Yearly report 1996-1997
SCS European Council

Dr.ir. Alexander Verbraeck, Chairman SCS European Council Board
Philippe Geril, SCS Europe BVBA

1. The SCS European Council Board

In the past year, two changes were made to the SCS European Council Board. Istvan Molnar was added for CD-Rom production, and Marwan Al-Akaidi was added for starting SCS activities in the Middle East and in the North African countries. The current composition of the European Council Board is as follows:

At each European Simulation Multiconference (June) and European Simulation Symposium (October) a Council Board meeting has been held, usually the day before or after the conference. The meetings are split into two parts: the Council Board meeting and the Conference Board meeting. For the latter meeting, general chairs and program chairs of future conferences are invited, so exchange of experiences with organizing conferences is stimulated. The European Council Board has its own mailing list, which is used to distribute information among the Board members. For all meetings, minutes have been distributed among the European Council Board members. All meetings were attended by guests who were interested in future activities and who gave valuable suggestions.

2. 1996/1997 Conferences and Workshops in Europe

The major activity of SCS in Europe is organizing conferences. Each year, a European Simulation Multiconference (ESM) is held in June, and a European Simulation Symposium (ESS) is held in October. The conference attendance for both conferences has stabilized around 170-210 for both conferences. Competition in Europe is tough. Apart from the ESS and ESM conferences, a yearly Concurrent Engineering conference (called CEE) and a Telematics and Multimedia conference (called Euromedia) are organized. It is expected that these fields will benefit largely from simulation and that SCS can bring together researchers and practitioners for these topics by organizing conferences. These efforts might also yield new members for SCS. The first figure shows the total number of attendants and papers per year for all conferences organized by SCS in Europe (top two lines). The bottom two lines show the mean number of attendants and papers per conference.

The separate attendance of the ESM and ESS conferences over the years is shown in the charts below.

The following conferences have been organized by or sponsored by SCS Europe between July 1996 and July 1997:

• ESS'96 October 24-26, 1996 in Genoa, Italy
• Euromedia'96 December 19-21, 1996 in London, UK
• Simulation and Animation '97. March 6-7, 1997, Magdeburg (Germany); co-sponsored event.
• CEE'97 April 16-18, 1997 in Erlangen, Germany.
• ESM'97 June 1-4, 1997 in Istanbul, Turkey.

The conference proceedings for the past few conferences have been printed in Hungary under supervision of Dr. Istvan Molnar and in Turkey (ESM'97) under supervision of prof. Ali Riza Kaylan. For all conferences, including CEE and Euromedia, a CD-Rom was produced. The total number of SCS European conference CD-Roms is now 5.

At all ESM and ESS conferences since 1995, a "Blue Sky Meeting" has been organized for SCS Members and others who are interested. The Blue Sky Meetings were well attended (20-30 participants) and a number of valuable suggestions and ideas were given by the participants that will help to improve the service to our members and to our conference participants.

Current ESM and ESS conferences now all follow the same time-schedule:

• Professional Development Seminars or Tutorials on the day before the conference
• Welcome reception on the evening before the conference starts
• Opening session on the first conference day, followed by one or two keynote presentations
• Three slots of five to seven parallel sessions on the first day
• Second day may open with a plenary speaker or several plenary presentations per track
• Three or four slots of five to seven parallel sessions on the second day
• Day 2 is concluded by the Blue Sky meeting
• Social event (i.e. conference dinner) on the second night
• Full or half day parallel sessions on the third day, concluded by the closing session of the conference. During the closing session, the best papers of the conference are awarded. The attendance of the closing session is high (usually 40-60% of the conference participants).
• Several other events are usually planned for the conference participants, but the fee for those events is not included in the conference fee.
• At all conferences, equipment is made available to the conference participants for accessing the Internet: for reading mail, and for browsing the WWW.

