other required soft-ware components on the other. A typicalexample of system architecture isdepicted in Figure 1.

The system works as follows: afterretrieving customer coordinates andother relevant data from the CRM-Application, the Front-End uses the Net-work Toolbox to obtain a distance matrixcontaining travel times for all possiblecustomer pairs. The Front-End forwardsall information to the Optimisation Mod-ule, which applies the optimisation algo-rithm. Resulting tours are returned to theFront-End and given a geographical rep-resentation using the Network Toolbox.Finally, a complete list of travel plansincluding customers, street paths andvisiting order for the requested period oftime may be generated and presented tothe application user.

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Deviation minutes

Average 0.6

Minimum -32

Maximum 24

Standard 10.3

Figure 1: Component diagram.

Table 1: Deviation of driving times in minutes.

IImmpplleemmeennttiinngg tthhee OOppttiimmiissaattiioonn AAllggoorriitthhmmVehicle Routing Problems belong to thegroup of NP-complete programs thatare known to be hard to solve. In gen-eral, the computation time for solving aVRP increases exponentially with theoverall number of customers. Even exe-cution times for heuristics and meta-heuristics suffer from this effect. Foroptimisation problems of a certain sizeonly the development and implementa-tion of highly parallel algorithms mayachieve reasonable execution times.

Optimisation algorithms are usuallyimplemented in Fortran or C due to thehigh-performance compilers that areavailable for these languages. Next toefficiency, additional criteria such asprogramming convenience, adoption oftechnology and availability of toolscould also justify the use of C++ as aprogramming language.

RReeaall WWoorrlldd VVRRPP EExxaammpplleeThe use of GIS for optimisation in trans-portation planning described above wasapplied in a project dealing with thedevelopment of a decision support sys-tem for transportation of blood dona-tions in Austria. The underlying optimi-sation problem originates from theblood collection process of the Austrian

Red Ccross blood program, where pro-cessing requirements state that all bloodmust be processed in one centrallylocated blood bank within four hours ofdonation. This restriction causes a sig-nificant amount of vehicle movement,which could be reduced with problem-tailored optimisation algorithms bymore than 25%, as measured in totaldriving time. Figure 2 depicts the user



Figure 2: User interface of a decision support systemfor transportationplanning.

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Safety and security are constant con-cerns in maritime navigation, not leastbecause of the constant increase in mar-itime traffic and reduction of crews ondecks. This has favoured the develop-ment of automated monitoring systemssuch as the Automatic IdentificationSystem (AIS) and the Electronic ChartDisplay and Information System(ECDIS). However, officers on thewatch and monitoring authoritiesrequire additional and advanced deci-sion-aid solutions that will take advan-tage of these communication and carto-graphical systems.

The development of geolocalisation,information and telecommunicationtechnology offers higher traffic dataavailability, but presents new challengesfor the integration, analysis and deliveryof maritime traffic data. Hence there is agreat need for integrated traffic systemsthat are able to cope with all these tech-nological domains. The development ofa real-time integrated maritime platformimplies a reconsideration of storage,modelling, manipulation, analysis andvisualisation functions, since currentmodels have not been designed to han-dle such dynamic phenomena.

One of the most promising solutions tothis problem is the integration of Geo-graphical Information Systems (GIS)with maritime navigation systems. Ourapproach relies on a monitoring project,the purpose of which is to integrate het-erogeneous positional data from threesources: an Automatic IdentificationSystem (AIS), public traffic data avail-able from the Internet, and a real-timemonitoring system developed for sailingraces. These systems generate geolocal-isation frames from different types (egAIS frames) and from different ad-hocnetworks (eg VHF for AIS, WiMAX for

interface of the transportation-planningtool developed in this project.

Please contact:Günter KiechleSalzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft, AustriaTel: +43 662 2288 421E-mail: [email protected]


defined as a generic and context-awareGIS that automatically adapts accordingto its context. The context is defined by(i) the properties and location of thegeographical data being manipulated(eg maritime traffic data); (ii) the under-lying categories that reflect differentuser profiles (eg port authorities); and(iii) the characteristics of the computingsystem, including Web and wirelesstechniques. In all, the use of adaptiveGIS as a decision-aid system appears tobe a useful approach for maritime trans-portation systems.

The framework developed so far repre-sents a preliminary step towards thedevelopment of integrated GIS and mar-itime information systems. A number ofresearch challenges remain. One is thedevelopment of cross-domain protocolsand exchange standards for the trans-

sailing races). Coupled with externaldatabases, this constitutes the input foran internal spatio-temporal databasethat manages historic and real-timedata. These data include maritime tra-jectories, vessel characteristics andenvironmental data.

The framework developed so far inte-grates several modules. One of these isan anti-collision function that monitorsthe risk of running aground and evasiveship behaviour. This module also inte-grates simulation capabilities in order tocontrol and predict the evolution of shipbehaviour and trajectories. These simu-lations are based on a multi-agent sys-tem and micro-simulation capabilities,where ships are modelled asautonomous agents acting in their envi-ronment according to maritime rules. The module is designed for maritimeauthorities and for educational andtraining purposes. Moreover, the trafficanalysis module integrates intelligentinference mechanisms that can use datamining to derive traffic patterns. Theobjective is to observe and understandmaritime traffic at different levels ofgranularity.

Two complementary external views areof interest in maritime traffic monitor-ing. One is the conventional absoluteview of spatial trajectories. The othercombines the relative position andvelocity of mobile ships with respect toan observer. This relative external viewhelps users to perceive traffic evolutionaccording to their point of view andaids their perception of the underlyingprocesses that emerge from the ships’behaviour.

Current research into users’ interactionwith the system is focusing on the con-cept of adaptive GIS. This can be

mission and interoperability of trafficdata; another is the integration of differ-ent geographical information sourcesthat are combined, adapted and sharedin real time between different levels ofusers acting in the maritime environ-ment. Conventional statistical, geo-graphical data analysis and visualisa-tion methods should also be adapted tothe specific nature of maritime trafficinformation. Traffic data and applica-tions are usually physically allocated indifferent geographical locations and arecomputationally expensive in terms ofthe data volumes generated. Hence,there is also a need at the implementa-tion level for the development of a GIS-based distributed computing environ-ment, and computational and process-ing capabilities. Overall, the develop-ment of GIS for maritime informationsystems should improve the manage-ment and planning of maritime naviga-tion, thus favouring the search for asafer sea.

Links: GIS research group of Naval academy:http://www.ecole-navale.fr/fr/irenav/groupes/sig/sig-en/

Please contact: Cyril RayNaval Academy Research Institute,FranceTel: +33 298233611E-mail: [email protected]

Figure 2: Illustration of anti-collision module.

Figure 1: Integrated GIS.

frameparsers

anti collision module

spatio- temporal database

relative external

view

absolute external

view

adaptive visualizationcommunication

networks location-based

systems

externalspatio-

temporal databases

traffic analysismodule

communication networks

The Internet is becoming increasinglypopular as an electronic marketplace.As a result of rapid technologicalprogress, the near future will show awide variety of goods and servicesbeing traded over the Internet by hugenumbers of buyers and sellers. Such avast marketplace requires reliable trad-ing mechanisms that are truly efficientand scalable.

At the same time, peer-to-peer (P2P)networks are emerging as a new designapproach for building scalable and

fault-tolerant applications. By means ofresource aggregation and replication,P2P-based applications benefit frompeer resources that otherwise lieunused, and thus provide much betterperformance and greater robustnessthan traditional client/server-basedapplications.

PPeeeerrMMaarrtt AArrcchhiitteeccttuurree aanndd DDeessiiggnnPeerMart is a fully decentralized auc-tion-based marketplace layered on topof a P2P network (see Figure 1). It com-bines the economic efficiency of doubleauctions with the technical performanceand scalability of structured P2P net-

works. The solution supersedes theneed for a central auctioneer by distrib-uting broker functionality over allpeers. Redundancy is used to achieverobustness even in the presence of mali-cious peers.

The auction-based pricing mechanismis complemented by a decentralizedaccounting scheme called PeerMint,which provides accountability for appli-cations in a secure and scalable manner.The scheme uses multiple distributedaccount holders and session mediation

peers to store and update accountinginformation on individual peers andsessions. It also enables peers to becharged for service usage in an aggre-gated manner.

David Hausheer and his advisor Prof.Burkhard Stiller at the Institute TIK atETH Zurich developed PeerMart’s fullydecentralized market approach duringHausheer’s PhD candidacy. The workwas completed in 2005. A prototype ofthe design has been implemented inJava using the FreePastry structuredP2P overlay library, and will be madeavailable under an open-source licence.

Detailed experiments were performedwith the prototype to provide evidenceof the mechanisms’ efficiency and reli-ability even in the presence of faulty ormalicious peers.

BBaannddwwiiddtthh TTrraaddiinngg oonn DDeemmaannddWhile PeerMart is generally applicableto any distributed trading scenario likeP2P file sharing, Grid computing, ordecentralized storage systems, theapproach is particularly interesting forbandwidth-trading scenarios. Electronicmarketplaces for trading bandwidthhave emerged since the late 1990s, butwere seriously hit by the economicdownturn in 2001. However, driven byrecent technical advances, especially inthe area of optical fibre technology andvirtual router infrastructures, the provi-sion of bandwidth services ‘ondemand’, being offered just like othercommodities, will become a reality.

Today, bandwidth services are normallyprovided under the umbrella of long-term bilateral peering and transit agree-ments between individual Internet serv-ice providers and customers. Appropri-ate mechanisms for trading such serv-ices in an efficient and scalable fashionamong multiple providers and cus-tomers are not yet available. A newworkshop on bandwidth on demand(BoD) has therefore been established tobring together researchers from bothindustry and academia. The scope of theworkshop includes the technical andeconomic dimensions of BoD mecha-nisms, legislative and regulatory issues,and the industrial development of newtechnology that supports these mecha-nisms.

To meet the individual requirements ofbandwidth services, the generic Peer-Mart design is currently being refinedand extended in a follow-up post-docproject at the University of Zurich, IFI.This includes the support of key service



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Figure 1: PeerMart – a fullydecentralized P2P-based market-place.

Consumer

Service

Auction-based Pricing

Decentralized Marketplace

Session-based Accounting

P2P Network

Provider


parameters like bandwidth, reliability,delay and jitter, as well as start-time andduration of such services. The adaptedtrading mechanism will enable users tobuy and sell bandwidth services ondemand or in advance, and will alsoallow the reselling of unused bandwidthservices to other users.

AApppplliiccaattiioonn SScceennaarriioossAs depicted in Figure 2, two differentapplications have been defined whichwill benefit from decentralized supportfor bandwidth services. One applicationis targeted at trading bandwidth overoptical links in a wired, fully virtualizednetworking infrastructure. The otherfocuses on trading Internet services overaccess points between Internet accessproviders and end-users in wirelesshotspots.

Fully virtual network environments area promising future platform for Internetservice providers and large end-cus-tomers, who may use them, for example,to sustain parts of an ISP's network or tocarry traffic for broadcasting largesporting events. Using synchronousoptical network (SONET) circuits, orwavelength-division multiplexing(WDM) technology supporting ‘virtual’lightpaths, multiple bandwidth-guaran-teed tunnels can be carried over a singleoptical dark fibre. In conjunction withnew router platforms such as Cisco'sCSR-1, which have the ability to pro-vide secure virtualisation, routers them-selves can be separated into multiplevirtual routing engines. This enables the

deployment of dedicated, bandwidth-guaranteed networks on top of fully vir-tual networking infrastructure. UsingPeerMart’s trading mechanisms, cus-tomers and providers of such a virtualnetwork platform will be able to buyand sell fully virtual networks com-posed of virtual nodes and networklinks across different physical loca-tions, adapting their capacity as neces-sary.

The second application shows thatPeerMart can also be applied to wire-less scenarios. At wireless hotspots likeairports, train stations or other crowdedareas, there are typically multiple usersequipped with mobile terminals (lap-tops, mobile phones, PDAs etc) seekingaccess to the Internet. At the same timethere may be several Internet accessproviders available and running multi-ple wireless access points. With Peer-Mart, it is possible to determine pricesfor such services in an economicallyefficient and scalable way based on thecurrent supply and demand. Moreover,through the use of redundancy Peer-Mart can ensure high reliability of itstrading mechanisms even in the pres-ence of malicious or unreliable peers.Future work will include an integrationof the developed bandwidth-tradingmechanisms into real hardware devicessuch as open-source routers, accesspoints, and end-user devices, which willenable a deployment of these mecha-nisms into production environmentssuch as Internet eXchange Points(IXPs) or wireless hotspots.

