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