Conference Photos from Barry Smyth. If you have conference photos that you would like to contribute, please create a public gallery on your favorite photo-sharing site and send the link to David Wilson. We expect to incorporate a subset of submitted photos into the ICCBR-09 site and CBR Wiki.

ICCBR-09 Proceedings are available online from Springer.

Welcome

We are very pleased to invite you to participate in the eighth International Conference on Case-Based Reasoning (ICCBR), the premier international meeting on research and applications in Case-Based Reasoning (CBR). ICCBR-09 will be held in Seattle, Washington, USA from 20 July to 23 July 2009, on the week following IJCAI-09, which will also take place on the west coast of North America in Pasadena, California.

Previous ICCBR conferences have been held in Sesimbra, Portugal (1995), Providence, Rhode Island, USA (1997), Seeon Monastery, Germany (1999), Vancouver, BC, Canada (2001), Trondheim, Norway (2003), Chicago, Illinois, USA (2005) and Belfast, Northern Ireland (2007). ICCBR is a bi-annual conference, held in alternation with our sister conference, the European Conference on Case-Based Reasoning (ECCBR), which is always located in Europe. ICCBR and ECCBR are the leading conferences on Case-Based Reasoning.

In order to expand the frontiers of CBR as a scientific field, we would like to (1) emphasize the connections between CBR and related areas, and (2) explore new problems and industrial solutions. Another main objective of ICCBR-09 is to encourage new members to join the CBR community and regularly attend / participate in ICCBR. Thus, the ICCBR-09 program will include several new ideas along with the regular keynote addresses, technical program, applications track and workshop sessions.

Please come and join us in Seattle!

News

7 Jul 2009 - Preprint program of events available

7 May 2009 - Registration site live and linked

26 Apr 2009 - Updated dates, camera-ready submission, PC

16 Feb 2009 - Workshops posted, Keynote Speakers, links updated

12 Feb 2009 - Updated Technical Paper submission deadline (to Feb 20 from Feb 16)

9 Feb 2009 - Updated DC application deadline (to Apr 17 from Jan 09), PC

28 Nov 2008 - Updated logo, clarification on Workshop / DC EasyChair submission

12 Nov 2008 - Computer Cooking Contest Call added, minor site updates

27 Oct 2008 - ICCBR-09 Web Site Goes Live

Dates

Camera-Ready Submissions

By Friday, 8th May 2009 (5pm GMT):

1. Your camera-ready copy must be uploaded to the EasyChair system.
2. Your copyright transfer form must have been submitted.
3. At least one author must have registered to attend the conference (Updated: author registration by 21st May).

To prepare and submit final camera-ready submissions.

1. The deadline for verified camera-ready paper submissions is: 8th May 2009 (5pm GMT). This is a hard deadline in order to meet Springer's publication schedule, and there is genuinely no buffer time available for late submission. If your camera-ready paper is not submitted and verified by this deadline, your paper may not appear in the proceedings. Please submit as early as possible.

2. All accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings, and authors are required to transfer copyright to Springer. Please scan and email the signed and completed copyright form right away. Copy the email to both program chairs. The copyright form is available from Springer's Author instructions page. You can use the following for the top matter:
   Title of the Book - Case-Based Reasoning Research and Development / ICCBR 2009
   Volume Editors - Lorraine McGinty and David C. Wilson

   Please take a moment to do this now, as we need to upload all scanned forms together to our publisher. It is sufficient for one of the authors to sign the copyright form. Only in the case that it is not possible to scan and email the completed form, please fax the form to one of the program chairs and send an email indicating that has been done.