Links:PeerMart Project: http://www.peermart.net/

PeerMart Dissertation: http://hausheer.osola.com/publications/dissertation.pdf

BoD Workshop:http://www.csg.unizh.ch/events/bod06/

FreePastry Project:http://freepastry.org/

Please contact: David HausheerUniversity of Zurich, IFI, SwitzerlandTel: +41 44 635 43 72E-mail: [email protected]

PeerMartOverlay

P1

P3

P2

bid

ask

BrokerSet

ask

bid

C1C2

Fully VirtualizedNetworking Environment

MT: Mobile TerminalAP: Access Point

a) Wired Link Scenario

MT1

AP1Internet

ask

BrokerSet

ask

AP2

MT2

bid bid

b) Wireless Link Scenario

VirtualRouters

VirtualLinks

P: ProviderC: Customer

Figure 2: Bandwidth trading scenarios.

Net-WMS will handle networked com-munication and co-operation processesthrough the integration of decision-making technologies, generic 2D, 3Dand higher-dimensional placement con-straint solvers, visualisation and inter-action with the solvers in virtual reality,packing models and knowledge model-ling with business rules. Its scientificoutcome will be relevant to the wholedomain of combinatorial optimisationand will have direct technologicalimpact on supply chain management atboth the WMS and Transportation Man-agement Software (TMS) levels, espe-cially in the areas of packing, vehicleloading, space management, planningand scheduling, inventory control andpacked item visualisation.

PPrroottoottyyppee AApppplliiccaattiioonnssNet-WMS prototype applications willbe operational in an environment of net-worked warehouses, thanks to theirinteroperability and to the user-friendlyinterface designed for plant-level tech-nicians. They will include innovativetools and plug-ins including:• a packing modeller of items based on

optimisation techniques and interacti-ons in virtual reality

• a palletizer tool using optimisationtechniques

• a dispatcher, which includes the vir-tualisation of a truckload

• a set of interfaces enabling communi-cations between several planningcomponents across a network.

The project goals are threefold. First,from a scientific standpoint, significantadvances are expected on:

• the algorithmic treatment of global pla-cement constraints for objects of higherdimensions including space and time

• the expression of constraint optimisa-tion problems with a language of busi-ness rules

• the control of an optimisation toolwith interactions in virtual reality.

Second, on the technological side, theproject will pave the way for next-gen-



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Figure 1: Example of an industrial warehouse powered by GILDAS WM, a warehouse manage-ment system from KLS Logistic System (Grenoble, France).

Figure 2: Innovative Net-WMS J2EE architecture. Applied technologies: - Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE)- Unified Modeling Language (UML)- Model-View-Controller (MVC)- Model Driven Architecture (MDA)- Single Sign-On (SSO)- 3D Visualisation.


eration WMS software by applyinginnovative technology to enhance oper-ations in industrial warehouse environ-ments. This includes:• a set of Java Platform, Enterprise Edi-

tion (J2EE) interfaces for interopera-bility and mobile services, enablingcommunications between planningcomponents across a network

• a mobility interface, allowing remoteusers (eg truck drivers) to report plan-ning changes

• new interactive modules combiningconstraint programming, rule pro-gramming and virtual reality, in sup-port of modelling, simulation andoptimisation of the packing process

• a set of high-level modelling librariesfor the constraint programmingsystem Choco

• extensions to rule programming toolssuch as constraint handling rules(CHR) and Drools.

Third, on the commercial side, Net-WMS aims at improving European

competitiveness in the area of ware-house management by significantlyreducing costs related to packing, man-power and transportation.

Net-WMS is a Specific TargetedResearch Project co-funded by theEuropean Commission's ICT for Enter-prise Networking D5 Unit. IST in FP6focuses on future-generation technol-ogy in which computers and networkswill be integrated into the everydayenvironment, allowing easy access to amultitude of applications and servicesthrough user-friendly human interfaces.Net-WMS places this vision at the heartof its activities and as such contributesto the Ambient Intelligence (AITPL)European cluster.

Net-WMS commenced on 1 Septem-ber, 2006 and will be active for threeyears. The consortium has a combinedexpertise and field knowledge thatguarantee the project will reach itsobjectives. It is composed of ten mem-

bers representing both academia andindustry including the ERCIM mem-bers INRIA and SICS.

Link: http://net-wms.ercim.org/

Please contact: François FagesINRIA, France (scientific coordinator)Tel: +33 1 39 63 57 09E-mail: [email protected]

Abder AggounKLS OPTIM, France (technical coordinator)Tel: +33 1 60 14 66 85E-mail: [email protected]

Philippe RohouERCIM office (administrative contact)Tel: +33 4 97 15 53 06E-mail : [email protected]

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The international shipping industryplays a key part in the global economy.It is responsible for the carriage of 90%of world trade, with 50,000 merchantships annually transporting over six bil-lion tons of goods in some twenty mil-lion maritime containers. Without ship-ping, intercontinental trade, the trans-port of raw materials, manufacturedgoods and food would simply not bepossible.

In this age of ‘just-in-time’ manufactur-ing and supply, containers are virtualwarehouses that move goods from ori-gin to destination via an intricate set ofprocesses. These often involve morethan ten different service providers,government representatives or interme-diaries. Market and customer pressuresdemand that these complex operationsbe optimized, and this has implicationsfor both public and private parties in the

trade lane. Governments are thereforeunder pressure to improve clearancespeeds and reduce costs. In addition,security must be drastically improved inthis time of increased terrorist threats

and security breaches: currently only 2-4 % of transported containers are physi-cally inspected. These needs are drivingchanges in public policy that will affectthe entire industry, with new challenges

Handheld

TREC

Sensor

WirelessRouter

TrackingDatabase

EnterpriseApplication

TrackingApplication

GPRS BaseStation

Satellite

Handheld

TREC

Sensor

WirelessRouter

TrackingDatabase

EnterpriseApplication

TrackingApplication

GPRS BaseStation

Satellite

Figure 1: Overall view of the STL architecture.

arising in terms of security, reliability,liability, visibility, and efficiency ofcontainer shipment.

The IBM Secure Trade Lane (STL) is anew comprehensive global logisticsinformation platform that addresses allthese challenges by providing unprece-dented levels of supply chain efficiencyand security. It gives global supply-chain stakeholders access to informa-tion on demand, allowing real-timeaccess and response to physical cargomonitoring data, and related logisticstransaction data such as order informa-tion, invoices, financial data, bills oflading and manifests.

An overall view of the STL architectureis shown in Figure 1. At its heart is theTREC (Tamper-Resistant EmbeddedController), an intelligent wirelessmonitoring device (see Figure 2) that ismounted on the container. Informationprovided by TRECs is made availableto supply chain participants through theShipment Information System (SIS; seeFigure 3). The SIS is a distributed net-work based on service-oriented archi-tecture (SOA), which enables end-to-end data collection and reporting. Itcoordinates the sharing of informationacross authorized parties using proventechniques and tools.

The TREC platform has two primaryfunctions. The first is to create an audittrail of container movements and eventsfrom the point of origin to the destina-tion. The second is to make this infor-mation available to authorized entities,allowing them to perform risk analyses,to assess the container’s security and

integrity and to optimize the efficiencyof container shipments. The TRECdevice automatically collects informa-tion on container events, including itsphysical location (based on GPS) andstate (eg temperature, humidity, ambi-ent light, acceleration and door status).It can communicate with the backendserver via a satellite network, a cellularsystem (GSM/GPRS), or a WirelessPersonal Area Network (WPAN) basedon ZigBee/IEEE 802.15.4 radio. Ahandheld can also be used to communi-cate with the TREC over a WPAN. TheTREC incorporates significant process-ing power, enabling it to analyse eventsand take appropriate actions. For exam-ple, opening of the door within a prede-fined geographic zone by an authorizedperson is an event that is logged; butopening of the door outside of the pre-defined zone or by an unauthorized per-son will trigger the sending of an alertto the backend server monitoring thestatus of the containers.

As shown in Figure 3, the TREC devicesare wirelessly connected to a Logistics

Service Provider (LSP) through a secure,fully integrated network that links to theSIS. This system enables manufacturers,customers and any authorized memberin the logistics network to check cargointegrity and location. Participants man-age their own data through decentralizeddatabases, ensuring full customer controlover data access and privacy.

The IBM Secure Trade Lane solutionwill be composed of four service pack-ages:• Monitoring services enable complete

real-time monitoring of any contai-ner, anywhere in the world. Collecteddata can be used to offer services toother trading partners who seek tobetter manage on-time deliveries,quickly identify bottlenecks, takeadvantage of green-lane customstreatment and realize additional sup-ply chain efficiencies.

• Information-sharing services allowtrading parties within and acrossindustries to exchange data moreeasily, helping them in meeting theirsecurity and efficiency objectives.



Figure 2: TREC prototy-pe ready to be mountedon the container door.On the left is the boxcontaining the electro-nics that sits within thecontainer; at the bottomright is the antenna boxthat sits outside the con-tainer door.

TREC (1)

(1) TREC= Tamper-Resistant Embedded Controller

= accredited entity

= various sensors

ImporterCustomsTerminalCarrierCustomsTerminalLSPExporter

SIS (2)

(2) CIS = Shipment Information System (Service oriented infrastructure)

TREC (1)

(1) TREC= Tamper-Resistant Embedded Controller

= accredited entity= accredited entity

= various sensors= various sensors

ImporterCustomsTerminalCarrierCustomsTerminalLSPExporter ImporterCustomsTerminalCarrierCustomsTerminalLSPExporter

SIS (2)

(2) CIS = Shipment Information System (Service oriented infrastructure)

Figure 3: Shipment InformationSystem (SIS) - an SOA-based distributed networkenabling end-to-end datacollection and reporting.


• Efficiency services help exporters andimporters to optimize their supplychains.

• Security services help any tradingparty to balance efficiency and securi-ty challenges in the context of theirspecific industry.

The STL concept and the first TREC pro-totypes were developed at the IBM ZurichResearch Laboratory with the support ofIBM Business Consulting Services. InSeptember 2005, IBM and Maersk Logis-tics, of the A.P. Moller-Maersk Group,announced a partnership for pursuing thedevelopment of STL. Several hundred

TREC prototypes have now been built bythe IBM Engineering and TechnologyServices in Mainz. The SIS prototype is indevelopment at the IBM European Busi-ness Solution Centre (EBSC), La Gaude,France, and the IBM Global BusinessSolution Center, Bangalore, India. IBM isparticipating in a large-scale internationalresearch project sponsored by the Euro-pean Union, known as Information Tech-nology for Analysis and IntelligentDesign for e-Government (ITAIDE). Theintent of the project is to define and, usingSTL, pilot ways to make internationaltrade safer while reducing the administra-tive burden.

Links:http://www-306.ibm.com/software/solutions/LE/LG04-01/solutions_over-view.html

http://www-03.ibm.com/industries/government/doc/content/bin/IBM1092_03_ISO.pdf?g_type=pspot

Please contact:Francois DolivoIBM Research GmbH, ZurichResearch Laboratory, SwitzerlandE-mail: [email protected]

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Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)tags typically are small devices that canbe embedded in or attached to objectsfor the purpose of identifying the objectover a radio channel. Objects taggedwith RFID technology can be read moreeasily and more frequently, thus improv-ing the quality of information on objectsin a supply chain or in the inventory of awarehouse. RFID tags can be read ifthey are within range (typically up to afew metres) of a reader, which commu-nicates with tags over a radio channelwithout requiring a line of sight. How-ever, these characteristics of RFID tagshave raised privacy concerns.

Retailers are constrained in the technol-ogy they use to protect consumer pri-vacy. Stringent cost requirements limitthe computational power of RFID tags,which in turn limits the mechanisms thatcould give users control over the use oftheir data in back-end systems. Existingsolutions either put the burden on theconsumer, which may include the risk ofillegal behaviour, or are hampered bythe very limited capabilities of inexpen-sive tags. Until now the ‘kill’ command

seems to be the solution with the great-est potential. However, it is still neces-sary to overcome its three major weak-nesses: complex key management, no(controlled) reuse after purchase, andno (visual) confirmation of successfuldisablement. In response to these limi-tations, we propose an RFID tag struc-

ture that permits consumers to disable atag by mechanically altering it. We callsuch structures ‘clipped tags’, since aportion of the antenna is separated fromthe tag.

The mechanical alteration inhibits theability of a base station or reader tointerrogate the RFID tag or transponderby wireless means, and provides visual

confirmation that the tag has been deac-tivated. Once a tag has been disabled (or‘clipped’), the distance over which itcan be read is drastically reduced. Lateruse would require deliberate actions onthe part of the owner of the RFID tag topermit the tag to be read, and thus couldnot be undertaken without the owner's

knowledge unless the item were eitherstolen or left unattended. This makes itan appropriate mechanism to implementconsumer consent.

