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ACM TOMACS special issue

The submission deadline for the special issue of the ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation (TOMACS) on Simulation in Complex Service Systems has been extended to October 31, 2011. See the Call for papers.
Papers for the special issue do not have to be linked to a specific presentation at the workshop.

The files of the plenary talks and poster session are available here.

The INFORMS Simulation Society Research Workshop is a forum for researchers to exchange ideas and results and to discuss new developments in the simulation of stochastic and discrete-event systems involved in operations research and management contexts. The general goal of the workshop is to bring together leading researchers working either in simulation methodology or on applications, in order to reflect on a selected central theme and identify important issues that need attention and promising paths to solutions. The theme can be defined by a specific class of applications or by a particular type of methodology.

The 2011 workshop is the third edition. The first two workshops took place at INSEAD, Fontainebleau, July 5-7, 2007, and at the University of Warwick, Coventry, U.K., June 25-27, 2009. Details on these past workshops can be found here:

• 2007 Simulation Society Research Workshop
• 2009 Simulation Society Research Workshop

Theme for 2011

• health-care systems (hospitals, ...)
• emergency systems (ambulances, police, firemen, forest fires, ...)
• telephone call centers
• logistic and delivery systems
• transportation systems (public transport, road traffic, ...)
• telecommunication networks
• revenue (or yield) management systems
• reliability of complex systems

• building appropriate and reasonably realistic stochastic models for these systems;
• of particular interest is modeling the important dependencies between input random variables and processes;
• how to optimize or improve decision-making for these systems using simulation;
• improving the efficiency of simulations for those large systems;
• building efficient and flexible software tools to simulate these large complex systems and optimize (or improve) their management policies;

Format (outline)

Three days, Monday to Wednesday, ending early-afternoon on Wednesday. Ten invited 40-minute talks (plus 20-30 minutes for discussion), four per day on Monday and Tuesday, and two on Wednesday. All other presentations will be in the form of poster sessions, preceded by sessions of 4-minute "quick presentations" (or "announcements") for the posters. The poster sessions will be held in the first two afternoons, and arranged so that those who present posters also have a chance to visit most of the other posters.

There will be a special issue of the ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation (TOMACS) dedicated to full versions of selected papers presented at the Workshop. The submission deadline is September 30, 2011. See the Call for papers.

Confirmed plenary speakers

• John Fowler, Arizona State University
  Simulation of Healthcare Systems
• Peter Glynn, Stanford University
  Traffic Modeling for Complex Service Systems
• David Goldsman, Georgia Tech
  Modeling and Simulation of Pandemic Influenza Outbreaks
• Peter J. Haas, IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose
  Composite Simulation Modeling of Complex Service Systems: Example and Research Challenges
• Shane G. Henderson, Cornell University
  Real-time Control of Ambulance Services
• Sally McClean, University of Ulster, Londonderry
  Integrating Methods and Practice Across Health, Social and Community Services
• Haipeng Shen, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
  Statistical Modeling of Labor-Intensive Service Systems
• Young-Jun Son, University of Arizona
  A Multi-Scale Crowd Behavior Modeling Framework: Emergency Evacuation and Normal Scenarios
• Huseyin Topaloglu, Cornell University
  Revenue Management: Applications, Models and Algorithms
• Assaf Zeevi, Columbia University

Financial support for students and young researchers from the United States

Financial support from the National Science Foundation is available to help students and young researchers from United States institutions to attend the conference. Details on how to apply are given here.

Important dates

• April 8, 2011 (extended): Abstract submissions for poster presentations.
• April 15, 2011: Acceptance notifications from program committee, and registration opens.
• May 31, 2011: Final versions of abstracts for invited talks and for poster presentations. These abstracts will be available to conference participants.
• June 17, 2011: Final program ready. Early registration ends.
• July 18-20, 2011: Workshop (Monday to Wednesday).