3. Please revise your submission to take reviewers' comments into account when preparing the final version of your paper.
4. You must prepare the camera-ready copy of your paper following the Springer LNCS format with a maximum of 15 pages. Authors' instructions along with LaTeX and Word macro files are available at Springer's LNCS/LNAI web page. Details specifically for authors are found at the LNCS author page.
5. The 15-page limit is strict. Springer template parameters such as vertical space and font sizes must not be altered. The content should fit the template, not the other way around.
6. Per Springer requirements, your submission must include all source (input) files. You must submit both:
   1. PDF version of your camera-ready paper.
   2. a zipped (.zip) archive file containing source files, either:
      1. Your LaTeX source files for both the text and PS/EPS or PDF/JPG files for all figures (with all the associated style files, special fonts and eps or bib files). A final DVI file should also be included (for papers prepared using LaTeX/TeX).
         -or-
      2. RTF files, for submissions prepared using Word (Word document saved in RTF format).
7. Upload the camera-ready version of your paper (both PDF and source archive) to the EasyChair Conference System.
   1. Make a brand new submission for your camera-ready copy.
   2. Submit to the following conference track: Camera Ready Papers: ICCBR-09 (Main Technical Program)
   3. Ensure that all author names and affiliations are correct and associated with this final submission. Make sure that first and surnames are in the correct fields, and are written with (only) the first letter in uppercase, e.g., David Wilson (not DAVID WILSON, david wilson, or any other variation). Affiliations must be in the same style. The information you provide here will go in the conference program.
   4. Indicate the correct submission category, group, and keywords.
   5. In the EasyChair submission BOTH of the following are required:
      File: is the final PDF version of your paper.
      Attachment: is the zip archive of your paper source material.
8. In order for the paper to appear in the proceedings, at least one author must have registered to attend the conference by May 21the camera ready copy submission date.

Call for Papers

The ICCBR-09 Program Committee invites submissions of original theoretical research, applied research and deployed application papers on all aspects of Case-Based Reasoning.

Submission Topics

Example submission areas include, but are not limited to:

• Case and knowledge representation, acquisition, modeling, visualization, maintenance and management for CBR
• CBR system design issues (e.g., indexing, retrieval, similarity assessment and adaptation)
• System architectures and integration of CBR with other methods
• Collaborative agent architectures involving CBR
• Analogical reasoning, cognitive models, and creative reasoning approaches based on CBR
• Formal, empirical, and psychological evaluations of CBR models and systems
• Methodologies for developing CBR applications
• Lazy-learning, instance-based learning and case-based learning
• Case-based planning topics including plan adaptation, retrieval from a plan library and plan similarity
• Case-based approaches to scheduling, design and robot navigation
• CBR and knowledge discovery, data mining, text mining
• CBR software reuse and engineering redesign
• Explanations, Context, and confidence in CBR
• Peer-to-Peer Networks and CBR
• CBR in the Semantic Web
• CBR foundations
• Conversational CBR
• Textual CBR
• Distributed CBR
• CBR and uncertainty
• CBR in design, diagnosis, health, law, education
• Knowledge management in CBR, case and experience-based knowledge management
• Case-based recommender systems
• Applications of CBR (e.g., in customer support, education, electronic commerce, pattern recognition, image processing, legal reasoning, manufacturing and medicine)
• Adaptive interfaces, user modeling, customization & personalization using CBR
• Computer models of case-based argumentation
• Fielded applications of CBR

Proceedings

All accepted papers will appear in the conference proceedings published by Springer Verlag in the Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence series.

Review Criteria

Each submission must be identified as theoretical/Methodological research, applied research, or deployed application paper and will be reviewed using criteria appropriate to its category. The criteria are as follows:

• Paper Category: Theoretical/Methodological research paper
  Review Criteria: Scientific significance; originality; technical quality; and clarity
  


• Paper Category: Applied research paper
  Review Criteria: Significance for scientific research or innovative commercial deployment; originality; technical quality; and clarity


• Paper Category: Deployed application paper
  Review Criteria: Demonstrated practical, social, environmental or economic significance; originality; treatment of issues of engineering, management & user acceptance; and clarity.

Submission Format

Papers MUST be submitted as a single PDF file in Springer LNCS format, which is the format required for the final camera ready copy, with a maximum of 15 pages. Authors' instructions along with LaTeX and Word macro files are available on the web at Springer's Information for LNCS Authors page. Authors of accepted papers are required to transfer their copyrights to Springer. All submissions are required to be in electronic format.

Submission Procedure

Authors must submit a full paper by the conference paper submission deadline. ICCBR-09 is employing the EasyChair conference system, and submissions must be made via the ICCBR-09 EasyChair Conference Site.

Multiple Submission Policy

Papers submitted to other conferences or journals must state this fact. If a paper will appear in another conference or journal, it must be withdrawn from ICCBR-09. This restriction does not apply to papers appearing in proceedings of specialized workshops.

Author Registration Policy

In order for a paper to appear in the proceedings, at least one of the authors must register for the conference by the camera-ready copy deadline.