Clipped tags are a simple and practicalprivacy-enhancing technique for RFIDretail. Disabling can be performed in aneasy, reliable and verifiable way. Evenif the RFID tag is ‘printed’ onto a prod-

Figure 1: Schematic scheme.

uct, its antenna can be partiallyremoved. Whereas the physical destruc-tion of a tag would likely damage theoriginal item, clipped tags provide apractical way to separate the antenna.For instance, we have demonstratedpaper labels with an RFID tag inside.The tag comprises an antenna, which isprinted, etched or stamped onto a sub-strate (eg a plastic foil), and a siliconchip attached to it. If necessary, anotherplastic foil may cover the tag to protectit from inclement environments. Suchlabels are then affixed to objects, andstored information may be written andrewritten to the embedded chip.

There are a number of possible ways ofmaking clipped tags. One preferredstructure uses perforations like those onpostage stamps, which are manufac-tured into the antenna and its substrate.A separation along the line of smallholes or cuts then detaches a portion ofthe antenna from the tag. Figure 1shows a schematic of a clipped tagemploying perforation. The notchesadditionally provide tear initiation, sim-ilar to the slits placed in ketchup pack-ets. When torn, a portion of the antennais removed.

In another example, the antenna may beconstructed of conducting ‘scratch-offmaterial’. This material is familiar toconsumers from its use to obscureprinted material on lottery tickets orprepaid phone cards. The antenna of theRFID tag is manufactured on a sub-strate using the scratch-off material.

The substrate or mount may be a plasticmaterial such as polyimide or polyester.The chip is mounted on the substrateand is connected to the antenna by anelectrical conductor or conductors. TheRFID tag is manufactured in such a waythat a part or all of the antenna or itsconnecting wiring is exposed. The elec-trical conductor or conductors passthrough a window, such as an exteriorportion of the substrate or mount. Suchtags are placed on the article or on itspackaging in such a way that theantenna or the antenna-chip connectioncan be scratched off using a coin or fin-gernail. The consumer or a check-outattendant in a retail establishment maythen perform the scratch-off operationto disable interrogation of the tag. Thetag is open for visual confirmation thatthe tag has been deactivated.

To demonstrate that such physicalstructures can be embedded in today'smanufacturing process, IBM has beencollaborating with Marnlen RFiD, aleading manufacturer of RFID labels, todesign and manufacture samples of gar-

ment hang tags. The starting point wasthe Alien Technology, ALL-9440(Squiggle 2.2) Gen2 UHF RFID taginlay. This tag may be read at distancesof 30 feet (10 metres). The Alien taginlay was incorporated into a printablegarment hang tag or label by MarnlenRFiD. We have also experimented suc-cessfully with inlays from other manu-facturers: Symbol, Intermec, and Impinj.

The label contains notches for tear initi-ation and perforations to direct the tear.The design is consistent with the print-ing of graphics and the writing of taginformation in a standard RFID printer.Marnlen RFiD manufactures clippedtag labels using standard RFID inlays.The tag design is compatible with com-mercially available readers and printers.Figure 2 shows an RFID tag inlayincorporated into a printable garmenthang tag or label. The hang tags may betorn at the point-of-sale by the con-sumer to remove parts of the antenna.The result is a reduction in tag readrange from 10 metres to about 2 cm.

Link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipped_Tag

Please contact:Günter Karjoth, IBM Zurich ResearchLaboratory, SwitzerlandE-mail: [email protected]

Paul Moskowitz, IBM WatsonResearch Center, Hawthorne, NY, USAE-mail: [email protected]



Figure 2: Partial antenna removal from agarment hang tag.

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In responding to more intricate cus-tomer demands, today’s industrial pro-duction has to deliver more than a mereproduct, since in numerous cases, cus-tomers wish to receive up-to-date infor-

mation about the status of their individ-ual orders. Moreover, the custom-tai-lored production of items is spreading,even in areas where simple ‘make-to-stock’ policies used to prevail in the

past. All these trends necessitate theimprovement or introduction of item-level support for tracking (what is thestatus of the item itself, eg where it islocated during delivery) and tracing


(what happens to the item with respectto production processes, eg what otherproduct is it built into). Given today’sheterogeneous production networks,these solutions often have to reachbeyond company borders while still pro-viding services in a uniform way. Whiletechnically feasible solutions haveemerged in the past, in most cases theyare suitable only for large companies,and small and medium-sized enterprises(SMEs) still find it difficult to join suchtracking and tracing efforts, even thoughparticipating in them could be vital forgroups of cooperating small companies.

In order to overcome these difficultiesby providing a more SME-friendly solu-tion platform, the international researchproject ‘TraSer’ (Identity-Based Track-ing and Web-Services for SMEs) was

started in June 2006. The efforts areplanned to culminate in the creation ofan open-source TraSer community.Through its Web services, this will assistthe targeted group of users (mainlySMEs) to improve their efficiency whileoperating in changing environmentssuch as supply-chains, service opera-tions and project delivery networks. Themain output of the project, the TraSeropen-source platform, is based on expe-rience gained during earlier work at theHelsinki University of Technology, thedevelopment of the DIALOG system(see the DIALOG Project Website,http://dialog.hut.fi). The expected bene-fits are as follows:• A low initial investment will be nee-

ded, as users will be able to set up abasic product-centric tracking servicewith components available for free atthe open-source community.

• Lean implementation and maintenan-ce will be possible, as the applicationof the solution platform is meant to be

simple, not requiring many IT specia-list staff.

• By allowing the use of the ‘ID@URI’item identification scheme, as alreadyemployed in the DIALOG project, itwill be possible to spare the costs ofID registration, since – in contrast topresent-day proprietary ID providers– the participants can manage distri-buted unique ID allocation on theirown. In addition, up-to-date statusinformation on the items will be sto-red by the manufacturer in charge (asopposed to paying for centralizedtracking services provided by thirdparties), making a further reductionof operating costs possible.

• The TraSer solution platform is inten-ded to guarantee maximal compatibi-lity with legacy and low-end standardsystems, as the community will pro-

vide the tools for embedding newtracking and tracing services into exi-sting software environments, such asenterprise resource planning (ERP).It will also be possible to adapt theitem identification scheme to legacysystems, meaning it will become fea-sible to integrate traditional numbe-ring schemes already in use by one ormore partners. As a further concessi-on to ‘as-is’ situations, detailed andfreely available documentation willallow companies to re-implementparts of the solution platform within asoftware environment of their choiceif they wish to reduce the diversity ofsoftware technologies used in theirown system.

• Companies using TraSer will haveeasier access to current logistics dataand the RFID and barcode readers ofservice providers, as TraSer will deli-ver guidelines and standards which,when followed, will ensure inter-changeability with information from

other SMEs and logistics service pro-viders (LSPs).

In addition, the following outputs areplanned for the project:• industrial implementations• reports on the implementation cases• descriptions of specific SME business

scenarios, and models of the potentialbenefits of developing product-centricapplications in these scenarios

• advancing theory on product-centricservice innovation, the evolutionpaths for product-centric informationarchitectures and applications.

This project has been funded for threeyears by the 6th Framework Pro-gramme of the EU. It is a collaborationbetween SZTAKI (project leader), theHelsinki University of Technology and

the University of Groningen (RuG) rep-resenting the academic sector, withindustrial partners Innotec Magyar Kft.,Finland Post Corporation, NetherlandsOrganisation for Applied ScientificResearch (TNO) and Wittmann & Part-ners Computer Systems. These com-mercial organisations share practicalbackground knowledge and provide atesting terrain for the first applicationcases of TraSer. Further informationabout the project can be obtained at theofficial TraSer website or by contactingthe representatives of the participatingorganisations.

Link:http://www.traser-project.eu/

Please contact:Elisabeth Ilie-Zudor and Zsolt KeménySZTAKI, HungaryTel: +36 1 279 6195E-mail: [email protected], [email protected]

Tracking during itemdelivery using thirdparty proprietary ser-vices (conventionalapproach, left) andusing decentralized itemnumbering and trackingwith the TraSer solutionplatform (right). Thelatter scheme is expec-ted to spare considera-ble setup and operatingcosts.

The research and industry partners inthe Distributed Engine for AdvancedLogistics (DEAL) project are AlmendeBV, RSM Erasmus University, VrijeUniversiteit Amsterdam, CWI, Carrier-Web, Post Kogeko and Vos Logistics.The goal of this consortium is to applynew knowledge to a broad range ofproducts for national and internationallogistic services. In particular, it aims tospeed up negotiations amongst softwareagents representing different stakehold-ers in dynamic logistic problems. Thiswould enable an increasing number of

logistic conditions and alternativelogistic plans to be examined, andtherewith a higher overall optimal per-formance of the logistic system to beachieved.

The current best practice for planning ina logistics company consists of humanplanners interacting with an order-assignment database and a tool for cal-culating optimal routes. The mostadvanced logistics tools focus on bal-ancing well-defined goals such as mini-

mizing the number of vehicles, the dis-tance covered, and the number of emptykilometres driven. The task of thehuman planners is to make choices,often by imposing additional con-straints on the optimisation tool, suchthat all involved parties are more or lesssatisfied with the schedule. This processis time-consuming, and a schedule maystill be sub-optimal when the timecomes for it to be executed.

Another issue is that the extra con-straints imposed by human planners on

the optimisation tool consist of a largenumber of rules that express the prefer-ences of all the involved parties. Tolearn all the rules is a lengthy processand makes the logistics companies vul-nerable to changes in personnel.

OOuuttppeerrffoorrmmiinngg tthhee OOppttiimmuummThe DEAL project develops a multi-agent based logistic planner and moni-toring tool that allows planning andexecution to overlap. Truck and con-tainer agents dynamically change plans

to react to unexpected events by usingdifferent market mechanisms such asauctioning and de-commitment. Theagents continuously search for bettersolutions while always maintaining anexecutable plan. Even while some partsof a plan are being executed, the agentskeep searching for better solutions forthe rest of the work, and if any incidentsoccur, they adjust their plans immedi-ately.

Another issue studied in the DEALproject is the evaluation of logistics per-formance. It is argued that simply eval-uating one of the traditional perform-ance indicators is insufficient for amodern logistics provider. Rather, mon-itoring of key performance indicators ofall the stakeholders is essential for suc-cessful business relations. This meansthat the optimisation goals of the agentsare manifold. To decrease the numberof optimisation goals, we introduced anevaluation framework based on fuzzylogic. This translates the values of sev-eral key performance indicators intosatisfaction measures of the main stake-holder groups: management, customers,employees and society. Given thesemeasures, agents can concentrate ongenerating a solution that balances thesatisfaction of these four groups.

In conclusion, we see the problem facedby logistics companies to be not merelyan optimisation for cost problem, but abalancing problem within an uncertainand unstable environment. Companiesmust provide plans for transportationvehicles such that all parties are satis-fied (including management invest-ments), while constantly facing inci-dents that force changes of plan.

Link:http://www.almende.com/deal/demo

Please contact: Tamás Máhr and Alfons SaldenAlmende, Rotterdam, The NetherlandsTel: + 31 10 4049444E-mail: [email protected],[email protected]


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agent-based technologies can help reducing transport costs, traffic jams and carbon dioxid emissions .


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As traffic volumes increase in urbanareas, so does the need for and interestin traffic monitoring for purposes suchas city transportation planning or safetyanalyses. With the improvement ofimage-processing techniques, video sen-sors are becoming one of the naturalsuccessors to loop-detectors for trafficstudies. Video allows traffic objects likebuses, cars, pedestrians and bicyclists tobe identified, and their speeds esti-mated. On a higher level, video analysiscan help in describing the interactionsbetween traffic objects and in detectingevents or incidents such as failure togive way. Yet it remains difficult to pro-vide reliable tracking in congested con-ditions that generate highly occludedscenes. VTT is developing a generic toolfor traffic monitoring that can extractrelevant traffic parameters from videosand store the results in GIS (GeographicInformation System).

Method development started on imagesequences acquired from helicopters, asthese can cover a greater area thanground-based systems. The methodswere then applied to static ground-basedcameras, on which the majority of traf-fic-monitoring systems are based. Theprocessing chain includes imagegeocoding and moving-pixel detectionfollowed by tracking of moving objects.The first image of the sequence wasmanually registered to a GIS map toallow vehicle speeds to be later evalu-ated in meaningful units.