Since the 1996 ESM conference, for each conference a CD-Rom has been produced which contains the entire text of the proceedings of the conference. Using Adobe Acrobat (which is available on the CD), all papers of the proceedings can be searched for keywords, viewed on the screen (including figures), and printed. Because of the fact that the papers are stored in facsimile (so not as wordprocessor documents), we experience no problems with formulas and figures and there is less danger that others copy the content of the papers for their own use. The CD-ROM project is managed by Dr. Istvan Molnar of the Budapest University of Economic Sciences. This University will support the SCS European Office for future conferences as well. The 1997 ESM had a novelty: Systems Modeling Corporation sponsored the CD by paying for the production of 300 copies, so each conference participant could be given a free copy of the CD-Rom together with the hardcopy proceedings. In return, we allowed Systems Modeling to fill 500 Mb of the CD-Rom with simulation demonstration material, videos, etc.. We will try to repeat this at future conferences.

3. Future conferences in Europe

Future ESS and ESM conferences are planned until 2001. Originally, the Warsaw conference was planned for 1998, but a major event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first stored computer program takes place in Manchester in June 1998, and it was decided to include the ESM'98 as one of the major conferences in the overall celebration. History of simulation will be one of the topics.

Most of the conferences will be held on University premises, because we usually can get the rooms and other facilities for free or at very low costs. Since the ESS-8 conference in Genoa, Italy in 1996, the ESS conferences are devoted to simulation in industry. We are now carefully shifting this conference towards an event where simulation users, simulation vendors, simulation professionals, and simulation researchers can meet and exchange experiences and results.

In addition to organizing the two major European conferences, SCS Europe supports local events as well. For the next few years, several smaller country-based meetings are planned that SCS will support financially and by organizational effort. In this way, we hope to create an environment in which local councils and technical councils for SCS can be formed. The Euromedia and CEE conferences are not planned so far in advance yet, as these are currently smaller events as well. The current calendar of the other conferences, workshops, and sponsored events looks as follows:

• Sponsored event: WCSS'97, Singapore, September 1997
• Euromedia'98, January 1998, Leicester, UK
• Sponsored event: Simulation and Animation, Magdeburg, Germany, March 1998
• ECEC'98 (CEE'98), April 1998, Erlangen, Germany
• Workshop on Simulation and Visualization of Products and Production Processes of the Factory of the Future, Bucharest, Romania, August 1998
• Workshop on Harbour and Maritime Simulation, Riga, Latvia, September 1998
• Sponsored event: NEURAP'98, Marseille, France, October 1998
• Euromedia'99, January 1999, Budapest, Hungary
• ECEC'99, April 1999, Erlangen, Germany or Istanbul, Turkey

4. Conference Organization

Planning of future conferences follows a precise schedule, which allows the organizers to start working on the conference three years in advance, and which enables them to use the experiences of previous conference organizers as much as possible. As a rough sketch, the schedule looks as follows:

• T-3 years: First proposal to the conference board with location proposal, first selection of topics, main organizers, ideas about major budget items, and local organization.
• T-2 years: Contract signed, approved budget, final selection of topics, approval of the Board
• T-1,5 years: Local organization starts, Web pages, First Call for Papers
• T-1 year: Call for Papers at the previous conference in the same series

The so-called "Conference Matrix" is used in selecting topics and in dividing topics over conferences. The conference matrix is a breakdown of the number of papers per conference in certain categories since the first European SCS conference in 1987. Successful categories and less successful topics can easily be identified.

There is now a written agreement between SCS Europe BVBA and the conference organizers, which clearly shows the responsibilities of each party with respect to the conference budget. Usually, conference organizers make decisions and promises that heavily influence the amount of money spent, but SCS has all the financial risks. After some problems over the budget, an agreement was made that conference organizers can use as a guideline when making decisions that have financial implications. The mutual trust between organizers and the office, however, remains the basis for conference organization in Europe.

