Yearly report 1998-1999
SCS European Council
Prof. Dr. Dietmar P. F. Möller, Chairman SCS European Council Board
Philippe Geril, SCS Europe BVBA
1. The SCS European Council Board The SCS European Council Board has been changed in the actual period of report. During the SCS European Council Board Meeting, Saturday June 5th in Warsaw, Prof. Dr. Dietmar P. F. Möller, Univer-sity of Hamburg, Germany, has been elected as Chairman SCS European Council Board, and Prof. Dr. Andrzej Bargiela, Nottingham Trent University, UK, has been elected as SCS European Council Conference Board Chair. It is a great honour for the new elected Cahirman of the SCS European Council Board, Prof. Dr. Dietmar P. F. Möller, to thank Dr. Alexander Verbraeck, the previous Council Chairman, for the really tremendous work he has done for the SCS European Council from 1994 on, when he became the Council´s chair. Alexander was not only the official chairman of the Council, but he acted also as secretary, WEB manager, assistant and advisor for Executive Director Philippe Geril of SCS Europe BVBA.
Name | Country | Task |
Dietmar P. F. Möller | Germany | Council chair, WWW |
Ali Riza Kaylan | Turkey | Secretary |
Marwan Al-Akaidi | UK | Middle East contacts |
Agostino Bruzzone | Italy | Industry contacts |
Andrzej Bargiela | UK | Conference chair |
Axel Lehmann | Germany | Membership, SCS international contacts |
Yuri Merkuryev | Latvia | Eastern Europe |
Istvan Molnar | Hungary | Eastern Europe |
Rainer Rimane | Germany | Publishing House |
Alexander Verbraeck | Netherlands | Past chair, WWW |
Richard Zobel | UK | Eurosim relations |
Philippe Geril (office) | Belgium | finance, organization, office |
In the past at each European Simulation Multiconference (June) and European Simulation Sympo-sium (October), Conference Board and Council Board meetings have been held, usually the day after the conferences. For the latter meeting, general chairs and program chairs of future conferences and workshops are invited, so exchange of experiences with organizing conferences is stimulated. During the first meeting with the new Chairman SCS European Council, Prof. Dr. Dietmar P. F. Möller, at Hamnurg, July 7th, the Board decides that up to now the Council Board meeting will be held once annually at the ESS. In between an Executive Board of the SCS European Council, which should be established very soon, after the SCSC 99 Chicago BoD Meeting, will manage all business affairs of the council. The SCS 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 SCS European Council Board members.
2. 1998/1999 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 300 for both confe-rences. 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 following conferences have been organized by or sponsored by SCS Europe between July 1998 and July 1999:
The printing of the conference proceedings for the last conferences has been moved from Hungary to the Netherlands under supervision of Prof. Eugene Kerckhoffs. For the ESM and ESS conferences, CD-Roms were produced. For the other conferences, a CD that contains several conference pro-ceedings will be produced every other year. The production of the ESM and ESS CDs has been spon-sored by Systems Modeling Corporation.
Current ESM and ESS conferences follow the following time-schedule:
3. Future conferences in Europe
Future ESS and ESM conferences are planned until 2003, according to the following schedule:
1999 | ESM'13 | Warsaw, Poland | 1999 | ESS'11 | Erlangen, Germany | |
2000 | ESM'14 | Ghent, Belgium | 2000 | ESS'12 | Hamburg, Germany | |
2001 | ESM'15 | Prague, Czech Republic | 2001 | ESS'13 | Marseille, France | |
2002 | ESM'16 | Vienna, Austria | 2002 | ESS'14 | Dresden, Germany | |
2003 | ESM'17 | Budapest, Hungary | 2003 | ESS'15 | TBA, Portugal |
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 confe-rence 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 tech-nical councils for SCS can be formed. The Euromedia and CEE conferences currently planned two years in advance. The calendar of the other conferences, workshops, and sponsored events of 1999/2000 looks as follows:
Euromedia 1999 | Munich, Germany | April 1999 |
Euromedia 2000 | Antwerp, Belgium | April 2000 (?) |
ECEC 1999 | Erlangen, Germany | April 1999 |
ECEC 2000 | Leicester, UK | April 2000 |
Middle Eastern Simulation Symposium | Amman, Jordan | March 1999 |
Workshop on Simulation and Factory of the Future | Bucharest, Romania | August 1998 |
Workshop on Harbor and Maritime Simulation | Riga, Latvia | Sept. 1998 |
Sponsored event: Simulation und Animation '99 | Magdeburg, Germany | March 1999 |
Sponsored event: ECB'9 | Brussels | 1999 |
The Middle Eastern Simulation Symposium is an experiment to extend the SCS contacts to the Middle East, and to bring together the researchers working in the field of simulation in the Middle East. The symposium will have two major parts: a scientific part with refereed papers and a proceedings, and a part that is focused on forming local chapters in the different countries in the Middle East. These local chapters will be the key contact between SCS and the simulationists in these countries. Dr. Marwan Al-Akaidi of the University of Leicester, UK (a member of the SCS European Council Board) heads the Middle East project.