The pixels in motion were then detectedby adaptive background subtraction,which iteratively constructs an image ofthe background (static pixels), and sub-tracts it from the current image in thevideo. Moving objects were aggregatedand tracked throughout the sequence byspatiotemporal connected-componentanalysis. This simple approach allowed

Figure 1: Vehicle-speedestimation in an imagesequence acquired innear-nadir directionfrom a helicopter flyingat an altitude of 200metres over an inter-section in Helsinki.

Figure 2: TRAFMON, a tool for interactive traffic monitoring. Red lines symbolize the GIS mapoverlaid on input imagery. In replay mode, the sequence can be browsed in search of specificevents. At every frame of the sequence, position and estimated vehicle speeds (in km/h) are dis-played on the left-hand side.

In 1970 more than 90,000 drivers diedon European roads, and congestion andaccidents stood out as the main issues totackle. Within the COST framework(European Cooperation in the field ofScience and Technology), ‘electronicaids’ helped to optimize existing trans-port networks through the considereduse of road information. In the 1980sand 1990s, radio broadcasting and vari-able message signs (VMS) emerged asthe first systems to bring real-timeinformation to the road environment.

Since then, a variety of bodies haveworked to develop a specific context fortelematic implementation. Various proj-ects exist within the European Frame-

work Programs (Drive I and II, Trans-port etc), and the Directorate-Generalfor Energy and Transport (DG TREN)has strongly promoted Euro-regionalprojects (ARTS, SERTI, CORVETTEetc) for Intelligent Transport Systems(ITS). In the last thirty years, theseresearch efforts and road safety policieshave contributed to the number of peo-ple dying annually on European roadsbeing halved to 45,000. In 2001 theEuropean Commission stated in the so-called Lisbon agenda that this death tollwas still unacceptably high, and thechallenge was then set to achieve a fur-ther 50% reduction by 2010. In achiev-ing this, technology will again play acrucial part.

As a complex multinational and multi-lingual environment, Europe must workhard to keep up with ITS (now also e-Safe) technology as it is applied to roadmobility and safety. Sadly, the Euro-pean road user, the last link in theimplementation chain, has somehowbeen neglected.

For instance, while VMS applicationsare now a mature technology (ie effi-cient and cost effective), the UnitedNations’ Convention on Road Signs andSignals, which claims to have produceda catalogue of standard signs withwhich to inform road users worldwide,includes a bare minimum of useful pic-tograms to indicate variable or dynamic



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most of the noisy pixels to be discardedwhile spatiotemporally consistent tar-gets were tracked. In case of helicopter-based sequences, semi-automaticimage-sequence stabilisation was car-ried out as pre-processing. The methodswere successfully tested in an aerialimage sequence acquired at an altitudeof 200 metres (Figure 1), as well as withground-based cameras.

The methods have been integrated witha piece of software known as TRAFMON, which has a GraphicalUser Interface (GUI) and allows semi-automated and interactive analysis ofimage sequences for traffic monitoring.The user can draw a zone of interest inthe scene and associate events with it, ega vehicle stopping or slowing down inthis zone. The ‘philosophy’ of the tool isto aid later analysis by extracting fromevery frame of the video all the relevanttraffic information (eg vehicle positionsand speeds in real-world coordinates,and triggered events). Records are thenstored in tabulated text files, and can be

used in replay mode for displayinginformation (Figure 2). They could eas-ily be used for computing traffic density,vehicle speed profiles or other parame-ters useful to traffic engineers. The hugeamount of data generated by severalminutes of video can be used in datamining; for example, identifying typicalvehicle behaviour at a given intersec-tion. The tool has proved useful atHelsinki City Planning department,assisting intersection-monitoring tasksthat were previously done manually.

This work was part of a larger project,ENVIMON (Environment Monitoringusing Earth Observation), the purpose ofwhich was to develop a general softwareplatform utilizing Earth Observationdata. ENVIMON benefits the TRAF-MON software by providing a set oftools for image pre-processing and post-processing; where necessary, these canalso enable the distribution of data andprocessing results via the Internet. Fur-ther work in the traffic-monitoring proj-ect will be supported by the Finnish

Ministry of Trade and Industry and theHelsinki City Planning Department, andwill include making improvements tothe tracking procedure for ground-basedimagery and to the handling of occlu-sions of vehicles by other vehicles. Theability of TRAFMON to define eventsinvolving more than one object, eg twovehicles approaching each other in acollision course, will be enhanced.

We are looking forward to developingcollaborations with traffic consultingcompanies, and possibly with otherEuropean research institutes within theFP7 program – partners are welcome!

Link:ENVIMON Traffic monitoring website: http://virtual.vtt.fi/virtual/proj2/envimon/traffic.htm

Please contact:Matthieu MolinierVTT, FinlandTel: +358 20 722 7345E-mail: [email protected]


events (eg pictograms for fog or ‘ghostdrivers’ are still missing).

As far back as the 1970s, VMS wererecognized as tools that would improvemobility and safety by virtue of traffic-flow re-distribution – thereby aidingtraffic planning and logistics. However,after twenty years of VMS implementa-tion, pictograms or graphics able to indi-cate or recommend rerouting schemesare only just beginning to emerge inEurope (see figure; to date only the con-gestion pictogram enjoys officialacceptance in the UN catalogue).

Turning to more recent tools, the imple-mentation of RDS-TMC (Radio Mes-sage System-Traffic Message Channel),which brings real-time traffic informa-tion to vehicles, has been affected bycommercial and institutional procrasti-nation. While countries such as Ger-many and Spain make traffic informa-tion freely available via public radio,some popular navigators are sold with-out TMC receptors. These navigatorsare therefore unable to take public traf-fic information into account, somethingmany road users are unaware of. Itappears that highly speculative ‘busi-ness case’ reasons are responsible forthis absurd state of affairs.

Another inconsistency occurs in digitalmaps and navigators that do not includea subject-profile facility. For example,some tunnels in Spain have vehicleweight restrictions. Tunnel operatorssometimes report trucks having to turnback and take an alternative route (spec-ified several kilometres before the tun-nel). The reason is simple: many truckdrivers rely on navigators built for cars.These navigators thus neglect the obvi-ous needs of a very important group,despite the growing volume of interna-tional freight and the consequences ofthis on planning and logistics.

VMS and RDS-TMC are ‘old’ technol-ogy, which after twenty years shouldhave produced a greater benefit forsociety. Both DG TREN (promotinginitiatives such as the Mare Nostrumproject for VMS harmonisation inEurope) and DG INFSO (promotingTMC and user-awareness workinggroups within the broader eSafety ini-tiative) appear to recognize this.

However, something is clearly missingfrom our modus operandi when it

comes to planning the penetration oftechnology: either we forget about endusers or we take them for granted. Welive in an era that burgeons with techno-logical innovations marked by unend-ing acronyms: for example, ESP (Elec-tronic Stability Program), V2V (Vehi-cle-to-Vehicle communication), V2i(Vehicle to Infrastructure), FCD (Float-ing Vehicle Data) and ADAS(Advanced Driver Assistance Systems).How will these innovations comple-ment each other? What response isexpected from users, and can we predicttheir behavioural adaptations? Andmost importantly, why is it still so com-mon for highly sophisticated technolo-gies to be designed, developed and pro-moted “for the road user but without theroad user”?

On top of this, road users are clearlypaying the toll of inconvenient eventsand avoidable road accidents. The intro-duction into the market of new naviga-tion and road safety technology tends tobe much slower and more difficult thanfor engines and mechanical devices.This is simply a failure of education:the user is unaware of or uninterestedby them and as a consequence, manypotential success stories have yielded toa massive reliance on hands, wheel,horn and blinkers. In the meantime,congestion and the optimisation of roadflows and road infrastructures is still themain issue for our transport systemsand will continue to be so for the fore-seeable future.

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Links:Mare Nostrum VMS project:http://www.arts-mip.com/vms/default.asp

UN-ECE "Small Group on VMS har-monisation":http://www.unece.org/trans/main/

SOMS/IN-SAFETY project:http://www.insafety-eu.org/

eSafety initiative:http://www.escope.info/

Euro-regional projects:http://www.i2tern.info/

Please contact:Antonio LucasRoad Safety and Traffic Institute, University of Valencia, Spain. Tel: +34 96 3393880E-mail: [email protected]

Pictograms relatingto traffic planningand logistics.



In the near future, engine and passengercomfort control via x-by-wire, andtime-constrained Web services, will nolonger be optional or futuristic features.It is likely that the pressure of marketcompetition in the automobile industrywill compel both car makers and devicesuppliers to exceed even the most dar-ing research challenges.

The positive side of this market-driventechnological push is twofold. On theone hand, research is stimulated by con-tinuous requests from the field. On theother, cars are becoming more comfort-able, easier both to drive and to inhabit.They are more environmentally sustain-able and are even better at fulfillingtheir primary function, ie transportingdriver and passenger from A to B in thebest possible way.

The System and Software EvaluationCentre (SSEC) at ISTI-CNR has beendealing with the effects of the increas-ing importance of automobile software(expected to reach 85% of car projectbudget by 2008). European car makershave been considering the relevance ofthe suppliers’ software process since2000. In 2001, SSEC convinced themain national Italian producer, FiatAuto, to launch a program for supplierevaluation. Between 2001 and 2006,more than 25 suppliers from sevenEuropean and North American coun-tries were process-assessed. We believethat most suppliers, not just Fiat Auto,have benefited from this.

However, progress can also bring prob-lems. Even if ‘problems’ in a researchenvironment may mean good news, weare concerned about some possibleways of dealing with innovation. Ofcourse, it is too early to see whether fea-tures such as infotainment, city netservices or Web services also imply alevel of risk. Yet even though the driver

and passengers in a car may be wellaware of any in-car services (Web or noWeb) and their qualities, software oftenacts on crucial vehicle functions inways that are totally opaque, unforesee-able from the user’s perspective andfrequently purposely masked. Forinstance, the act of touching a lever toflash the lights no longer operates aswitch, but signals the kernel of theoperating system to schedule a pre-defined task that, when executed, oper-

ates the lights. This means that softwareis mediating the car controls. The popu-larity of ‘x-by-wire’ projects (x being aplaceholder for ‘brake’, ‘steer’ etc)seems to indicate that this is going to bea prominent feature in the near future.

Of course, users do not need to knowhow car controls are working, providedthat the perceived performance is good.X-by-wire solutions were introduced toreplace unreliable (and unsafe) mechan-

ical devices and to perform complexfunctions like ensuring vehicle stabilitycontrol in particular situations (egacceleration, jerks, turns, braking). Weknow that part of this technology, theelectronic components, can be highlyreliable and safe. But we also know thatsoftware can fail.

Even though many believe that SWE issufficiently mature to guarantee thereliability of software-controlled sys-

tems and that they meet safety require-ments, what is not guaranteed is that carmanufacturers actually adopt the mostsuitable SWE techniques.

Optimistically, there are standards thatdeal with these issues. One importantstandard is IEC 61508. This is a genericstandard that has given rise to the emer-gence of specific standards in variousapplication domains, such as train con-trol and medical equipment control. It

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Software often acts on crucial vehicle functions.


has also generated a standard (still underdevelopment) that should cover safetyin the automobile: ISO 26262.

However, we strongly believe thathighly innovative solutions where soft-ware has direct control over critical carfunctions, such as the case of x-by-wire,should only be adopted with utmostcare. Our concerns are based on severalaspects, and in particular:• in general, the standard ISO 26262

resembles part 6 of IEC 61508. Thismainly concerns reliability, but haslittle to do with safety

• both IEC 61508 and ISO 26262 con-tain only a vague notion of process(they refer to the more traditionalview of phased projects). We knowfrom our experience how important it

is that mature processes are executedby car makers’ suppliers

• most supplier organisations that wehave assessed (and most organisati-ons assessed by other institutions) donot have sufficient process maturityto handle safety-critical projects

• safety is a system property, and can beunderstood and implemented havingthe vision of a system in which all thecomponent interactions are wellknown (software is usually the wea-kest of such components). Softwareengineers alone cannot ensure safety;for example, in avionics safety isimplemented at system level (and alsoregulated by different standards)

• when a standard is officially recogni-zed by all the stakeholders, what thenmatters to the manufacturer is stan-

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dard compliance. However, suchcompliance may not guarantee suffi-cient confidence with respect to ‘real’system safety.

It is possible that not all suppliers or carmanufacturers are in agreement with theabove points. However, we hope that wehave encouraged further efforts in soft-ware and system engineering with theobjective of guaranteeing both the relia-bility and the safety of the diverse, com-plex and evolving field of automobileapplications.