There are now three types of submissions (full papers, extended abstracts, and short papers), and three types of papers that can be presented at conferences (extended papers, regular papers, and short papers). The procedure for handling each category is as follows:

• Submitting a full paper (5 pages or more). After refereeing by at least three IPC members, the paper can be accepted as a regular paper (5/6 pages) or be rejected. In at most 10% of the cases, exceptionally good papers can be accepted as an extended paper (8 pages).
• Submitting an extended abstract (3-4 pages). After refereeing by at least three IPC members, the paper can be accepted as a regular paper (5/6 pages) or be rejected.
• Submitting a proposal for a short paper (2 pages). One IPC member or the Track Program Chair can decide on the acceptance of a short paper. Usually, a short paper is seen as support for a presentation for those authors that are not interested in preparing a rigid, scientific paper (e.g. an application presentation from industry).
• Any submission which is less than one page is immediately returned to the authors with the question to extend it and not inserted into the reviewing process.

The extended and regular papers appear in volume 1 of the conference proceedings, whereas the short papers and late papers are collected in volume 2. The "paper recognition award" is based on the extended papers, and a new procedure for awarding the previously called "best paper" has been suggested during ESM'97 which will be tested during ESS'97.

The way conferences are organized in Europe is also continuously being adapted and refined. The latest changes alter the central role of the SCS European Office by parallelizing the administrative processes and the refereeing process. Several weeks can be saved by this new procedure, and as a result, the time schedules can be better kept and backup procedures are installed if persons fail or are late in performing their duties. The General Program Chair of the conference now plays a central role in the scientific evaluation of the papers.

5. The SCS European Publishing House

SCS Europe prints and publishes its own proceedings, books, and other material in Europe through the SCS Publishing House. Languages for publication include English, German, and French. Several books, proceedings of a sponsored conference, and a number of dissertations on simulation have been published, and more books and dissertations are planned for the near future. Any author who wants to publish a book on simulation, modeling, or a related field, can submit a proposal to the SCS European Publishing House. The time between submitting the manuscript and finished printing of the books is usually less than three months. All books are high-quality, hard cover books that are, however, produced for a low price. The current list of published books other than regular SCS conference proceedings and CD-Roms looks as follows:

Monographs:

• Peter Eschenbacher. Konzeption einer deklarativen und zustandsorientierten Sprache zur formalen Beschreibung und Simulation von Warteschlangen- und Transportmodellen
• B. Schmidt, SIMPLEX II

Dissertations:

• Thomas Apsel, Konzeption des Aufbaus eines Universell Einsetzbaren Simulationssystem
• Axel Hein, Conjoint Simulation - A Modeling Framework for Combined Performance and Dependability Analysis of Computer Systems
• Peter Heusser, Modelling and Simulation of Boiling Channels - General Front Tracking Approach
• Christian Kelling, Simulationsverfahren für zeiterweiterte Petri-Netze
• Karin Reger, Konzeption und Realisierung der Konfigurierbarkeit universeller Simulationssysteme
• Nicole J. Saam, Computergestützte Theoriekonstruktion in den Sozialwissenschaften

Proceedings and other books:

• Eberhard Blümel et al., Managing and Controlling Growing Harbour Terminals. Results of the Copernicus 1994 Project 312 AMCAI, Funded by the European Commission, DG XII
• O. Deussen, P. Lorenz (Eds.), Simulation und Animation'97. Proceedings of the March 6-7, 1997 simulation conference in Magdeburg, Germany

6. SCS Europe and Future Technologies

The use of the Web is now standard in all SCS efforts in Europe. Usually, the Web pages for a conference are ready before the printed Call for Papers goes out. Conference participants value it very much if they can view the preliminary program of the conference one month before the conference, and the final program with the actual sessions, rooms, and times one to two weeks before the conference starts. All information on publications, conferences, workshops, etc. are available on the Web pages. Maintenance takes place on a daily basis.

The Internet is also used in other ways during conference organization: conference calls are placed in a number of Usenet newsgroups and sent to several appropriate mailing lists. The e-mail lists for personal mailing to individuals now amounts about 3500 for the simulation conferences, and about 5000 for the Euromedia conference series. Last but not least, the conference organization pages (now protected by a password) contain all material SCS European conference organizers need for setting up a successful conference, ranging from author kits, session chair instructions, and standard letters to timetables, lists of responsibilities and software for ranking of papers.

