Next Generation Research Challenges for Computation IS Research in Energy, Mobility, and Sustainable Economy

Policy, Awareness, Sustainability and Systems

Information Systems and Technology (IS/IT) fundamentally changed and change many areas of life. IS researchers embrace technology as a vital component in interaction with our surrounding environment. Technology can also help tackle the most urgent problems of our time. As such, we seek to unveil ways in which IS and IT can help the shift towards sustainable behavior and consumption in the areas of energy and mobility.

The workshop on Policy, Awareness, Sustainability, and Systems (PASS) is an initiative of Workshop for Information Technology and Systems (WITS) to encourage research in terms of problem domains, technological and methodological scope and its potential impact. Information is key to organizing a sustainable environment for the planet, whether it is in terms of creating and managing food supply, energy, mobility, water or embedded devices that will provide new perceptive abilities to humans in the form of augmented reality and interactive decision environments. Building, testing, managing and controlling this new generation of technologies would require an understanding that current data and approaches may not adequately be able to deal with. Yet appropriate guidelines and policies must be developed to avoid exploitation of new technology for potentially destructive purposes.

The purpose of the PASS workshop is to invite researchers and scholars to discuss their research related to Information Systems and Technology and provide a forum for substantive discussion around a broad set of forward-looking topics. We especially seek new research on the paradigmal shifts of the energy and mobility domains. Consistent with WITS theme, the methodological focus we encourage is that of computational, simulation and algorithmic strain. The award ceremony of the 2020 Power TAC tournament (www.powertac.org) will take place during the workshop. Power TAC participants are particularly welcome to submit abstracts. Furthermore, we are planning a special issue in the Journal of Information Technology around these themes.

The workshop will take place on Wednesday, December 2 - 3, 3 PM - 6 PM (CET), virtually only. Interested presenters should submit an extended abstract (1 to 6 pages, excluding references) per e-mail to ketter(at)wiso.uni-koeln.de, including all names and e-mail addresses. Please submit your presentation to Wolf by November 30th.

Program

Wednesday, December 2nd 2020, 15:00 to 18:00

six 30-minute slots

Welcome: Wolf Ketter and John Collins

Overview
Participants introduction
Initial 2020 tournament analysis

Presentations:

Design of VidyutVanika 2020 : A Autonomous Smart Grid Electricity Broker Agent
Easwara Subramanian, Sanjay Chandlekar and Bala Suraj Pedasingu
CrocodileAgent: Evidence from electric energy trading competition in PowerTAC 2020
Demijan Grgic, Jurica Babić, Dario Pevec, Vedran Podobnik
Southwest Portfolio Optimizing Trader (SPOT) 2020
Moinul Morshed Porag Chowdhury, Christopher Kiekintveld
Retail tariff design using reinforcement learning: strategy development of EWIIS3 2020
Nastaran Naseri, Saber Talari, John Collins, Wolfgang Ketter

Thursday, December 3rd 2020, 15:00 to 18:00

Presentations

Does upgrading always work? The case of Agent Mertacor in Power TAC 2020
Lampros Karavidas, Andreas Symeonidis
Power TAC -- Experiment Scheduler
Fred Milkau, John Collins
Aiming for half gets you to the top: the strategy of TUC-TAC, winner of PowerTAC 2020
Stavros Orfanoudakis, Stefanos Kontos, Georgios Chalkiadakis, Charilaos Akasiadis