[Mycolleagues] Call for Papers on System Performance

CALL FOR PAPERS ON SYSTEM PERFORMANCE

 

International Scientific Studies Conference

Vienna, Austria

10 – 12 June 2009

 

The Conference is being organized by the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) for the purpose of evaluating the capability and readiness of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty’s (CTBT) verification regime to detect nuclear explosions worldwide. It will also address relevant scientific and technical developments since the Treaty opened for signature in 1996.

 

The CTBT verification system comprises the International Monitoring System, a process of consultation and clarification, on-site inspections and confidence-building measures. The focus of the Conference is on the International Monitoring System and on-site inspections. The International Monitoring System consists of monitoring facilities, an International Data Center and a global communications infrastructure that detect signals and collect, process and analyze data in real time. The system also generates and distributes data products in real time. There are four categories of monitoring facilities: seismic, hydroacoustic, infrasound and radionuclide. The data-generating facilities and the data-product recipients are distributed around the globe, while the central node of the system is located in Vienna, Austria.

 

The purpose of the system is to detect, locate and characterize events in order to allow discrimination between nuclear explosions and all other benign events. The principal design objective is the detection of events as small as possible and minimization of the area of uncertainty about the location of detected events.  The issues associated with each of the four monitoring technologies are being addressed by the relevant scientific communities. In addition, there is a need to evaluate and optimize the performance of the system as a whole.

 

While the short-term objective of the conference is the evaluation of the current system, the treaty provides a mechanism for improvements using new technologies and methodologies. Accordingly, contributions are solicited that span the range from current practices to potentially valuable theoretical approaches. Some typical areas of interest are:

 

-Process modeling

-Quality of Service modeling, metrics and measurement

-Network reliability

-System dependability and survivability

-Data quality and data availability

-Measurement and evaluation of data integrity

-Database management

-Information security

-Data transport protocols

-Measures and computation of efficiency

-Performance measurement techniques

-Simulation tools and techniques

 

Authors are invited to submit contributions as one-page abstracts to iss@ctbto.org. The deadline for submission is 31 March 2009. Notification of acceptance: 30 April 2009.  The papers will be reviewed by a scientific panel consisting of the coordinators for each of the topics of the Conference. Authors of accepted abstracts will be requested to make their full papers available at the Conference. The scientific papers will be published in scientific journals according to the praxis of the individual journals. Presentations made at the Conference will be summarized in a special publication that will also include a compilation of the one-page abstracts in the form of an annex. The Call for Papers, Instructions and Template for submission of an abstract, and registration forms can be downloaded from the CTBTO web site: www.ctbto.org  

 

Conference Topic Coordinators:

 

System Performance

Dr Thierry Heritier, Atomic Energy Commission, France

Prof Nicholas Kyriakopoulos, The George Washington University, USA

 

Atmospheric Transport Modeling

Dr Peter Chen, World Meteorological Organization, Switzerland

Dr Richard Hogue, Meteorological Service, Canada

 

Data Mining and Exploration

Dr Sheila Vaidya, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, USA

Prof Arno Siebes, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands

 

Hydroacoustics

Dr Wolfgang Jans, Forschungsanstalt der Bunderswehr, Kiel, Germany

Prof Kiyoshi Suyehiro, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Japan

 

Infrasound

Dr Elisabeth Blanc, Atomic Energy Commission, France

Dr Lars Ceranna, Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources, Germany

 

On-Site Inspecions

Dr Massimo Chiappini, Instituto Nazionale di Geofiscica e Vulcanologia, Italy

Dr Edward Ifft, Georgetown University, USA

 

Radionuclide

Dr Harry Miley, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, USA

Prof Wolfgang Weiss, Bundesamt fuer Strahlenschutz, Germany

 

Seismology

Prof Zhongliang Wu, China Earthquake Administration, China

Prof Barbara Romanowicz, University of California-Berkeley, USA