The 1st IFAC Workshop on Control of Complex Systems (COSY 2022) will be held Thursday to Friday, November 24-25, 2022 in Bologna, Italy. 

 

COSY 2022 aims to be the first of a series of IFAC (The International Federation of Automatic Control) Workshops on Control of Complex Systems organized with the main sponsorship of the IFAC Technical Committee 2.2 “Linear Control Systems” and focused on the topics of the Working Group on “Control of Complex Systems” (information on how to participate in IFAC activities can be found at https://www.ifac-control.org/about/participation). The workshop will gather academics and professionals from the control community who share the interest for complex systems. The workshop’s goal is offering them a forum where to discuss current research developments, open problems, emerging structural properties and methodologies on the control of complex systems.

In more detail, the main focus of the workshop is on the study of structural properties of systems which consist of the interconnection of a number of subsystems and which are characterized by the complexity due to one or more of the following features: uncertainty or lack of knowledge about the system dynamics; perturbations,  disturbances and changes of the external demand; uncertainty or variability of the interconnection topology; hybrid or heterogeneous nature of the involved sub-processes; structural adaptation to moving goals and operational requirements; uncertain or variable environment; large dimensionality; constrained variables and communication constraints. Examples of complex systems in the above sense are structure evolving systems, switching systems, impulsive systems, networks of agents, and, more generally, systems of systems and cyber-physical systems. Applications are found in modelling and control of natural processes (e.g., in biology and genetics), social sciences dynamics (e.g., in community networks studies) and man-made processes (e.g., in engineering design, manufacturing, networks and communications, power distribution, management). A detailed (although non-exhaustive) list of topics can be found here.

Submissions to COSY 2022 are solicited in the form of contributed papers and invited tracks/sessions. The submissions should be written in English, formatted according to IFAC templates and style files (double-column A4 IFAC format) and made through IFAC Papercept submission system. The submission deadline for invited track/session proposals is May 15, 2022. The submission deadline for contributed papers and invited papers is May 31, 2022.  All submissions will be subject to a review process and will be selected for inclusion of the workshop program on the basis of the referees' reports and the IPC's assessment. By submitting their contribution(s), the authors accept to abide by the conference submission and registration policy.  

Publication material submitted for presentation to the IFAC-sponsored workshop COSY 2022 must be original and hence cannot be already published, nor can it be under review elsewhere. The authors take responsibility for the material that has been submitted. COSY 2022, as an IFAC-sponsored conference, will abide by the highest standard of ethical behavior in the review process as explained on the Elsevier webpage (https://www.elsevier.com/authors/journal-authors/policies-and-ethics), and the authors will abide by the IFAC publication ethics guidelines (https://www.ifac-control.org/events/organizersguide/PublicationEthicsGuidelines.pdf/view).

Accepted papers that have been presented at the IFAC meeting COSY 2022 will be published in the proceedings of the event using the open-access IFAC-PapersOnLine series hosted on ScienceDirect (https://sciencedirect.com/). To this end, the author(s) must grant exclusive publishing rights to IFAC under a Creative Commons license when they submit the final version of the paper. The copyright belongs to the authors, who have the right to share the paper in the same terms allowed by the end user license, and retain all patent, trademark and other intellectual property rights (including research data).

The program of COSY 2022 (expected to appear in its preliminary version at the beginning of September 2022 and in its final version by early October 2022) will include plenary lectures delivered by high-profile scientists, in addition to contributed papers and invited tracks/sessions. Also, panel discussions and special events are foreseen to increase the involvement of industry and, respectively, students, as well as to foster gender balance among scientists active in control areas. 

The workshop is planned to be an in-person event (in the unfortunate case the general conditions will prevent in-person meetings, it will turn into a hybrid meeting or a virtual meeting). The workshop venue will be in the heart of downtown Bologna (further details on the conference location will appear here).  The town is strategically located at the intersection of the main Italian railways and highways and its airport is conveniently connected to all the main European airports. Further, the historic middle-age downtown, the oldest university of the western world, the nice landscapes of its surroundings, the renowned cuisine and hospitality make of Bologna not only the ideal location for a profitable meeting but also the perfect place to stay on a relaxing break.