Subject: 2nd CFP: CP-AI-OR'00 (Integration of AI and OR in CP)

From: Stefan Karisch <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1999 17:23:05 +0100 (MET)

(Apologies if you receive this message more than once.)

     ************************************************************
          Second call for contributions and participation

      CP-AI-OR'00: Second International Workshop on Integration
          of AI and OR techniques in Constraint Programming
               for Combinatorial Optimization Problems

                         March, 8 - 10, 2000

             University of Paderborn, Paderborn, Germany
     ************************************************************

The integration of techniques from both Operations Research (OR) and
Artificial Intelligence (AI) provides a new paradigm for solving
difficult combinatorial optimization problems. As demonstrated by work
in scheduling, rostering, vehicle routing, and other problems,
constraint programming (CP) provides a powerful means for doing
successful integrations of this kind.  Nowadays, most industrial CP
tools and systems have integrated efficient special purpose techniques
from OR for improving problem solving facilities.

In February 1999, the Universities of Bologna and Ferrara (Italy)
organized the workshop CP-AI-OR'99 and brought together about 60
researchers from AI and OR to discuss integration issues. In order to
continue this successful event, the second workshop on integration of
AI and OR techniques in CP will be held at the University of Paderborn
(Germany) from March 8-10, 2000.

The aim of the workshop is to bring together interested researchers
from AI and OR and to make this the major forum for exchanging ideas
and methodologies from both fields. The workshop gives an excellent
opportunity to show that the integration of techniques from AI and OR
can lead to interesting results (e.g., improvements in performance and
modeling) on real-world applications. We explicitly welcome new ideas
and methods for integrating OR and AI techniques that have arisen from
real-world problems.

This year a special session will focus on airline planning and
scheduling problems, since the workshop is organized by the European
research project PARROT (Parallel Crew Rostering with CP and OR
techniques). 

During the workshop ample time will be allocated for discussion. The
following speakers will give an invited presentation at the workshop:

   * Peter Brucker, University of Osnabrueck
   * Pascal van Hentenryck, University of Louvain
   * George Nemhauser, Georgia Institute of Technology

AREAS OF INTEREST

The workshop invites submissions related to the following topics (the
following lists are not exhaustive, but just give examples for methods
and applications).

Integration of AI and OR methods from:

   * Constraint satisfaction
   * Local consistency/propagation
   * Cost-based propagation
   * Heuristic/iterative repair
   * Intelligent backtracking
   * Search heuristics and procedures
   * Randomized search

   * Linear and integer programming
   * Cutting planes
   * Column generation
   * Local search
   * Meta-heuristics
   * Lagrangean and other relaxations

Problems, modeling, and applications:

   * Time-tabling, Rostering
   * Fleet assignment
   * Crew scheduling
   * Vehicle routing
   * Production planning
   * Production scheduling
   * Car sequencing
   * Configuration and diagnosis

SUBMISSION

Submission deadline is December 1, 1999. Authors are invited to submit
an abstract (approx. 1000 words) written in English to the contact
address below. We encourage electronic mail submission in
self-contained Postscript format. Please send an email to

[email-masked]

Both the abstract and the email should indicate author name(s) and
title.  Alternatively one hard copy may be submitted by mail to the
workshop address (cf. below). Decision on acceptance will be sent to
authors by January 15, 2000.

Informal proceedings will be available at the workshop. Negotiations are
under way to publish papers, selected from those presented at the 
workshop, in a refereed proceedings volume.

SOFTWARE DEMOS

Demonstrations of existing systems exploiting the integration of OR
and AI techniques in CP are welcome. Authors are requested to submit a
200 word abstract describing their system to the workshop address
below. For demos the submission deadline is December 15, 1999, and
decision on acceptance will be sent to authors by January 15, 2000.

WORKSHOP SITE

Paderborn is located in Westphalia, Germany. It is a city with a long
and rich history, dating back 1200 years.

In recent times, the development of Nixdorf computers has led to
intense local activity in computer science. The Paderborn Center of
Parallel Computing (PC2), with research focused on parallelism in
operations research, applied mathematics, and virtual reality,
enhances this activity.  In addition, the world's largest computer
museum is located next door to the workshop site.

The Paderborn airport (PAD) can be easily reached from Frankfurt,
Amsterdam, Munich, Paris, and London.

WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS

   * Ulrich Junker, Ilog
   * Stefan Karisch, Carmen Systems
   * Stefan Tschoeke, University of Paderborn

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

   * Christian Bessiere, CNRS Montpellier
   * Alexander Bockmayr, University of Nancy
   * Peter Brucker, University of Osnabrueck
   * Jens Clausen, Technical University of Denmark
   * Michel Gendreau, University of Montreal
   * Matthew Ginsberg, University of Oregon
   * Costas Halatsis, University of Athens
   * Pascal van Hentenryck, University of Louvain
   * John Hooker, Carnegie Mellon University
   * Niklas Kohl, Carmen Systems
   * Francois Laburthe, Bouygues
   * Michela Milano, University of Bologna
   * Burkhard Monien, University of Paderborn
   * George Nemhauser, Georgia Institute of Technology
   * Jean-Francois Puget, Ilog
   * Paolo Toth, University of Bologna
   * Mark Wallace, Imperial College
   * Toby Walsh, University of York

WORKSHOP ADDRESS

CP-AI-OR'00
c/o Stefan Tschoeke
University of Paderborn
Fuerstenallee 11
33102 Paderborn - Germany
e-mail: [email-masked]

IMPORTANT DATES

   * Third call for contributions ............. Nov 22, 1999
   * Submission dead-line (abstracts) ......... Dec  1, 1999
   * Submission dead-line (software demos) .... Dec 15, 1999
   * Notification to the authors .............. Jan 15, 2000
   * CP-AI-OR'00 .............................. Mar 8-10, 2000

FURTHER INFORMATION

Please consult the web site of CP-AI-OR'00:
http://www.uni-paderborn.de/CP-AI-OR

CONTACT ADDRESSES

Stefan Tschoeke        Stefan E. Karisch      Ulrich Junker         
Univ. of Paderborn     Carmen Systems AB      Ilog S.A.  
Fuerstenallee 11       Odinsgatan 9           1681, route des Dolines
D-33102 Paderborn      S-41103 Gothenburg     F-06560 Valbonne 
[email-masked]   [email-masked]      [email-masked]