Please contact: Mario FusaniISTI-CNR, ItalyTel: +39 050 3152916E-mail: [email protected]

Today’s information systems show acontinuous growth in complexity. Thisgrowth was identified by Manny M.Lehman back in 1985, who placed sys-tems into certain classifications. Thesewere ‘specification systems’ (where acomplete specification of the system islaid down and must then be fulfilled bythe implementation, eg assigning car-plates); ‘problem systems’ (where onlya limited, incomplete knowledge of theproblem and the resulting specificationis available and the implementation ischallenged to find acceptable solutions,eg a traffic simulation program); and‘environment systems’ (which have thesame properties as problem systemswith the added difficulty that their veryintroduction into the system environ-ment will change the problem, eg con-trol of traffic lights based on simulationwith the burden of the uncertainty ofdrivers' future behaviour). HermannKopetz has since added a fourth cate-gory – ‘wicked problems’ – which have

the additional property of being large,complex, ill-defined and lacking aclearly identified objective (eg askingfor the traffic control to also optimizethe travel times of cars). He observesthat such a system cannot be specifiedwithout some prior concept of its solu-tion. Changing these concepts at a laterstage cannot be done without consider-able loss of time and effort. As a conse-quence, ill-conceived projects musteither be continued with an inappropri-ate basic architecture or be abolished.

CCllaassssiiffiiccaattiioonn ooff AArrcchhiitteeccttuurraall AAlltteerrnnaattiivveessWe observe that these basic conceptscan be classified as ’dichotomic archi-tectural alternatives’ along differentdimensions, usually providing aneither/or alternative. In the real imple-mentation a certain trade-off can usu-ally be achieved, but the basic conceptwill stay. For example, should a systembe centralized or decentralized? In

everyday life, the proverb "You can’thave your cake and eat it too" can alsobe seen as an example.

We intend to isolate and describe suchalternatives together with their essentialproperties, implications, consequencesand interactions. In this way, systemdesigners (both newcomers andexperts) will be given a clear under-standing of the different options avail-able to them, have some support fortheir intuition, and will therefore makebetter initial architectural decisions.

We classified the alternatives along thefollowing dimensions:• Enactment time: WHEN should a

foreseen action be performed?(Example: prefetching of variables orjust-in-time fetching)

• Physical Location: where shouldnecessary data and programs be pla-ced? (Example: centralized versusdecentralized storage)

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• Granularity: how many/much shouldbe accessed or handled in one step?(Example: choosing a large or a smallpage size for a paging system)

• Communication Control/Responsibi-lity: who or what has the responsibili-ty for leading the interaction? (Exam-ple: controlling the communicationbetween sender and receiver either bypolling or by an interrupt mechanism)

• Risk expectancy: how probable is anevent? (Example: trying to prevent an(improbable) error versus providingdetection and repair mechanisms)

• Optimism versus pessimism: shouldone prepare for the worst case or forthe ‘sunshine situation’? (Example:does one expect many or few errors inuser inputs?)

• Reductionistic versus holisticapproach: Should one consider only

the problem at hand or all its ramifi-cations? (Example: just planning anew motorway technologically oralso taking into account environmentand commercial implications)

• Planning horizon: how far into thefuture should the considerations go(Example: looking for short-termreturn on investments or for sustaina-bility?)

IImmpplliiccaattiioonn oonn SSyysstteemm CChhaarraacctteerriissttiiccssThe end-user of a system is not reallyinterested in the architectural choicesbut rather in the effects of those choiceson system properties, such as runtime,size, complexity and development risk.(A more detailed list of system charac-teristics can be found in ISO/IEC 9126and in effort estimation methods like

COCOMO.) The next step is thereforeto identify the implications of the archi-tectural alternatives on these character-istics (for instance, decentralization isless vulnerable to attacks but morecomplex to implement).

Another issue is the cross-impact ofthese alternatives on one another andthus on the aggregated system charac-teristics. A typical example is the cross-impact of alternatives for choosing amodule size: choosing a small modulesize (granularity) reduces the complex-ity of the individual modules but at theprice of increasing the number of inter-faces, which boosts complexity of thewhole system. A compromise betweenthe two will give some optimality (seefigure).

Research in this area clearly holdsmany challenges. A better understand-ing of the alternatives and their effectswill be of help to both novices and sea-soned designers, and will also give achance to teach in a holistic way someof the basic design decisions that mustbe made during the initial phase of anew challenging project.

Link:http://www.sea.uni-linz.ac.at

Please contact:Gerhard Chroust J. Kepler University Linz / AARITTel: +43 70 2468 8866E-mail: [email protected]

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SICS is building infrastructure that willprovide computing resources ondemand, so-called ‘utility computing’ orcomputing power on tap. The namestems from an analogy made with tradi-tional utilities, such as water and gas.Traditional utility resources are acquiredas they are needed, without the need toreserve them in advance, and are paidfor in proportion to usage. This is verydifferent from the way in which comput-ing power is acquired. We must buy the

machinery that generates the computingpower, rather than being able to easilybuy the power only.

Who will benefit from having comput-ing power on tap? The initial benefici-aries will be companies with fluctuatingworkloads and problems balancing outthe workloads over time. As thingsstand, it is common that, in order toachieve an acceptable quality-of-serv-ice at peak load, business servers on

average run at only 5 to 10 percent load.Such an amount of unused resourcestranslates into huge costs. These costscould be cut with the help of utilitycomputing, where someone elseemploys the unused resources whenthey are not needed by the business.

What's more, having a fixed computingpool can become a straitjacket that sti-fles innovation of new services anddamages the flexibility of a company.

The trade-off between modulesize and number of intercon-nections, and their impact onsystem complexity.


For instance, we see more and morebusinesses that produce services on theWeb. These new services are often themost innovative users of the new net-work and information technology thatwe see today. Network businesses arevulnerable to flash crowds – hundredsof thousands of users that access anonline service at the same time –because it is uneconomical to dimen-

sion resources to deal with such intenseload peaks. For such businesses to bereliable and viable, we need infrastruc-ture that can allocate resources to thesebusinesses in a short time, from a com-mon resource pool.

Can a virtually infinite resource pool bebuilt? Yes, but it will require an infra-structure that encourages investment inscarce resources. More investment inthe right places enables the pool togrow organically, and to adapt tounknown workloads that will occur inthe future and services that we cannotyet begin to imagine.

To begin creating an infrastructure thatturns computing power into an almostliquid resource, SICS is building, incooperation with HP Labs, the next-generation computing infrastructure‘Tycoon’. This provides a public, open

market, where computing resources aresold for profit. The market is designedto encourage on-demand resourceacquisition, rather than reservations.The motivation is that you rarely knowyour future demands in such detail thatthey could be easily expressed in aresource reservation language. Instead,you typically notice at run-time thatmore resources are needed to meet the

quality-of-service objectives forresponse latency, throughput and so on.

The Tycoon market uses dynamicprices that fluctuate in response tochanging supply and demand. Demand-driven prices make it more profitable toprovide scarce resources, and encour-age resources to be added to the net-work when a shortage occurs. The mar-ket is open, meaning resources are pro-vided by competing providers; this pre-vents consumers from being locked inby a particular provider.

SICS is also active in the EU-fundedSORMA project, led by the Universityof Karlsruhe. SORMA's goal is to cre-ate a truly open and ‘self-organising’marketplace for the future computinggrids. In contrast to Tycoon, which pro-vides one specific computing platformbuilt on virtualization, SORMA will be

a general market platform or hub, thatwill connect together heterogeneouscomputing platforms in one commoninfrastructure. SORMA’s members areactive in many of the existing Gridcomputing initiatives worldwide, suchas gLite, Mosix, and CATNETS. Weexpect these will benefit greatly fromthe market features that will be pro-vided by the SORMA infrastructure.

Link:http://tycoon.hpl.hp.com/

Please contact:Lars.RasmussonSICS, SwedenTel: +46 8 633 15 00E-mail: [email protected]

The next-generationcomputing infrastruc-

ture "Tycoon" isbeing built to turn

computing power intoan almost liquid

resource.



The ORG project is a consortium of theDepartment of Distributed Systems(DSD) of SZTAKI, Arvato SystemsHungary Inc. and the National Instituteof Oncology. It has been responsible forbuilding new online infrastructure tocollect and validate medical data, whichwill greatly improve the quality of dataon cancer diseases in the NCR and thusprovide a much stronger statistical basefor decision-makers and medicalresearchers.

One of the other important objectives ofthe ORG project is to broaden the rangeof data associated with cancer diseases.The current NCR collects only cancer-specific medical data and providesannual reports and statistics focused onthe geographic spread of cancer cases.In the ORG system we plan to collectother healthcare, environmental, politi-cal, demographical and economical dataassociated with a given geographicalterritory (grid cell). Associating thesedata with the currently collected cancer-specific records will give a much morecomprehensive view of possible causesof cancer, and aid experts in the analysisof factors affecting the progress of can-cer diseases.

The quality of the collected data is anessential factor, not only for researchersbut also for physicians. For instance, thelatter could use the system to identifysimilar cancer cases, and thus for deci-sion support. To achieve reliability inthe collected data we introduced so-called consistency criteria. These arelike small plug-ins, with each analysingincoming records for different types oferrors, such as invalid address, nameand sex mismatch, miscoding of diseasecode (BNO) etc. During the lifetime ofthe system new requirements couldemerge or frequent errors in the incom-ing data be discovered. By writing con-sistency criteria and adding them to the

system, further occurrences of theseerrors can be easily detected andavoided. These criteria will then warnthe operators if an error is found or sus-pected. The operator or the physiciancan then decide if it is indeed an error,or merely an unusual case.

To make this system more accessible aWeb-based interface is used, allowingthe new registry to be accessed easilyfrom any browser without having toinstall third-party software. Becausedata collected by the registry is sensi-tive and confidential, privacy and secu-

rity are important issues. Access istherefore limited to the internal networkof the hospitals, and even there the sys-tem uses a secure transfer protocol.Each hospital can install client soft-ware, which will automatically importthe necessary data from their internalsystem (warning immediately if errorsare found by either the local consis-tency criteria or the central server).

Within this distributed system, theseclients communicate with the serveralso by secure connections. This initself is a huge step forward, since upuntil now, data was often sent on afloppy disk by regular post.

The ORG Cancer Registry is currentlyin a test phase, which will finish in early2007. After this, the old and the newsystems will run in parallel in order toeliminate any remaining errors in thesystem, train personnel, and prepare forthe final switch from the old system tothe new one.

Link:ORG Project Page:http://dsd.sztaki.hu/projects/org/en/

Please contact:László KovácsSZTAKI, HungaryTel: +36 1 279 6212E-mail: [email protected]

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Architecture of the National Cancer Registry GRID.

Given the competition among ISPs, it isvital that they operate their networksefficiently. Quality of service (QoS) isalso important: many emerging multi-media applications such as voice andvideo communication can greatly bene-fit from QoS support in a network. Thistherefore opens further possibilities forvalue-added services with whichproviders can differentiate themselvesand target new markets.

Hence, efficiency and QoS are crucialfor ISPs operating the networks thatcomprise the Internet. Recent research,represented in the dissertation of OliverHeckmann, gives new insights into howISPs can improve in these areas. For hiswork, Oliver Heckmann was recentlypresented with the ERCIM Cor Baayenaward. The central question of the dis-sertation is: how can an Internet serviceprovider optimize the efficiency andquality of service of its network?

This work shows that efficiency andQoS strongly depend on three factors:• the network architecture (how the

network is built) • traffic engineering and network engi-

neering (how the network is adaptedto changes)

• the interconnections (how the net-work is connected with other net-works).

A system-oriented approach is thereforeemployed, in which all these areas areanalysed and optimized, while takinginto consideration their mutual influ-ences (see figure).

In the context of network architectures,the focus of the research lies on meth-ods for providing QoS. Analyticalmodels are developed in order to deter-mine and analyse the overprovisioningfactor of a plain best-effort networkcompared to networks that supportexplicit service differentiation. The

work shows that the analytical overpro-visioning factor ranges between threeand five in most cases. Furthermore,the different IETF QoS architecturesare evaluated and compared in anexperimental study to confirm andextend previous findings.

In this context, a bandwidth broker forDifferentiated Services networks isdeveloped. It offers strong QoS guaran-tees and a high efficiency by overbook-ing. With the bandwidth broker, the so-called Charny bound can be broken andthe utilization of networks with servicesof the highest QoS can be increased bya factor of about four.

