harbour entrance from Scilly

5th International Workshop on

Soft Constraints

Held in conjunction with

9th International Conference on
Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming, CP2003

Actons Hotel, Kinsale, County Cork, Ireland.
29 September - 3 October, 2003


Index:

Overview ]

Scope ]

Submissions ]

Important Dates ]

Accepted Papers ]

Schedule ]

Organisation ]

The workshop schedule is available.

Overview

Soft-constraints augment the classical CSP framework by allowing the user to express preferences among potential solutions. Given a well-defined mechanism to express and combine preferences, the goal is to find the "best" solution. Therefore, solving soft constraints becomes an optimization task, harder than the satisfaction tasks in classical CSP. Sometimes optimization becomes multi-objective, making the solving process even more complex. The interest of the community on soft constraints has increased in the last years. Several theoretical frameworks have been developed to allow soft constraints in problem modeling. For these frameworks, new algorithms have been built. The main motivation for this line of research is the existence of many real problems involving preferences among potential solutions, which demand an effective solving method.

Also in this edition, we want to enlarge the workshop scope by encouraging submissions from domains where soft constraints have specific semantics such as propositional logic formulae (i.e. MAX-SAT), probability distributions (i.e. probabilistic reasoning) or uncertainty.

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Scope

The scope of the workshop includes, but is not limited to, the following topics:

  • theoretical frameworks for soft constraints
  • problem modeling with soft constraints
  • solving algorithms for soft constraints
  • multi-objective or qualitative optimization and soft constraints
  • constraint languages including soft constraints
  • combining/integrating soft constraint frameworks and algorithms into the Constraint Programming framework
  • comparative studies
  • real-life applications

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Delivery & Submissions

This workshop is intended to build on the experience and success of the CP99, CP2000, CP2001 and CP2002 workshops on the same subject, and its aim is to provide a forum where researchers currently working in this area can discuss their most recent ideas and developments and think together about the most promising new directions.
Therefore we encourage the presentation of work in progress or on specialized aspects of soft constraints. Papers that bridge the gap between theory and practice are especially welcome.

Prospective attendees can Submit a paper, which can be up to 15 pages in length.

We encourage authors to submit papers electronically in postscript or pdf format. Papers should be formatted using the Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) style.

Please send your submissions by email to larrosa@lsi.upc.es using the subject line Soft-2003 Workshop Submission.

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Important Dates

The proposed schedule of important dates for the workshop is as follows:

Paper Submission deadline June 30th
Notification of acceptance July 24th
Camera-ready version deadline August 14th
Workshop Date September 29th

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Accepted papers

NSCSP: Definition and resolution by transformation
A. Anglada, P. Codognet, L. Zimmer
An elegant and efficient way of implementing Russian Doll Search for Variable Weighted CSP
T. Benoist, M. Lemaitre
Evaluation-based semiring meta-contraints
J. Kelleber, B. O'Sullivan
Symmetry breaking in soft csps
S. Bistarelli, J. Kelleber, B. O'Sullivan
A local search framework for semiring-based constraint satisfaction problems
S. Bistarelli, S. K. L. Fung, J.H.M. Lee, H.F. Leung
A logic of partially satisfied constraints
Nic Wilson
Ordinal Constraint Satisfaction
E.C. Freuder, R.J. Wallace, R. Hefferman
A general conflict-set based framework for partial constraint satisfaction
T. Petit, C. Bessiere, J.C. Regin
Soft consistencies for weighted CSPs
K. Brown

Workshop Schedule

  Opening Remarks
[ Front Matter of the Working Notes ]
S. Bistarelli, J.Larrosa, T. Schiex
  Invited Talk:
Chair: ...
9:00 Soft Constraint Islands of Tractability
Dave Cohen (Royal Holloway, University of London, UK)
[ abstract and slides]
Coffee Break (10:00-10:30)
  Morning Technical Session
Chair: ...
10:30 A local search framework for semiring-based constraint satisfaction problems
S. Bistarelli, S. K. L. Fung, J.H.M. Lee, H.F. Leung
[ paper and slides]
10:55 A logic of partially satisfied constraints
Nic Wilson
[ paper and slides]
11:20 Ordinal Constraint Satisfaction
E.C. Freuder, R.J. Wallace, R. Hefferman
[ paper and slides]
11:45 Soft consistencies for weighted CSPs
K. Brown
[ paper and slides]
12:10 NSCSP: Definition and resolution by transformation
A. Anglada, P. Codognet, L. Zimmer
[ paper and slides]
Lunch (12:35-14:30)
  Invited Talk:
Chair: ...
14:30 Will soft constraints make security any easier?
Simon N.Foley (University Collegge Cork,Ireland)
[ abstract and slides]
Coffee Break (15:30-16:00)
  Afternoon Technical Session
Chair: ...
16:00 Symmetry breaking in soft csps
S. Bistarelli, J. Kelleber, B. O'Sullivan
[ paper and slides]
16:25 An elegant and efficient way of implementing Russian Doll Search for Variable Weighted CSP
T. Benoist, M. Lemaitre
[ paper and slides]
16:50 A general conflict-set based framework for partial constraint satisfaction
T. Petit, C. Bessiere, J.C. Regin
[ paper and slides]
17:15 Evaluation-based semiring meta-contraints
J. Kelleber, B. O'Sullivan
[ paper and slides]
  Concluding Remarks
S. Bistarelli, J.Larrosa, T. Schiex

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Organisation

Organising Committee

Stefano Bistarelli (Primary Contact)
Dipartimento di Scienze
Università degli studi "G. D'Annunzio" di Chieti-Pescara, Italy
and
Istituto di Informatica e Telematica
C.N.R. Pisa, Italy
Email: bista@sci.unich.it
Web: http://www.sci.unich.it/~bista/

Javier Larrosa
Software Department
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, UPC, Barcelona, Spain
Email: larrosa@lsi.upc.es
Web: http://www.lsi.upc.es/~larrosa

Thomas Schiex
Biometry and Artificial Intelligence Dept
Institut National de La Recherche Agronomique, Castanet Tolosan Cedex - France
Email: tschiex@toulouse.inra.fr
Web: http://www.inra.fr/bia/T/schiex

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Programme Committee

Fadi Aloul (Electrical Engineering & Computer Science University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, USA)
Hélène Fargier (IRIT, Université Paul Sabatier, France)
Thom Fruehwirth (University of Ulm, Germany)
Carmen Gervet (IC-Parc, Imperial College, UK)
Ulrich Junker (ILOG, France)
Jimmy H. M. Lee (The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong)
Pedro Meseguer (IIIA-CSIC, Bellaterra, Spain)
Barry O'Sullivan (University College Cork, Ireland)
Francesca Rossi (University of Padova, Italy)

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bista@sci.unich.it

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