Continuous constraints are often a natural way to represent practical  problems and the knowledge they involve.  Such constraints may  be simple or complex, linear or non-linear and may, or may not, involve transcendental functions. They are widely used to express chemical or mechanical models, process descriptions, building codes or cost restrictions for example.  Many industrial problems involving continuous constraints can be modelled as continuous constraint satisfaction and optimization problems (CSOPs). In practice, such models are often large in size and non-linear.

This workshop focuses on complete solving techniques for continuous CSOPs that provide all solutions with full rigor. Less  rigorous solution techniques are not excluded, since they may be part of complete relevant techniques. Complete solution techniques guarantee  that all the constraints - e.g. security or tolerance criteria - are satisfied and the global optima identified. Completeness would thus benefit directly the quality and reliability of decisions or analyses based on the provided solutions. This has obvious implications in many industrial and economic areas.

None of the existing approaches for solving non-linear CSOPs is fully satisfactory in practice.  Non-linear programming techniques are
routinely used and can solve large-scale non-linear problems. However, they are complete only in the convex case and if roundoff errors are controlled.  In contrast, constraint programming solvers preserve completeness,  but suffer from poor scalability.

The  respective strengths of mathematical and constraint programming  appear however to be highly complementary and a number of
recent development showed that there is a lot to be gained by merging the different inference techniques they provide and by combining their specific advantages.

The goal of this workshop is to bring together communities from global optimization, mathematical programming and constraint programming, giving the opportunity to promote presentation and discussion of ongoing work on solving techniques for continuous CSOPs. The workshop aims to encourage cross-fertilization between the various approaches, including the study of adapted cooperation strategies between mathematical and constraint programming, and of  new representations and abstractions for which they can efficiently interact.

Topics:

Relevant topics include, but are by no means restricted to the following:

• Solution techniques for global optimization problems
• Integration of constraint programming with non-linear programming techniques
• Linear programming enclosures of nonlinear programs
• Improved consistency techniques for continuous constraints
• Combination of symbolic methods with mathematical and constraint programming techniques
• Solution techniques for under-constrained systems
• Adaptation of sparse matrix techniques to the non-linear case
• Enclosures by polytopes or nonlinear boundaries
• Representation and exploitation of monotonicity and convexity  properties
• Abstractions based on convex decomposition
• Partial boundary representation based on critical points and topological abstractions.

 

Important Dates:
 
 

15th July 2002	Submission deadline
10th August 2002	Notification of acceptance
31th August 2002	Pre-registration ends
15th September 2002	Final camera-ready copies

Workshop format

Submissions

The final deadline for submissions is July 15th.  Two categories of submissions are welcome: full papers and extended abstracts.  The organizers plan to publish selected full papers in an appropriate book series or a special issue of a journal. The accepted full papers and  extended abstracts will be presented  during the workshop. Full papers must be no longer than 15 pages in length, using the provided latex format (the style files are given below), and are expected to describe in detail solving techniques for constraint satisfaction and global optimization problems. Extended abstracts must be no longer than 5 pages in the same format, and are expected to address research proposals and reports. Submitted papers shall be written in English.  Papers are expected in Latex and postscript format.  The title page should include the name, address, telephone number and electronic mailing address for each author as well as a list of keywords. A contact author should also be provided.

The submitted papers have to be sent electronically to cocos02@ilog.fr .
 

Reviewing  Process
 

Proceedings

The organizers plan to publish selected fullpapers in an appropriate book series or a special issue of a journal.
 

The submissions must be formatted in lncs/lnai format (http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html).

Scientific Committee

• Frédéric Benhamou, Université de Nantes, France
• Christian Bliek, ILOG, France
• Boi Faltings, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland
• Arnold Neumaier, University of Vienna, Austria
• Peter Spellucci, Darmstadt University, Germany
• Pascal Van Hentenryck, Brown University, USA
• Luis N. Vicente, University of Coimbra, Portugal

Invited Talks (preliminary list)
 

• "Possibilities and Limitations of the GlobSol Software Package"  by: R. Baker Kearfott

• "Deterministic Global Optimization: Theoretical, Computational and Implementation Advances" By Chris Floudas

The workshop will take place at the Mediathel conference centre in Valbonne-Sophia Antipolis.  The Mediathel will host the attendees in a nice setting amidst the Sophia Antipolis pine forests. It is located 10 min away from Antibes and the sea, and 15 km away from Cannes, Nice and the Nice-Côte d'Azur International Airport.

Accomodation

Preferential rates are proposed by the Mediathel to the workshop attendees (55 euros/night).
Other hotels can be found at http://www.alpes-azur.com/vsa/english/vsamain.htm

Fees

The registration fees are of 150 euros, 75 euros for students. The fees includes all conference material, access to conference rooms, breaks and lunches.

Organization / Contact Information

The workshop is organised by the partners of the COCONUT project (IST-2000-26063) with the financial support from the European Commission and the Swiss Federal Education and Science Office (OFES).
 

University of Vienna	University of Coimbra	Darmstadt Technical University	Université Catholique de Louvain

University of Nantes	Swiss Federal Institute   of   Technology	ILOG