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:
As can be seen from the conference schedule in section 3, the current planning of
conferences is until 2003, so the 3 year planning cycle is implemented fully. 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. See also the next section for the conference procedures.
During the past two years, there have been three types of submissions for the European SCS conferences (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). Lately, posters have been added to this list. Full paper submissions could lead to, if accepted, regular (80-90%) or extended (10-20%) papers. Accepted extended abstracts were admitted as regular papers. A small number of papers that were interesting for the participants, but not of high enough quality, were accepted as short papers, published in a separate (photocopied) annex to the proceedings. Regular and extended papers appeared both in the main volume of the proceedings.
As of ESM'99, quality of the papers in the conference proceedings will be enhanced even more. Acceptance of papers for the conference proceedings will be on the basis of full papers only. This means that the referees (minimum 3 per paper) can judge the submissions by examining the full contents of the proposed paper, including the abstract, conclusions, and references. This will hopefully also lead to better comments from the referees to the authors. After the authors have made final changes, and put their papers in the right format, the conference proceedings will consist only of the accepted 8 page full papers.
In addition to the full papers, extended abstracts and posters can be submitted, but acceptance of an extended abstract can never lead to publishing in the conference proceedings. From the extended abstracts and a print of the posters, a separate volume of the proceedings will be made (probably by photocopying). This volume will have an ISBN, but from the title it will be made clear that this is not the main scientific volume of the conference. For ESM, this volume will be titled "ESM Short Paper Proceedings". For ESS, it will be titled "ESS Short Papers and Industrial Applications Proceedings". In this way, scientific institutions will see their papers published in a proceedings of much higher quality than before, while young or new authors can still present their work at the conference and industry will be encouraged to submit practical application papers, which will not be refereed in the new, much stricter way.
The way conferences are organized in Europe is also continuously being adapted and refined. The main procedures as they are implemented, are shown in the diagrams below. The conference handbook on the Web is also being extended, so all SCS conference organizers can benefit from the experiences of previous conferences. The SCS European Conference Board meetings (Council Board members plus conference organizers of the next few conferences) are also very helpful in exchanging information with future conference organizers.
6. 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:
Dissertations:
Proceedings and other books:
7. (Potential) problems for SCS Europe
SCS faces the following problems (or
challenges) in Europe during the next few years:
In the list below, the progress on the plans and action items of the European SCS report of last year is shown.
Relationship with Eurosim
One meeting of the SCS-Eurosim liaison committee has been held. Several meetings have
taken place with Eurosim board members. The co-operation with ASIM (German speaking part
of Eurosim -- the largest of the member societies) is very strong. ESS11, ESS12, ESM15,
ESM16, and ESS13 will be organized in close co-operation with ASIM. ASIM and UKSIM also
sponsored the Manchester ESM13 conference.
Small European office
No progress until now. The situation is becoming very critical.
Membership in Europe
Small progress: both in Eastern Europe and in the Middle East, several SCS activities
have been started. This will certainly lead to more SCS members in these regions. As long
as a European council fee is not added to the SCS membership fee, nothing can be done to
serve our European members better.
Election preparations
Elections for the European Council Board had already been delayed until 1999. Eugene
Kerckhoffs and Ali Riza Kaylan are working out the details.
Small workshops
In August and September 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
In the section on "quality", several changes than will increase conference
quality have been explained. These changes affect both conference organization procedures
and paper acceptance management.
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. Several
suggestions for more involvement of industry have been implemented. Other ideas will be
implemented in ESS'98.
Publishing House
Several new titles came out last year. A marketing plan with a strategy to increase
sales is still needed, however.
Future Technologies and CD-ROM project
The action items on use of the Web and Internet, publishing conference proceedings on
CD-Rom, and more use of the database have been implemented. The installation of a full
CD-Rom Internet server for all SCS conferences is delayed, but is still on our action
list.
There are many plans for the coming years, which have also been outlined in the separate sections. Some of the plans that have not been mentioned above, and on which we are currently working are:
9. Conclusions
Concluding, we will do our best to continue the innovations we have carried through during the past few years. In ASIM, we found a strong partner, with whom we can co-operate in conference and publication activities. New activities will be started in Eastern Europe and in the Middle East. These activities will hopefully turn out to be beneficial for SCS International as well. Conditions that have to be fulfilled to continue along this path and to reach our long term goals are a structural increase in the European office staff and a European Council membership fee that will enable us to present added value to our SCS members in Europe.
Dietmar P. F. Möller
Chair SCS European Council Board
Alexander Verbraeck
Past Chair SCS European Council Board
July 7th 1999