Managing ubiquitous communications and services 2011

Ubiquitous Communications and Services, being part of pervasive computing and smart space applications, present a set of important management challenges for the successful delivery of highly adaptive services across heterogeneous networks, mobile networks, ad-hoc networks, middleware, applications, and devices. Such challenges include: managing user-centric services and context services, extreme distribution and scalability, extensive system and network and semantic heterogeneity, ad-hoc formation and disassociation of systems and services, and intelligent support for user centric applications. Today’s management systems need to keep pace with the complexity, heterogeneity, and automation required by the pervasive computing vision. The MUCS workshop builds up synergies between the domains of Ubiquitous Computing and Communications Management, providing a forum for researchers and practitioners to explore the theoretical, technological, and organisational challenges, and to present advances in management techniques and technologies, for pervasive computing and smart space applications. The workshop in 2011 provided a single-track scientific program containing a blend of a keynote presentation, peer-reviewed papers, and workshop interaction. The key topics presented in the workshop covered the areas of context, more specifically simulations, intelligent information dissemination, and service provisioning, and behavior and special services, in particular behavior of QoS- and QoE-based algorithms, declarative XML-based layout state encoding, managing mobility data, and user-centric service selection. These topics provide both a unique insight into the current state of the art in management in ubiquitous communications and services and suggest avenues for future research in this area. The keynote for MUCS 2011 was given by John Krumm, Microsoft Research, USA on a perfectly well fitting topic termed “What To Do With 100 Million GPS Points”, which describes the research at Microsoft in using GPS data. He outlined the model and predictions, where people go, how they view location privacy, and in which way road maps can be created. Selected practical tools for such research, some pitfalls, and ideas for new projects concluded his presentation. The 8th IEEE International Workshop on Managing Ubiquitous Communications and Services (MUCS 2011) was held in Seattle, USA, 21st March 2011, as an integrated part of the 9th Annual IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (PerCom 2011).