The work shows that besides the net-work architecture, the interconnectionstructure also strongly influences theefficiency and QoS of an ISP. The inter-connection structure describes how thenetwork is connected with its peeringand transit networks. Differentapproaches to optimizing the efficiency,reliability and QoS of the structure aredescribed as decision problems, and arethen solved and evaluated. The disserta-tion shows that with these approaches,

cost savings of 5% to 30% can be real-ized, and QoS improved. The effectiveness of using traffic engi-neering to further improve the effi-ciency and QoS obtained with the net-work architecture and interconnectionsis also analysed. Weaknesses in existingapproaches are identified and corrected,taking the findings in the rest of the dis-sertation into account.

Due to the steadily increasing trafficvolumes (Internet traffic is doubling involume every 9-15 months), capacityexpansion is the most important net-work engineering task of a provider.New strategies for capacity expansionare therefore elaborated and evaluatedin this dissertation. They have signifi-cant advantages over the rules of thumbused today, since they also consider theinfluence of different network architec-tures and traffic engineering. Theresults show that traffic engineeringshould be explicitly taken into accountwhen planning capacity expansions.

Links:Online publication of the dissertation:http://elib.tu-darmstadt.de/diss/000522/

Homepage of the book 'The Competiti-ve Internet Service Provider' by OliverHeckmann (contains selected parts ofthe dissertation, introductory chaptersplus updates): http://www.competitive-isp.info

Please contact:Oliver HeckmannE-mail: [email protected]

Oliver Heckmann has been awardedthe 2006 Cor Baayen Award for a mostpromising young researcher in compu-ter science and applied mathematicsby ERCIM. Oliver is currently workingat rom Technical University Darm-stadt, Germany, and Google LabsZürich, Switzerland.


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Efficiency and quality of service stronglydepend on three factors.

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The purpose of the CONCUR conferences is to bringtogether researchers, developers and students in order toadvance the theory of concurrency and promote its applica-tions. Interest in this topic is growing continuously as a con-sequence of the importance and ubiquity of concurrent sys-tems and their applications, and of the scientific relevance oftheir foundations. The scope covers all areas of semantics,logic and verification techniques for concurrent systems.Topics include concurrency-related aspects of models ofcomputation and semantic domains, process algebras, Petrinets, event structures, real-time systems, hybrid systems,probabilistic systems, model checking, verification tech-niques, refinement techniques, term and graph rewriting,distributed programming, logic constraint programming,object-oriented programming, typing systems and algo-rithms, security, case studies, tools and environments forprogramming and verification.

The first two CONCUR conferences were held in Amster-dam (NL) in 1990 and 1991, with the locations in followingyears being Stony Brook (US), Hildesheim (DE), Uppsala(SE), Philadelphia (US), Pisa (IT), Warsaw (PL), Nice (FR),Eindhoven (NL), University Park (Pennsylvania, US), Aal-borg (DK), Brno (CZ), Marseille (FR), London (UK) andSan Francisco (US). The proceedings of CONCUR 2006have appeared in Springer LNCS as volume 4137.

The technical programme of the conference and its satelliteevents delivered 122 presentations in total, from which fif-teen were invited talks or invited tutorials. Out of 101 regu-lar papers submitted to CONCUR 2006, 29 were acceptedfor presentation at the conference. The conference alsoincluded three talks by excellent invited speakers: EdwardLee (University of California at Berkeley, US), OrnaKupferman (Hebrew University, IL) and Jan-Willem Klop

(Free University of Amsterdam, NL). Further, the pro-gramme included two plenary invited tutorials, delivered byRoberto Segala (University of Verona, IT) and Uwe Nest-mann (Technical University of Berlin, DE).

The talk by Edward A. Lee on 'Making Concurrency', whichwas jointly invited by CONCUR and its satellite workshop'Formal Methods for Industrial Critical Systems' (FMICS),was a particular highlight. FMICS is also the annual meetingof the ERCIM Working Group with the same title and wasorganised by Martin Leucker (TU Munich, DE) and LubosBrim (Masaryk University, CZ). See ERCIM News 67(http://ercim-news.ercim.org/content/view/24/46/) for areport on FMICS 2006.

Apart from FMICS, CONCUR 2006 was accompanied bythe following spectrum of satellite workshops:• Verification of Infinite-State Systems (INFINITY), orga-

nised by Ahmed Bouajjani (University of Paris 7, FR)• Expressiveness in Concurrency (EXPRESS), organised by

Iain Phillips (Imperial College, UK) and Roberto Amadio(University of Paris 7, FR)

• Structural Operational Semantics (SOS), organised byRob van Glabbeek (National ICT Australia, AU) and PeterMosses (Swansea University, UK)

• Geometric and Topological Methods in Concurrency(GETCO), organised by Eric Goubault (CEA, FR)

• German Verification Day (GVD), organised by JuergenNiehaus (University of Oldenburg, DE)

• Foundations of Coordination Languages and SoftwareArchitectures (FOCLASA), organised by Carlos Canal(University of Malaga, ES) and Mirko Viroli (Universityof Bologna, IT)

• Parallel and Distributed Model Checking (PDMC), orga-nised by Boudewijn Haverkort (University of Twente, NL)and Jaco van de Pol (CWI, NL)

• Control and Observation of Real-Time Open Systems(CORTOS), organised by Franck Cassez (CNRS, FR)

• Graph Transformation for Verification and Concurrency(GT-VC), organised by Arend Rensink (University ofTwente, NL), Reiko Heckel (University of Leicester, UK)and Barbara Koenig (University of Stuttgart, DE).

The conference took place in Germany for the second timeafter 1993. The organisers attempted to give the conferenceadditional stimuli through moderate conference fees, makingit attractive to participants from Central and Eastern Europeand to young researchers all over the world.

CONCUR 2006 was sponsored by ERCIM.

Link:http://d.cs.uni-sb.de/concur2006

Please contact: Holger HermannsSaarland University, GermanyE-mail: [email protected]


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The celebration of the 25th anniversary of the IFSR wereheld in Vienna on 19 April 2006 during the European Meet-ing of Cybernetics and Systems Research. The opening pres-entation was given by Secretary General Prof. GerhardChroust (University of Linz, Austria), who described theaims, goals, structure, projects and achievements of theIFSR. The designated president of the IFSR, Prof. em. Mat-jaz Mulej, University of Maribor, Slovenia, then gave thetraditional Ross Ashby Memorial Lecture. The rest of theday was devoted to a review of past and present activities ofthe IFSR and an outlook into the future.

Matjaz Mulej chose the title ‘Systems theory – a worldviewand/or a methodology’, and argued that the immenselygrowing knowledge of humankind causes unavoidably nar-row specialization of individuals, with every professionworking in a partial field. Knowing and using parts alonerather than wholes is not enough. Warnings about the prob-lems of oversights, one-sidedness and their consequenceswere voiced millennia ago, but have been neglected by spe-cialists in a variety of professions who fail to recognize thatspecialization is not sufficient.

As Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901-1972) – the father of gen-eral systems theory – emphasized, systems thinking is not aprofession but a world view. It is a matter of education, val-ues, culture, ethics, and norms of behaviour, added to everysingle field of professional knowledge.

The IFSR was based on the recognition that in order to respondto global problems, synergistic cooperation between all scien-tific societies working on systems theory and cybernetics isnecessary. With support from the Austrian Federal Ministry forScience and Research, it was founded on 12 March 1980, withthree members. These were the Society for General SystemsResearch, now ISSS (its president, Prof. J. Klir of the USA,became the first president of the IFSR); the Austrian Societyfor Cybernetic Studies (its president, Prof. Robert Trappl ofAustria, became the first vice-president); and the Systeem-groep Nederland (its representative, Prof. Gerard de Zeeuw ofNetherlands, became the first secretary treasurer).

The aims of the federation were to stimulate activity associ-ated with the scientific study of systems, and to coordinatesuch activities on the international level. Since 1980 the fed-eration has grown to 32 members from 25 countries on allcontinents. Past and present major contributions to the fieldof systems research are:• the Journal of Systems Research and Behavioral Science

(Editor-in-chief: Prof. M. C. Jackson), publishing originalarticles on new theories, experimental research and appli-cations relating to all levels of living and non-livingsystems

• the IFSR International Book Series on Systems Scienceand Engineering (editor-in-chief: Prof. George Klir), foun-ded in 1985, publishing high-quality scientific papers onsystems sciences

• the Fuschl Conversations (started in 1980 by Bela H.Banathy), which provide an alternative to conventionalconferences by offering a collectively guided disciplinedinquiry into issues of social/societal significance by scho-larly practitioners in self-organised face-to-face teams.Since 1980 they have been held biannually in Fuschl, nearSalzburg, Austria and replicated in many other places to anestimated total of forty or fifty

• the First International Congress of the IFSR (14-17November 2005 in Kobe, Japan) under the chaimanship ofProf. Jifa Gu, Prof. Y. Nakamori, and Prof. G. Chroust,was the first international systems conference to be held inJapan. It established a foundation for understanding andcollaboration between Japanese and non-Japanese systemsprofessionals

• the Ross Ashby Memorial Lecture at the bi-annualEMCSR-Conferences, sponsored by the IFSR

• a Web site and newsletter (Editor-in-chief and Webmaster:Prof. Magdalena Kalaidjieva, recently succeeded by Prof.G. Chroust).

Recent and current projects of the IFSR include: • acquiring, archiving and scientifically analysing the Lud-

wig von Bertalanffy Legacy in cooperation with the Ber-talanffy Centre for the Study of Systems Science, Austria(Prof. Wolfgang Hofkirchner, Salzburg)

• an electronically accessible International Encyclopaediaof Systems and Cybernetics based on Charles François’book version (Prof. Günther Ossimitz)

• planning an Academy of Systems Sciences and Cyberne-tics (Prof. Jifa Gu and Prof. Matjaz Mulej)

Left to right: Gerhard Chroust, secretary general; Matjaz Mulej,president; Gerard de Zeeuw past secretary/treasurer and past presi-dent; and Gary Metcalf, vice-president.

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The conference in the Czech Republic was a very successfulcontinuation of former conferences organised in the USA,Belgium, Germany, Canada and the UK. Programme chairsof the conference were Edmund Burke from the Universityof Nottingham and Hana Rudová from the organising uni-versity. The programme of this year's conference featuredseventy presentations representing the state of the art inautomated timetabling. This included four plenary papers,seventeen full papers, 41 extended abstracts, and eight sys-tem demonstrations. Plenary presentations discussed physi-cian scheduling in emergency rooms (Michel Gendreau,Université de Montréal), differences between theory andpractice in university timetabling (Barry McCollum, Queen'sUniversity and eventMAP Ltd), search techniques intimetabling (James Orlin, MIT), and state of the art intimetabling experimentation (Andrea Schaerf, Università diUdine).

The conference proceedings were published by MasarykUniversity Press and selected and revised papers will bepublished in Lecture Notes in Computer Science bySpringer-Verlag.

Link: http://patat06.muni.cz

Please contact: Hana RudováFaculty of Informatics, Masaryk UniversityE-mail: [email protected]


PPAATTAATT 22000066 CCoonnffeerreenncceebbyy HHaannaa RRuuddoovváá

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The PATAT conferences, which are held every two years,bring together researchers and practitioners in all aspects ofcomputer-aided timetable generation. This includes univer-sity timetabling, school timetabling, personnel rostering,transportation timetabling, sports scheduling and other areasof the subject. These timetabling problems are common tomany of us. The classical example is the construction of thetimetable for some school. It corresponds to an assignmentof the time and room to each course. Such a generatedtimetable must satisfy requests given by student programs,teachers and students. Another important problem can beintroduced by timetabling of the nurses at hospitals. Here thegoal is to find nurses for each shift such that the needs of thehospital and its employees are satisfied. A very commomproblem, solutions for which were also explored by the con-ference, is sport league or tournament scheduling. The goalis to find team-mates, dates and placement of the gameswithin constraints such as the availability of venues, theorder of opponents, or travel time and distance.

• collecting and analysing data on courses in systems sci-ences to develop a basic common core (Prof. G. A. Swan-son)

• networking the archives of pioneers of systems scienceand cybernetics (Prof. Gerhard Chroust, Gary Metcalf);

• connecting systems scientists in Asia and the West (Prof.Jifa Gu).

The anniversary event was recorded and the video will bepublished on DVD in 2007.

Link: http://www.ifsr.org

Please contact:Gerhard ChroustKepler University, Linz, Austria, E-mail: [email protected]

Matjaz MulejUniverza v Mariboru, SloveniaE-mail: [email protected]

Invited speaker James Orlin from the MIT talking about Very Large-Scale Neighborhood Search Techniques in Timetabling Problems.

PATAT conference participants.


