Automation of the Qualitative Reasoning and Applications

Spanish version

 

ARCA group
History and meetings
Publications
Applications
Coordinators of the group

The Spanish community ARCA is composed of groups and people that investigate and work in the field of the Qualitative Reasoning. The aim of the group is promoting the co-operation among national and international scientists, and developing industrial applications of qualitative reasoning. In other words, the ARCA group was founded in order to enhance communication between professionals either directly or indirectly related to qualitative knowledge.

The contacts among the members are generally expected to happen on a personal and non programmed basis, but two general meetings a year are scheduled. Their objectives are, on the one hand, letting every ARCA member learn about every other's activities and, on the other hand, starting up projects involving the whole group.

Our research works are organized in six main lines. They are, at this moment:

The members of every research line depend on a coordinator. and in the general meetings, every group is expected to present their obtained results and conclusions. On the other hand, ARCA is connected to other international groups, and we carry out a variety of research-related activities like publishing books, monographs in journals, etc.

Several scientists from a number of Spanish Universities are integrated into the ARCA group:

The ARCA group is opened to scientists interested in the field of the Qualitative Reasoning and its applications. In order to enlarge our group with industry professionals and scientists from other Spanish Universities who work in similar topics, we carry out workshops, meetings and seminars in multiple conferences, i. e. in CAEPIA (Biannual Spanish Conference on Artificial Intelligence).

Another main goal of our group is to increase the connections to other European groups that are working in similar topics. At the moment, we are co-operating with the European group MONET (The Network of Excellence in Model-Based Qualitative Reasoning Systems), and with the European group SPACENET (Qualitative Spatial Reasoning).


HISTORY AND MEETINGS

The constituent session of the ARCA group took place in Barcelona in June, 1994. The next meeting was held in Castellón in January 1995 on the topic "Space Reasoning". The third meeting took place in Seville during April the same year, being its main topic "Qualitative Simulation"; in November 1995, coinciding with the Conference of the Spanish Association for the Artificial Intelligence (CAEPIA'95). The following meeting took place in Alicante, and the fifth one was in December 1996 coinciding with the second Qualitative Reasoning Forum (Euro-QR), which took place in Barcelona. The topics were: "Theoretical bases" and "Ecobiological models".

Meanwhile, we have been carrying out several activities included in diverse conferences: seminars in the context of the Conferences of the Spanish Association for the Artificial Intelligence in the years 1995, 1997 and 1999, placed in Alicante, Torremolinos (Málaga) and Murcia respectively. In 1997 the ARCA group organized a special session about "Qualitative Reasoning" in the congress IFAC-IFIP-IMACS Conference - Control Industrial of Systems, held in Belfort (France). In 1998, a special session on "Qualitative Reasoning" was held in the eleventh International Conference Industrial on & Engineering Applications Artificial of Intelligence & Expert Systems which took place in Benicàssim (Castellón).

The ARCA group organized two Workshops in Seville in 1999. The first one was the "Workshop on Applied Qualitative Methodologies to the Socioeconomic Systems" (http://www.lsi.us.es/arca/jornadas.html), which tried to establish a connection between the ARCA group and companies and investigators of related areas around the economy world. The second one held in Seville was the "Workshop on Reasoning with Intervals" (http://www.lsi.us.es/arca/jorint.html) and it tried to establish a link between the ARCA group and another Spanish group, IAC (Control Applied Intervals). The "2nd Workshop on Applied Qualitative Methodologies to the Socioeconomic Systems" (http://www.lsi.us.es/arca/jorna2.html) was in Seville in 2000. Last meeting of our group wad has been in Valladolid in 2001, and the next meeting of ARCA will be a Workshop about "Diagnosis and Qualitative Systems " in the summer of 2.002 in Barcelona.


PUBLICATIONS

The ARCA group has also produced several publications, as a result of our periodical meetings. The first one was a monograph on the state of the art of each work line of our group. The title of this monograph was «Current Trends in Qualitative Reasoning and Applications », Ed. CIMNE 1995. The second work of the group has been the elaboration of a special number, the 6th Bulletin, of the Spanish Association for the Artificial Intelligence (AEPIA) magazine..

The next work of the group was a monograph on the state of the art of the qualitative techniques in Spain. This monograph is the result of the Workshop which was held during the Conference CAEPIA’97, and its title was «Qualitative Techniques». At this moment, we are preparing two publications: a special number of the magazine of the Spanish association for the Artificial Intelligence (AEPIA) and a monograph about Qualitative Reasoning and Economics.


APLICATIONS

Several applications have been developed by members of our group:

Finally, we would like to tell any person or collective that is interested in our works: please do not hesitate to contact us by e-mail at mtoro@lsi.us.es, ortega@lsi.us.es or jguado@esaii.upc.es


HEAD & COORDINATORS OF THE GROUP

HEAD
Miguel Toro Bonilla
Facultad de Informática y Estadística
Departamento Lenguajes y Sistemas Informáticos
Avda. Reina Mercedes s/n, 41012 - Sevilla
Teléfono 95 455 27 78
Fax 95 455 71 39
e-mail: mtoro@lsi.us.es
COORDINATORS
Juan Antonio Ortega
Facultad de Informática y Estadística
Departamento Lenguajes y Sistemas Informáticos
Avda. Reina Mercedes s/n, 41012 - Sevilla
Teléfono 95 455 27 73
Fax 95 455 71 39
e-mail: ortega@lsi.us.es
Juan Carlos Aguado
Facultad de Náutica de Barcelona
Edificio U, C/. Pau Gargallo nº5, 08028 - Barcelona
Teléfono 93 401 16 80
Fax 93 401 7045
e-mail: jguado@esaii.upc.es