The 2nd PerAda International Summer School on Pervasive Adaptation (in association with SICSA, the Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance) 20-26 June 2009 in Edinburgh, Scotland

PerAda-SICSA International Summer School on Pervasive Adaptation

A series of tutorials presented by leading researchers will be interwoven with four pervasive adaptation case studies. Summer School participants will work in small interdisciplinary teams during the week and present a group project on the final day. The PerAda Projects Workshop will also feature during the Summer School week with presentations from the six pervasive adaptation projects funded by the European Commission’s FET PerAda Proactive Initiative under FP7.

The Summer School is aimed at all researchers interested in pervasive adaptation irrespective of experience and background. Participants should arrive by 8pm on Saturday evening, 20 June and the Summer School continues until Friday evening, 26 June. Attendance for the full week is required as participation includes teamwork activities and a series of social events and local visits has been arranged. All tutorials and team projects will take place at Edinburgh Napier University, Merchiston campus in central Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.

Summer School Case Studies

1. Adapt or Die!
Led by DK Arvind, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh

Considering the role of adaptation in its different forms in pervasive wireless sensor networks and exploring the role of adaptation at different levels:

• In the architecture, eg, in the way the networks and sub-systems are configured to optimise battery lifetime
• In the firmware, eg, for dependability or in the way mobility is handled
• In the application software for different contexts
• In the personalisation for different users

More Info...

2. Personal Smart Spaces
Led by Nick Taylor, Department of Computer Science, Heriot Watt University

A Personal Smart Space is defined by a set of services within a dynamic space of connectable devices (a personal area network of the devices) and services (running on those devices) that are owned, controlled, or administered by a single user or organization. It facilitates interactions with other smart spaces, is self-improving and capable of pro-active behaviour. The aim of this case study is to consider how this paradigm might evolve over the coming years.

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3. Body & Human Space
Led by Michael Smyth, Centre for Interaction Design, Edinburgh Napier University

Designing for connection between the augmented human and the intensely technological environment, the urban space of the future will be saturated with both visible and hidden media that gather and transmit information. How we as physical beings connect with, interpret and shape the increase of data residing in our environment will be a significant challenge. The forms in which this data will be presented, and how we decide to conceptualise it, is as yet unknown. Will the technologically enriched environment adapt to accommodate human/city contact points, and, in response, will we choose to adapt and augment our own bodies in order to navigate around, and communicate with and through, this information landscape?

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4. Nature Knows Best?
Led by Ruth Falconer, SIMBIOS Centre, University of Abertay and Emma Hart, Centre for Emergent Computing, Edinburgh Napier University

Future data communication networks show three emerging trends: increasing size of networks, increasing traffic volumes and dynamic network topologies. Efficient network management solutions are required that are scalable, can cope with large and increasing traffic volumes and provide decentralised and adaptive routing strategies that cope with the dynamics of the network topology. Routing strategies are an important aspect of network management as they have a significant influence on the overall network performance.

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Summer School Programme Tutorials

We are also running a number of PerAda themed tutorials.

PerAda Project Workshop

A day for working with the 6 PerAda projects, including introductions to each area of research, open discussions and presentations

More Info...

Background to the 2nd PerAda Summer School

Pervasive Adaptation is concerned with technologies used in information and communication systems which are capable of autonomously adapting to highly dynamic user contexts. The development of future systems will increasingly require collaborative systems, involving complex interactions between people, intelligent objects and computers. The real challenge will be the constantly changing networked environment that can no longer be centrally controlled, or even completely understood, by the developer or user. To be successful especially in such highly dynamic environments, systems will have to adapt themselves, taking into account the emergent behaviour of the system.

This summer school will address a number of these issues and offer a range of tutorials presented by leading international and UK researchers as well as including team work projects covering relevant case-studies concerned with:

• Evolve-able and adaptive pervasive systems, able to permanently adjust, self-manage, evolve and self-organise in order to robustly respond to dynamically changing environments, operating conditions, and purposes or practices of use.
• Networked societies of artefacts that adapt to each other and to changing needs, collectively harness dispersed information and pursue immediate or long-term goals for context-sensitive service delivery in rapidly changing and technology-rich environments.
• Adaptive security and dependability: theories, techniques and architectures, able to cope with the volatile landscape of risks, threats, attacks and context dependent user expectations for privacy and security in evolving and heterogeneous pervasive systems.
• Dynamicity of trust: capabilities for establishing trust relationships between humans and/or machines that jointly act and interact within ad-hoc and changing configurations.
• Security for tiny and massively networked devices: efficient, robust and scalable cryptographic protocols, algorithms and other security and privacy mechanisms, including hardware-based ones, as well as collective, biologically or socially inspired ones.

This is a joint event between SICSA (principally by Edinburgh Napier University, The University of Edinburgh, Heriot-Watt University and The University of Abertay Dundee) and PerAda (the Pervasive Adaptation FET pro-active initiative funded by the European Commission).

More information from Jennifer Willies, PerAda Project Manager

Associated Links: PerAda Summer School 2008