mardi 21 janvier 2014

International workshop: Interaction Networks and Collective Motion in Swarms, Flocks and Crowds

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS 

Interaction Networks and Collective Motion in Swarms, Flocks and Crowds

International Workshop to be held at the Open Innovation House of Aalto University, Espoo (Finland), May 26 – May 30, 2014

DESCRIPTION AND AIM OF THE WORKSHOP

Collective motion is a widely observed phenomenon in nature. Prominent examples of such behavior are swarms of insects, bird flocks, fish schools and human crowds. Synchronized movements provide various advantages to animal groups such as defense against predators, enhanced environment exploration or foraging. In human crowds, they give rise to coordinated spatiotemporal patterns such as the spontaneous spatial organization of pedestrian flows into lanes. These collective movements have been shown to emerge from local interactions between neighboring individuals. However the proximate causes of these phenomena in most biological systems in which they have been investigated are still poorly understood. We have very scarce empirical information about the type of stimuli exchanged by neighboring individuals to control their movements or about the number and position of the neighbors an individual interacts with. However, with the recent progress in video, GPS and RFID tracking technologies, high precision datasets on moving animal and
human groups are now available, thus discovering the way to a fine-scale analysis of individual behaviors and the local interaction networks ensuring group cohesion and coordination. Moreover, it has recently been shown that social networks were also affecting group movements, determining the existence of strong substructures within a group that may eventually split up into separate sub-groups. The identification and characterization of effective local neighborhoods and their interplay with social networks is a key element to a better understanding of collective group movements and for the elaboration and validation of mathematical models of these phenomena.

In this workshop we will investigate the role of social networks on collective movement patterns in various biological systems from swarms of insects to human groups. Two main topics will be addressed: (1) how to infer and model local interaction networks among individuals within a group from trajectory data analysis collected from video, RFID, GPS and other sensors? and (2) how do social networks affect the propagation of information within a group or the collective response of a group when facing a perturbation?

We hope that this workshop will stimulate a dialogue between the various communities studying collective motion (ethology, computer science and statistical physics) and elucidating in particular the role of social networks in such processes.

ORGANIZERS

Santo Fortunato – Department of Biomedical Engineering and Computational Science, Aalto University, Finland

Guy Theraulaz – Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition Animale, CNRS, Université Paul Sabatier Toulouse, France

INVITED SPEAKERS

Alain Barrat (CPT Marseille, France)
Ian D. Couzin (Princeton University, USA)
Petter Holme (University of Umeå, Sweden)
Derek A. Paley (University of Maryland, USA)
Jari Saramäki (Aalto University, Finland)
David Sumpter (University of Uppsala, Sweden)
Tamas Vicsek (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary)
Andrew J. Wood (University of York, UK)

WEBSITE


KEY DATES

Call for Abstracts Opens: January 2014

Call for Abstracts Closes: March 15, 2014

Notification to Accepted Authors: April 5, 2014

Registration Opens: January 2014

Registration Closes: May 1, 2014

Program Released: May 10, 2014

Workshop: May 26-28, 2014

PRESENTATIONS

We envision 20-minutes slots for regular speakers and 5-minutes slots for ignite talks, a very entertaining type of oral presentation. Presentations have been deliberately kept short in order to give participants plenty of time to discuss between sessions. Participants will be notified of which type of presentation they will give at the workshop after all abstracts have been reviewed.

KEYWORDS (RESEARCH AREAS)

Collective behavior
Collective and swarm intelligence
Interaction networks
Reverse-engineering and modeling methods
Computational modeling
Behavioral and trajectory analysis
  
ABSTRACT SUBMISSION

On the Website, go to Abstract Submission and insert the title and the abstract of your contribution, along with some basic info (name, affiliation, etc.). The abstract can contain a maximum of 1500 characters.

ABSTRACT REVIEW NOTIFICATION

Abstract review notification will be communicated to the corresponding authors by April 15, 2014. 
All correspondence related to the submission will be directed to this person, and he/she should in turn distribute it to all coauthors.

REGISTRATION

All participants, presenters or not, MUST register through the workshop Website. Go to Registration and fill in the required information.
Registration ends on MAY THE 1st, 2014. Registration is free of charge, participants are supposed to pay for their own meals during the workshop.

TRAVEL AND ACCOMMODATION

Info on travel and accommodation are available on the workshop Website.

FURTHER ENQUIRIES

For any enquiries regarding abstract submission please contact Santo Fortunato (santo.fortunato@aalto.fi
or Guy Theraulaz (guy.theraulaz@univ-tlse3.fr).