EESSFFOORRSS – NNEESSSSII WWoorrkksshhoopp AAddddrreesssseessNNeeww RReesseeaarrcchh PPrriioorriittiieessiinn TTrruusstt,, SSeeccuurriittyy aannddDDeeppeennddaabbiilliittyy iinn SSooffttwwaarreeSSyysstteemmss aanndd SSeerrvviicceessbbyy AAlljjoossaa PPaassiicc aanndd JJiimm CCllaarrkkee

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EESSFFOORRSS,, aa CCoooorrddiinnaattiioonn AAccttiioonn tthhaatt bbrriinnggss ttooggeetthheerr tthhee rriigghhtt ssttaakkeehhoollddeerrssESFORS is a coordination action of the Information SocietyTechnologies (IST) programme of the 6th framework pro-gramme (FP). It aims at bringing together the Europeanstakeholders for secure and dependable Information andCommunication Technologies (ICTs) to address the securityand dependability requirements of emerging software sys-tems and service platforms, such as web services.

The project will complement already existing coordinationactions in the area of ICT for security, dependability andtrust, such as SecurIST (http://www.securitytaskforce.eu/). Itwill co-operate with SecurIST to ensure that open servicerequirements are incorporated into the SecurIST security anddependability technology roadmap and that the roadmap isincorporated into the research agenda of the software andservice research community, notably through the strategicresearch agenda of the NESSI technology platform. More-over, ESFORS will act as a bridge between two researchcommunities: the software and service engineering commu-nity and the security and dependability community.

In order to take into account the views and experience of theexperts and stakeholders in the field of security and depend-ability of software systems and services, ESFORS has cre-ated an expert group of well known researchers and expertsfrom academia, industry and research institutes from nearlyall states of the European Union (EU).

ESFORS organises conferences and workshops that are themain vehicle for giving an opportunity to the research com-munities and expert groups to present their ideas, discuss andreach consensus upon the future research challenges in secu-rity and dependability that need to be addressed in prospec-tive European research programmes. The workshops arefocused on particular topics that deal with security and serv-ice oriented software architectures and infrastructures.

EEuurrooppeeaann TTeecchhnnoollooggyy PPllaattffoorrmm NNEESSSSII aanndd NNEESSSSII WWoorrkkiinngg GGrroouuppssPromoted by thirteen major European ICT corporations,NESSI aims to develop a visionary strategy for software andservices driven by a common European research agenda.NESSI has been officially launched on 7 September 2005 inBrussels. During the last NESSI general assembly, held on 8June 2006 in Brussels, there has been an opportunity to pres-ent the working groups as well as the NESSI contribution tothe research priorities of the EU's 7th FP. New partners andnew community members have also been announced duringthat event. The core partners of ESFORS proposed andestablished one of the first NESSI working groups to offi-cially receive approval, entitled 'Trust, Security and Depend-ability Working Group' (TSD WG).

RReesseeaarrcchh PPrriioorriittiieess ffoorr TTrruusstt,, SSeeccuurriittyy aanndd DDeeppeennddaabbiilliittyy iinn SSooffttwwaarree SSyysstteemmss aanndd SSeerrvviicceessSoftware applications will be broken into separately man-aged component services and will form so called dynamicservice coalitions. This has many consequences from a secu-rity point of view: first, applications will need to utilise com-ponents out of different domains of control that are requiredto obey separate security policies and ask for diverse secu-rity and dependability qualities; second, components may beowned and operated by different organisations so that infor-mal company arrangements will have to be replaced by for-mal agreements resulting from partially automated negotia-tions; and third, the services will be shared between manyconsumers, which implies advanced confidentiality, virtual-ization and isolation requirements.

Taking these evolutions into consideration, the participantsof the ESFORS-NESSI workshops held in Paris on 6-8 Sep-tember 2006 have derived the following conclusions regard-ing the main research priorities to focus on (this is a nonexhaustive list): • Privacy considerations - a clear definition of privacy as

well as research scope is needed in order to unify criteriaand to decide on the most appropriate research directions.Some of the suggested topics to further explore and deve-lop include: User empowerment, usage control and visibi-lity, context-aware privacy, data issues in software ser-vices, protection control and accountability.

• Identity considerations - after discussion on the identity con-cept, the existence of a unique or multiple identities per indi-vidual in service-oriented environments, the possibility tomanage identity in dynamic service coalitions and manyother topics have been debated. These include: links betweenprivacy, reputation, identity, credential systems and interope-rability, solutions for 'special' identity cases (group identity,inclusive identity, identity of “things” etc), virtualization ofidentity, interoperability, identity control lifecycle (issue,verification, revocation, etc.), repudiation of identity etc.

63

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CCAALLLL FFOORR PPAAPPEERRSS

FFCCTT 22000077 -- 1166tthh IInntteerrnnaattiioonnaall SSyymmppoossiiuumm oonn FFuunnddaammeennttaallss ooff CCoommppuuttaattiioonn TThheeoorryyBBuuddaappeesstt,, HHuunnggaarryy,, 2277--3300 AAuugguusstt 22000077

The Symposium on Fundamentals of Computation Theorywas established in 1977 for researchers interested in allaspects of theoretical computer science, in particular in algo-rithms, complexity, formal and logical methods. It is a bien-nial series of conferences previously held in Poznan (1977),Wendisch-Rietz (1979), Szeged (1981), Borgholm (1983),Cottbus (1985), Kazan (1987), Szeged (1989), Gosen-Berlin(1991), Szeged (1993), Dresden (1995), Kraków (1997), Iasi(1999), Riga (2001), Malmö (2003), and Lübeck (2005).

Authors are invited to submit papers presenting originalunpublished research in all areas of theoretical computer sci-ence. Topics of interest include (but not limited to):• automata and formal languages• design and analysis of algorithms• computational and structural complexity• semantics• logic, algebra and categories in computer science• circuits and networks• learning theory• specification and verification• parallel and distributed systems• concurrency theory• cryptography and cryptographic protocols• approximation and randomized algorithms• computational geometry• quantum computation and information• bio-inspired computation.

Invited speakers:• Ahmed Bouajjani (Paris, France)• Oscar H. Ibarra (Santa Barbara, CA, USA)• László Lovász (Budapest, Hungary)• Philip Scott (Ottawa, Canada).

Important dates:• Deadline for submissions: 5 March 2007• Notification to the authors: 20 April 2007• Final version: 20 May 2007.

The proceedings will be published in the Lecture Notes inComputer Science series of Springer-Verlag and it will bedistributed at the conference. We anticipate that a specialissue of Theoretical Computer Science will be devoted toselected papers published at the conference.

More information: http://www.conferences.hu/fct2007/

• Security mechanisms for services - this is an extensiveresearch topic since it encompasses issues like: clear divi-sion between modification of old security mechanisms andestablishing new mechanisms, policies integration andenforcement, negotiation and conflict resolution mecha-nisms, adaptive security, reusability and portability ofmechanisms, etc.

• Trust analysis, management and monitoring - these aretwo different, but inter-related, sub-topics that include,respectively: Trust analysis and management includingtrust modelling and computational trust; and dependabili-ty assessment and monitoring.

• Security and dependability engineering - some issues con-cerning security and dependability engineering are: use ofpatterns, integration of ‘lessons learnt’ and formal models,semantics, secure coding, secure migration, etc. There wasa particular emphasis on decision making in security engi-neering (user-driven, risk-driven, threat-driven, trust-driven, complexity- and cost-driven, etc).

• Stakeholders expectations - a number of key issues werediscussed from the perspective of various stakeholdersincluding end users, enterprises, academia, and serviceand communications providers. These topics includedchallenges related to the risk management approach tosecurity, including quantitative risk assessment, the needfor methods and tools for complex scenarios, raising awa-reness, the relationship between trust and training, andcosts vs. benefits across all three perspectives: citizen,industry and regulatory. In addition, the need for securemetrics and monitoring protocols and taxonomy or com-mon language are needed to ensure that all stakeholders onsecurity can communicate in a mutually understandlanguage, which is very difficult in this environment.

The full report presenting in detail the conclusions of theESFORS-NESSI workshop held in Paris can be found athttp://www.esfors.org/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=65.

The above research topics and priorities were further exam-ined with research stakeholders in the NESSI TSD WG intwo meetings held in September and November 2006,respectively. In addition, the ESFORS project organised andhosted a networking session at the IST 2006 event on 23November 2006 in Helsinki. The well-attended session wasentitled 'Bringing Together the European Stakeholders forSecure Service and Software Engineering: Creating trust,security and dependability in service applications'. Thekeynote addresses for the ESFORS networking session andthe project proposal presentations can be found at theESFORS web site. The next ESFORS-NESSI workshop isscheduled for June 2007 in Maribor, Slovenia.

Links: ESFORS: http://www.esfors.orgNESSI: http://www.nessi-europe.com/

Please contact:ESFORS coordinator Pedro Soria, Atos OriginE-mail: [email protected]

NESSI WG chairman Aljosa Pasic, Atos Origin E-mail: [email protected]



CCAALLLL FFOORR PPAAPPEERRSS

PPAACCTT 22000077 -- 1166tthh IInntteerrnnaattiioonnaall CCoonnffeerreennccee oonn PPaarraalllleellAArrcchhiitteeccttuurreess aanndd CCoommppiillaattiioonn TTeecchhnniiqquueess BBrraassoovv,, RRoommaanniiaa 1155--1199 SSeepptteemmbbeerr 22000077

The purpose of PACT is to bring together researchers fromarchitecture, compilers, applications and languages to pres-ent and discuss innovative research of common interest.PACT features cutting-edge research on a broad range oftopics, that include, but are not limited to:• parallel architectures and computational models• compilers and tools for parallel computer systems• multicore, multithreaded, superscalar, and VLIW architec-

tures• compiler/hardware support for hiding memory latencies• support for correctness in hardware and software (esp.

with concurrency)• reconfigurable computing• dynamic translation and optimisation• I/O issues in parallel computing and their relation to appli-

cations• parallel programming languages, algorithms and applicati-

ons• middleware and run-time system support for parallel com-

puting• high performance application specific systems• applications and experimental systems studies• non-traditional computing systems topics.

Important dates:• 26 March 26, 2007: abstract submission deadline• 1 April 2007: paper submission deadline• 2 April 2007: workshop proposal submission deadline.

More information: http://www.pactconf.org/pact07

65

In 2007,INRIA will recruit600 new staffTake up the challenge of workingwith the very latest technologiesin your profession:

research, computing, finance,assistantship, communication,HR, industrial relations,logistics…

Find out more about researchsubjects, activity schedules,

the listof available positions,

and download the application files:

It starts here and now...www.inria.fr/travailler

Encart recrutement ang. Inédit 20/12/06 16:47 Page 1

R&D researchers: 150 postswith fixed-term contractsThese 1-3 year contracts are designed for young graduates(at least five year's higher education), specialists from industryand foreign specialists from the academic world.They can be used to acquire professional experience or to bringexpertise INRIA research teams and to advanced researchsupport services.Recruitment: research contracts awarded throughout theentire year

Young graduate recruitment campaign:15 March 2007.

Support staff: 90 postsCovering the entire professional spectrum: legal, management,finance, accounting, HR, assistantships, documentation,communication, logistics, etc.These posts are aimed at young graduates and experiencedprofessionals.

Start of the recruitment campaign:Civil servant transfers: 2 January 2007External competitive selection process: end ofMarch 2007

Not forgettingTraining-through-research:460 PhD studentsand post-docs460 positions are available in research teams. Experienceabroad - post-docs will be in particularly high demand.Recruitment: throughout the entire year with 2 busyperiodsPhD students: 1 March 2007Post-docs: 1 February 2007

Researchers: 125 postsCandidates will be recruited for secondment or delegationpositions through a competitive selection process with an aim tostrengthen INRIA's research capacity within the scope of itsscientific challenges:- network- software security- complex systems- simulation and virtual reality modelling living systems

The competitive selection process is open to both young andexperienced researchers, in France and abroad.

Start of the recruitment campaign:15 December 2006

INRIA is the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control. It is amajor European player specialised research institute in IT Research. 3,600 people - including2,800 scientists (INRIA and partners) - work in its research units that are located in 7 regionsin France.

Encart recrutement ang. Inédit 20/12/06 16:47 Page 2

Advertisement

FFeelllloowwsshhiippss aavvaaiillaabbllee iinn GGRRIIDD RReesseeaarrcchhThe CoreGRID Network of Excellence currently offers fel-lowships for postgraduate students in the field of GRIDResearch The CoreGRID web site also offers the possibilityto post job announcements related to GRID research. Jobpostings are free of charge for academic institutions andorganisations. CoreGRID is a Network of Excellence admin-istrated by ERCIM.