Workshops

WS1: HCCBR: Human-Centered Case-Based Reasoning

Co-chairs: Jörg Cassens, Anders Kofod-Petersen, Thomas Roth-Berghofer

This workshop aims to bring together researchers and practitioners exploring human aspects of the design, implementation, and use of intelligent systems, from a broad range of areas, to share their problems and methodologies across different research and application areas. The workshop will examine methods, mechanisms, and techniques to keep the human in the centre of attention during the whole lifecycle of an intelligent system, from initial problem description through to knowledge acquisition and modelling and on to interactive use and maintenance. It aims to explore issues of human centered design, development, and application of case-based reasoning systems as well as the utilisation of case-based reasoning in human-centered computing.

WS2: WebCBR-09:Reasoning from Experiences on the Web

Co-chairs: Derek Bridge, Enric Plaza, Nirmalie Wiratunga

The WebCBR workshop promotes Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) as a means to advance web technology in two ways. Firstly by enabling better exploitation of explicit yet unstructured experiential web content and secondly by harnessing web usage experiences to improve browsing and searching. We aim to provide a forum for the discussion of trends, research issues and practical experiences on the role of CBR in reasoning with web-related content.

WS3: Case-Based Reasoning for Computer Games

Co-chairs: Luc Lamontagne, Pedro González Calero

The motivation for this workshop is to encourage the exchange of information and ideas about CBR as it is embedded within and provides support for computer gaming environments. Computer games are receiving increasing attention as a means for testing CBR concepts and to extend current CBR paradigms (e.g. real-time issues, uncertainty, online learning). The workshop will provide a medium of exchange for information on games-related CBR research and provide an opportunity for participants to demonstrate some game-related CBR prototypes and hence to illustrate some of the challenges and issues faced by CBR researchers.

WS4: Uncertainty, Knowledge Discovery and Similarity in Case-Based Reasoning

Co-chairs: Kerstin Bach, Eyke Hüllermeier, Miltos Petridis, Michael Richter, and Rosina Weber

Case-based reasoning must face the challenge to deal with uncertain, incomplete, and vague information, which leads to the need of suitable methods for modeling and reasoning under uncertainty, appropriately complemented by tools for learning and knowledge discovery. The objective of this workshop is to provide an opportunity for exchanging ideas related to the application of various techniques of uncertainty management, knowledge discovery, and similarity in CBR.

WS5: CBR in the Health Sciences

Co-chairs: Cindy Marling, Stefania Montani

This workshop will be the seventh in a serious of highly productive workshops on CBR in the health sciences, which have been held at every ICCBR and ECCBR since 2003. It will provide a forum for identifying important contributions and opportunities for research on the application of CBR to the health sciences. In addition the workshop will promote the systematic study of how to apply CBR to the health sciences and provide the opportunity to showcase applications of CBR in the health sciences.

WS6: Computer Cooking Contest Workshop

Co-chairs: Mirjam Minor, Armin Stahl, David Leake

The Computer Cooking Contest (CCC) workshop is part of the Cookery Contest. This workshop will facilitate the presentation and discussion of the technical descriptions of the contest finalists. Paper submissions can only be made by teams participating in the CCC qualifying examination which requires running software. The workshop, however, is open to all ICCBR'09 attendees.

Further Information

For additional details, please contact the ICCBR'09 workshop coordinator:Sarah Jane Delany ().

Call for Industry / Applications Presentations

ICCBR-09 invites submissions for a special presentation-only track of deployed applications on all aspects of Case-Based Reasoning. The applications track provides an opportunity for both industry and academic application developers to showcase their work in 20-30 minute high-quality presentations, without the need to write a paper. This event takes place on one day and is an excellent way for industry members to interact with students and academic researchers.

Presentation Topics

We will be accepting presentations on new work, updates on past work, and related work from other fields.

Expression of Interest

Presenters can express interest with a short (one paragraph) description of their work. Presenters must submit an email with this description to by the specified deadline. Please make the subject of this email "ICCBR-09 Applications Track Submission."

In addition to presentation-only submissions, conference participants that have a deployed application paper accepted to the conference main technical track may also elect and are encouraged to make an additional presentation of their work as part of the Applications Track.

Sponsoring ICCBR-09

Industry presenters, in particular, may find significant value in complementing their presentation with an official conference presence by sponsoring ICCBR-09. Please check the sponsorship section of the web site for details.

ICCBR 2009 Doctoral Consortium: Call for Participation

For the first time, ICCBR-09 will include a Doctoral Consortium for Ph.D. students who are at the midpoint of their Ph.D. programs. The Doctoral Consortium is designed to create a supportive community of young researchers, and to connect them to the broader research community through interactions with mentors.