The European Office database with about 15,000 addresses is used in a "smarter" way than we used to. Instead of sending mail to the major part of the addresses in the database, a more careful selection takes place that saves costs and maximizes the effectiveness of the mailings. The efforts spent in maintaining the database have been increased. The plan is to integrate part of the European database with the SCS San Diego (member) database once the database is finished.

The publication of conference proceedings on CD-Rom has already been mentioned in the conference section. The next step is the scanning of the old European proceedings. The material has been collected and sent to our partner in Budapest, Hungary for scanning and CD-Rom production. At the end of 1997, or the beginning of 1998, Dr. Istvan Molnar of the Budapest University of Economic Sciences plans to make the first proceedings available through the Web for limited download and viewing by installing a large multiple CD-Rom server. Security is a key issue in this project. A payment mechanism will be installed next year.

7. (Potential) problems for SCS Europe

SCS faces the following problems (or challenges) in Europe during the next few years:

• Competition between SCS and Eurosim, and between SCS and simulation activities started from one of the application fields.
• There is no effort for getting more SCS members in Europe, because the current membership structure creates no incentive for Europe to get more SCS members. On the contrary: for the European finances, extra members cost money without any extra earnings.
• The European office in Ghent is currently too small. The capacity of Philippe Geril is insufficient for the large number of events that are currently organized in Europe. Cash flow remains a pressing issue.
• There is always a tension between quality and attendance of a conference. In Europe, we have worked hard on improving the quality of papers, but it cost us conference participants.
• Relations to industry in Europe are still by far too low.
• The Publishing House sales need to go up: investments are high, and we need sales.
• The amount of publications of Europeans in SCS journals is very low, in spite of the fact that very good papers are presented at European conferences.

8. Plans for the coming two years

There are many plans for the coming years, which have also been outlined in the separate sections. This document only shows part of the new ideas and efforts that are currently being implemented. Some of the plans we are currently working on are:

• Relationship with Eurosim
  The SCS - Eurosim agreement has been signed both by SCS and by Eurosim. This enables us to work more closely together with our main competitor, and to bring the conferences in line, thereby avoiding similar conferences near each other in time and place. Cooperation with Eurosim will be started in a careful way.
  
• Membership in Europe
  By obtaining, maintaining, and using SCS European member list, i.e. by publishing a small (electronic) newsletter for the European SCS members, we might enhance the value for membership in Europe. Council Members for Eastern Europe and Middle East have been appointed, which may help to increase SCS membership in these regions.
  
• Election preparations
  Elections for the European Council Board are delayed until 1999.
  
• Small workshops
  In 1998, we will test the first two specialized workshops in Bucharest, Rumania and Riga, Latvia. Depending on the evaluation of those workshops, more focused (local) events may be organized during the next few years.
  
• Quality issues
  We will keep working on enhancing quality. The new conference organization procedures, two-volume proceedings, three types of submissions, three paper types, and the recognition awards will help us there. We will use of "Simulation" more for advertising the European conferences. As we now know the times for sending the journal, we can make better use of Simulation.
  
• Simulation in Industry
  The ESS Conferences has been transformed to a "Simulation in Industry" Conference series with a large(r) exhibition and active involvement of industry, both in the preparation of the conference and during the conference. ESS must become the European event where simulation vendors, simulation users, simulation professionals, and simulation scientists meet.
  
• Publishing House
  A special plan for contacting libraries has been developed. Internet order forms have been developed, but more advertisements for the books are needed.
  
• Future Technologies and CD-ROM project
  The use of the Web and Internet, more use of the database, and the installation of a full CD-Rom Internet server for all SCS conferences will be the focus of our attention during the next two years.

Alexander Verbraeck
Chair SCS European Council Board
9 June 1997.