More information; http://www.coregrid.net/jobs

EEvveennttss

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EECCOOOOPP ''0077 -- 2211sstt EEuurrooppeeaann CCoonnffeerreennccee oonn OObbjjeecctt--OOrriieenntteedd PPrrooggrraammmmiinnggBBeerrlliinn,, 3300 JJuullyy -- 33 AAuugguusstt 22000077

The ECOOP 2007 conference will feature high qualitypapers presenting research results or experience in all areasrelevant to object technology, including work that takesinspiration from or builds connections to areas not com-monly considered object-oriented. Many different researchmethods can be applied, eg, both experimentally based workand mathematical results.

ECOOP 2007 will also host a number of workshops address-ing different areas of object-oriented technology. Workshopsserve as a forum for exchanging late breaking ideas and the-ories in an evolutionary stage. They typically focus on eitherin depth analysis or broad-ranging approaches to areasrelated to object-oriented technology. The conference also isoffering a number of opportunities for tutorials and demon-strations of research and production systems.

More information:http://ecoop07.swt.cs.tu-berlin.de/index.html


ERCIM News is the magazine of ERCIM. This issue has a circulationof 10,500 copies. The printed version of ERCIM News has a productioncost of €8 per copy. It is currently available free of charge.

ERCIM News is published by ERCIM EEIG BP 93, F-06902 Sophia-Antipolis Cedex Tel: +33 4 9238 5010, E-mail: [email protected]: Jérôme ChaillouxISSN 0926-4981

Editorial Board:Central editor: Peter Kunz, ERCIM office ([email protected])Local Editors:Austria: Erwin Schoitsch, ([email protected])Belgium:Benoît Michel ([email protected])Czech Republic:Michal Haindl ([email protected])Finland: Pia-Maria Linden-Linna ([email protected])France: Bernard Hidoine ([email protected])Germany: Michael Krapp ([email protected])Greece: Eleni Orphanoudakis ([email protected])Hungary: Erzsébet Csuhaj-Varjú ([email protected])Ireland: Ray Walsh ([email protected])Italy: Carol Peters ([email protected])Luxembourg: Patrik Hitzelberger ([email protected])

Editorial Information

SSPPOONNSSOORREEDD BBYY EERRCCIIMM

CCAAiiSSEE''0077 -- TThhee 1199tthhIInntteerrnnaattiioonnaall CCoonnffeerreenncceeoonn AAddvvaanncceedd IInnffoorrmmaattiioonnSSyysstteemmss EEnnggiinneeeerriinnggTTrroonnddhheeiimm,, NNoorrwwaayy 1111--1155 JJuunnee 22000077

'Ubiquitous Information Systems Engineering' is the themeof the conference this year. Most modern information sys-tems span activities performed in several organisations andat different geographical locations. They often support theuntethered mobility of their users. The systems have alreadytoday a large impact on every day life in the organisations,and on the individuals. As we move towards ambient, perva-sive and ubiquitous computing this impact will increase sig-nificantly.

CAiSE'07 aims to bring together practitioners andresearchers in the field of information systems engineering.CAiSE'07 invites submissions on the development, mainte-nance, procurement and usage of information systems -especially submissions dealing with aspects related to infor-mation systems engineering in ubiquitous environments.

More information: http://caise07.idi.ntnu.no/

Norway: Truls Gjestland ([email protected])Spain: Salvador Lucas ([email protected])Sweden: Kersti Hedman ([email protected])Switzerland: Harry Rudin ([email protected])The Netherlands: Annette Kik ([email protected])United Kingdom: Martin Prime ([email protected])W3C: Marie-Claire Forgue ([email protected])

ContributionsContributions must be submitted to the local editor of your country.

Copyright NoticeAll authors, as identified in each article, retain copyright of their work.

AdvertisingFor current advertising rates and conditions, see http://ercim-news.ercim.org/ or contact [email protected]

ERCIM News online edition The online edition is published at http://ercim-news.ercim.org/

SubscriptionSubscribe to ERCIM News by: contacting the ERCIM office (seeaddress above) or by filling out the form at the ERCIM website athttp://ercim-news.ercim.org/

EERRCCIIMM ssiiggnneedd BBeerrlliinn DDeeccllaarraattiioonn oonn OOppeenn AAcccceessss

ERCIM has signed the 'Berlin Declara-tion on Open Access to Knowledge inthe Sciences and Humanities' on 30October 2006. The Berlin Declarationstates that, "Establishing open access asa worthwhile procedure ideally requiresthe active commitment of each andevery individual producer of scientificknowledge and holder of cultural her-itage".

Open access contributions include orig-inal scientific research results, raw andmetadata as well as source materialsand digital representations of pictorialand graphical materials. The authorsand right holders grant to all users afree, irrevocable, and universal right ofaccess to these contributions and allowtheir work to be used, reproduced, ordisseminated in digital form (providedcorrect attribution of authorship orcopyright owner is given). Togetherwith supplemental materials and thedeclaration of the right of use, the com-plete version of the work is to be madeaccessible in at least one electroniconline archive.

The Berlin Declaration is in accordancewith the spirit of the 'Bethesda Declara-tion on Open Access Publishing' and the'Budapest Open Access Initiative'. Bothalso endorse fundamental changes tothe practice of scientific publishing.

The Berlin Declaration was precededby a conference at the the Max PlanckSociety in Berlin in 2003 where lead-ing, international experts discussed newways of accessing scientific knowledgeand cultural heritage via the Internet.By January 2007, 193 organisationsfrom all over the world have signed thedeclaration including the individualERCIM members CWI, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, INRIA,

Links: Berlin Declaration: http://oa.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html

ERCIM News 64, European Scene:The Routes to Open Access Publishing: http://www.ercim.org/publication/Ercim_News/enw64/


AA JJooiinntt IINNRRIIAA--MMiiccrroossoofftt RReesseeaarrcchh LLaabboorraattoorryy

INRIA and Microsoft have inaugurateda joint fundamental research laboratoryin Orsay near Paris on 11 January 2007.For several years, INRIA and MicrosoftResearch have been working together topush forward research in the softwareindustry field, a key sector in the'weightless economy' that was the sub-ject of a recent report submitted to theFrench ministry of economy.

The joint laboratory will employ around30 top-level researchers who will devotetheir time to two key fields in computerscience research and, more broadly, sci-entific research: using formal methodsto demonstrate long theorems, or to val-idate communication protocols, and cre-ating a new avenue of research in com-puter science dedicated to the interac-tion of significant volumes of data gen-erated by modern scientific experimen-tation. The results of this research willbe made public and accessible to the sci-entific community.

Link: http://www.msr-inria.inria.fr/index.html

KKeeiitthh JJeeffffeerryy rree--eelleecctteedd EERRCCIIMM PPrreessiiddeenntt

Keith Jeffery, Director, IT & Interna-tional Strategy at CCLRC, has been re-elected ERCIM president for a further

two-year term of office 2007-2009 dur-ing the bi-annual meeting of ERCIM'sboard of directors in Nice, France, inOctober 2006. Keith took office asERCIM president on 1 January 2005.

Link:http://www.cis.rl.ac.uk/Person/NAME=K.G.Jeffery

IInn BBrriieeff

CCoollllooqquuiiuumm iinn MMeemmoorryy ooff GGiilllleess KKaahhnn

Gilles Kahn was the Chief ExecutiveOfficer of INRIA and INRIA's represen-tative on ERCIM's board of directorswhen he passed away in February 2006.

His friends and colleagues met on 12January 2007 in Paris to commemoratehis friendship and his scientific leader-ship.

Speakers at the colloquium includedSamson Abramsky (University ofOxford), Nicholas Ayache (INRIA),

Gérard Berry (Esterel Technologies),Luca Cardelli (Microsoft Research,Cambridge), Gérard Huet (INRIA), PaulKlint (CWI), Pierre-Louis Lions (Col-lege of France), David Macqueen (Uni-versity of Chicago), Robin Milner (Uni-versity of Cambridge and École poly-technique), Gordon Plotkin (Universityof Edinburgh), Erik Sandewall(Linköping University), Laurent Théry(INRIA), and Jean Vuillemin (INRIAand École Normale Supérieure).

The first computer scientist to be electedto the French Academy of Science, arelentless promoter of science and sup-porter of ERCIM, Gilles Kahn wasinvolved in many partnerships with themost prestigious organisations in theworld. He was a great man of science.

He was and will remain, for those thatwere close to him, a warm and charis-matic man whose simplicity and humanqualities will remain in their memoriesand in their hearts.

Link:http://www.inria.fr/gilleskahn/collo-quium.en.html

© INRIA / Photo Jim Wallace

Gilles Kahn in 1999

Keith Jeffery at the ERCIM meetings in Nice.

ERCIM – The European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics is an organisationdedicated to the advancement of European research and development, in information technologyand applied mathematics. Its national member institutions aim to foster collaborative work withinthe European research community and to increase co-operation with European industry.

ERCIM is the European Host of the World Wide Web Consortium.

FORTH

Fraunhofer ICT GroupFriedrichstr. 6010117 Berlin, GermanyTel: +49 30 726 15 66 0, Fax: ++49 30 726 15 66 19http://www.iuk.fraunhofer.de

Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en AutomatiqueB.P. 105, F-78153 Le Chesnay, FranceTel: +33 1 3963 5511, Fax: +33 1 3963 5330http://www.inria.fr/

Swedish Institute of Computer ScienceBox 1263, SE-164 29 Kista, SwedenTel: +46 8 633 1500, Fax: +46 8 751 72 30http://www.sics.se/

Technical Research Centre of FinlandPO Box 1000FIN-02044 VTT, FinlandTel:+358 207226041, Fax :+207226027http://www.vtt.fi/

Swiss Association for Research in Information Technologyc/o Professor Daniel Thalmann, EPFL-VRlab, CH-1015 Lausanne, SwitzerlandTel +41 21 693 5214, Fax +41 21 693 5328http://www.sarit.ch/

Magyar Tudományos AkadémiaSzámítástechnikai és Automatizálási Kutató IntézetP.O. Box 63, H-1518 Budapest, HungaryTel: +36 1 279 6000, Fax: + 36 1 466 7503http://www.sztaki.hu/

Irish Universities Associationc/o School of Computing, Dublin City UniversityGlasnevin, Dublin 9, IrelandTel: +3531 7005636, Fax: +3531 7005442http://ercim.computing.dcu.ie/

Austrian Association for Research in ITc/o Österreichische Computer GesellschaftWollzeile 1-3, A-1010 Wien, AustriaTel: +43 1 512 02 35 0, Fax: +43 1 512 02 35 9http://www.aarit.at/

Norwegian University of Science and Technology Faculty of Information Technology, Mathematics and Elec-trical Engineering, N 7491 Trondheim, NorwayTel: +47 73 59 80 35, Fax: +47 73 59 36 28http://www.ntnu.no/

Spanish Research Consortium for Informaticsand Mathematics c/o Esperanza Marcos, Rey Juan Carlos University,C/ Tulipan s/n, 28933-Móstoles, Madrid, Spain, Tel: +34 91 664 74 91, Fax: 34 91 664 74 90http://www.sparcim.org

Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, ISTI-CNRArea della Ricerca CNR di Pisa, Via G. Moruzzi 1, 56124 Pisa, ItalyTel: +39 050 315 2878, Fax: +39 050 315 2810http://www.isti.cnr.it/

Centrum voor Wiskunde en InformaticaKruislaan 413, NL-1098 SJ Amsterdam, The NetherlandsTel: +31 20 592 9333, Fax: +31 20 592 4199http://www.cwi.nl/

Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Coun-cils, Rutherford Appleton LaboratoryChilton, Didcot, Oxfordshire OX11 0QX, United KingdomTel: +44 1235 82 1900, Fax: +44 1235 44 5385http://www.cclrc.ac.uk/

Foundation for Research and Technology – HellasInstitute of Computer ScienceP.O. Box 1385, GR-71110 Heraklion, Crete, GreeceTel: +30 2810 39 16 00, Fax: +30 2810 39 16 01http://www.ics.forth.gr/

Czech Research Consortium for Informatics and MathematicsFI MU, Botanicka 68a, CZ-602 00 Brno, Czech RepublicTel: +420 2 688 4669, Fax: +420 2 688 4903http://www.utia.cas.cz/CRCIM/home.html

Fonds National de la Recherche6, rue Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, B.P. 1777L-1017 Luxembourg-KirchbergTel. +352 26 19 25-1, Fax +352 26 1925 35http:// www.fnr.lu

FWOEgmontstraat 5B-1000 Brussels, BelgiumTel: +32 2 512.9110http://www.fwo.be/

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