Participants will be matched with mentors, who will advise the students about their research trajectory, as well as advising them about writing about and presenting their research. We will facilitate communications between mentors and students prior to ICCBR, and will meet together on Monday, July 20, 2009. Each mentor-student pair will meet individually at the start of DC activities. Then, each student will present a 20-minute talk on a current facet of his/her research, getting feedback from both students and mentors present. A special reception for DC students and mentors will end the day.

Student participants

ICCBR-09 invites Ph.D. students to apply to participate in the Doctoral Consortium. To apply, students should submit application materials (listed below) through the Doctoral Consortium track of the ICCBR-09 EasyChair Conference Site by April 17, 2009 (Note updated deadline).

Application materials should include an application essay (3 pages or less), a brief (1-2 page) abstract of the paper to be presented at the DC, a current CV, and a letter of recommendation from the student's adviser. In EasyChair:

1. Put the title of the paper to be presented in the Title field.
2. If your abstract will fit in the Abstract field, put it there. Otherwise, put a note in the Abstract field indicating that the abstract is part of the PDF.
3. For keywords, enter keywords relevant to your research area, AND include the word "student". this will help us to match mentors and students.
4. Put all of parts of your application in a single PDF file, and upload it as the "Paper".

In the application essay students should describe:

• The student's background and state of progress in their Ph.D. program,
• The student's current research project, what is completed, currently underway, and yet to be done,
• The questions the student has for the mentor,
• What the student expects to get from the Doctoral Consortium, and
• What the student has to offer to the other participants in the Doctoral Consortium.

Students will be notified of their acceptance to the Doctoral Consortium and the identity of their mentors by May 1, 2009.

A final version of the paper to be presented will be due on May 15, 2009.

Students are expected to commit to attending all DC activities at the conference. ICCBR anticipates providing some support for all DC students.

Please direct any questions to Susan Eileen Fox ( ).

Mentor participants

ICCBR-09 invites researchers to serve as mentors for the 2009 Doctoral Consortium. Mentors are expected to correspond with DC students prior to ICCBR-09, and to commit to attending as much of the DC as possible. Mentors must be present for the one-on-one meeting with their students, and for their own student's presentation. We encourage mentors to see presentations by other students, and to provide feedback where possible.

Conference organizers are considering ways to encourage mentors by providing a thank-you for participation.

Interested mentors should submit information before April 17, 2009. The information should include a brief, one-paragraph description of their own career and research interests, and should describe what research areas they would be comfortable providing mentoring for. In addition, contact information for use by DC organizers and designated DC students should be provided.

Mentors may submit their information either through the Doctoral Consortium track of the ICCBR-09 EasyChair Conference Site, or in e-mail to Susan Fox ( ).

To submit information through EasyChair:

1. Click on the link that automatically fills in first "Author" information from your EasyChair account.
2. Enter "Mentor" where EasyChair asks for a title.
3. In the Abstract box, enter the paragraph describing your research and what areas you are comfortable mentoring.
4. For keywords, enter keywords that are relevant to your research area. This will help us to match mentors and students.
5. Click "Abstract Only", and submit.

Please direct any questions to Susan Eileen Fox ( ).

Computer Cooking Contest

Who says that only human beings are able to cook delicious meals? We aim to teach our computers the haute cuisine and therefore we need your creativity and ideas! Come to the International Conference on Case-Based Reasoning (ICCBR'09) in Seattle and participate in the Computer Cooking Contest (CCC)! Write your own software application for the live competition. Show that your program is more creative than the average kitchen user. Let your computer's recipe creations be evaluated by a professional cook and an international jury of scientists!

Rationales

Once upon a time in the past, when we still were students, we wondered whether there could be a software which would relieve us from the task of matching the content of our fridge to a dish. Given a restricted set of ingredients, the task is to cook something, where something does taste good. Ideally, something moreish.

Once upon a time in the present, when we were not students anymore, we wondered whether there could be a software which would relieve us from the task of explaining what we are doing, e.g. case-based reasoning, to a broader audience. Given the technological state of the art, the task is to demonstrate something, where something solves a problem. Ideally, something moreish.

Glue the two together and you get it: The Computer Cooking Contest!

It will attract new people, e.g. students, to deal with AI technologies such as case-based reasoning, semantic technologies, search and information extraction. Also cooking is fun, in particular when using a computer for the design of the menu. Furthermore, the contest will attract the public. Since everybody knows something about cooking, people will be curious what a computer might do about it. Furthermore, we all have noticed the increasing interest of the public audience in cooking, stipulated by the growing insight that good food is mandatory for health. Hence, the Computer Cooking Contest offers the opportunity to explain the benefits of our technologies intelligible to all.

Competition

The Computer Cooking Contest is an open competition. Any individual, student, research group and professional is invited to submit software that creates a recipe for a single dish or even a three course menu. The input will be a database of basic recipes from which appropriate recipes must be selected, modified, or even combined. The queries to the system consist of a number of wanted ingredients and other requirements for the dish or menu.

The overall competition is structured into a main compulsory task and two additional challenge tasks.

The Compulsory Task involves answering queries that require the selection and --- where appropriate --- modification of recipe for a single dish. A sample query could be to "cook a main dish with turkey, pistachio, and pasta without garlic". An appropriate answer would be to select a recipe for pistachio chicken and to replace chicken by turkey.

The Adaptation Challenge is to answer queries that require an adaptation of both the list of ingredients and the preparation directions. This challenge will operate on a restricted recipe base.

The Menu Challenge requires the composition of a three-course menu based on the available recipes. For example we might ask: "I have a filet of beef, carrots, celery, field garlic and cucumber. Potatoes are available, too. For the dessert, we have oranges and mint. A soup would be preferable for the starter." In this case, a Caldo Verde as a starter, filet steak with baked potatoes, and an orange ice cream with mint flavour would be a good solution.

Please note that for most of the queries there is not a single correct or best answer. Usually many different solutions are possible, depending on your creativity or the creativity of your software. We also do not imply any restriction on the technology to be used. Case-based reasoning is one candidate technology, but other approaches are certainly suitable as well. The only restriction we impose is that the given database of recipes must be used as a starting point. We will not provide a formal query language. Queries will be described in free text but the software to be developed can use any kind of user interaction (structural/formula-based, conversation, text-based).

Evaluation Criteria

All systems will be evaluated with respect to scientific/technical quality (technical originality of the approach, usability of the software, maintainability, and scalability) and with respect to the culinary quality of the created recipes (appropriate to the query, tasty, cookable, creative). The evaluation will involve a peer-review of the papers describing the system and an assessment by an international jury of experts including a professional cook.

Competition Procedure and Timeline

December 1, 2008: Publication of Contest Conditions and Material
A detailed description of the competition rules, an initial database of recipes in XML format, and a first set of queries will be published. The format will be very similar to last year's but the content will be new.

April 24, 2009: Qualifying Examination
To this deadline, the contest participants must submit:

• an up-to-10-page technical description of the system,
• the URL of the running system (web interface) or the executable software (must run on Windows).

July 21, 2009: Computer Cooking Contest
The finalist systems will be demonstrated at the Computer Cooking Contest at ICCBR. At least one person per finalist must register for ICCBR, demonstrate the system and give a technical presentation at the CCC workshop. The technical descriptions of the finalist systems will be published in the ICCBR workshop proceedings. The systems will be evaluated according to the initial set of queries and a confidential set of new queries. The new queries will be different, but similar in type and difficulty to the first set. The recipe base will be the same as in the qualifying. The evaluation will be performed by an international jury. Separate prices will be awarded for the compulsory tasks and for the two challenges.

Contest Conditions and Material

Contest data and updates will be made available via the Computer Cooking Contest Web Site.

Contact

Please do not hesitate to contact the organizers in case you have any questions.

Mirjam Minor
University of Trier, Germany

Armin Stahl
DFKI, Germany

David Leake
Indiana University, USA

People

• General Program Chairs:
  • David C. Wilson, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA.
    ()
  • Lorraine McGinty, University College Dublin, Ireland.
    ()
• Local Conference Chair:
  • Isabelle Bichindaritz, University of Washington at Tacoma, USA.
    ()
• Application Track Chairs:
  • William E. Cheetham, General Electric Research, USA.
    ()
  • Kareem S. Aggour, General Electric Research, USA.
    ()
• Workshops Coordinator:
  • Sarah-Jane Delany, Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland.
    ()
• Doctoral Consortium Chair:
  • Susan Fox, Macalester College, MN, USA.
    ()
• Cooking Contest Chairs:
  • Mirjam Minor, University of Trier, Germany.
    ()
  • David Leake, Indiana University, USA.
    ()
  • Armin Stahl, DFKI, Germany.
    ()
• Program Committee

  Agnar Aamodt, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway
  David Aha, Naval Research Laboratory, USA
  Klaus-Dieter Althoff, University of Hildesheim, Germany
  Josep-Lluis Arcos, IIIACSIC, Spain
  Kevin Ashley, University of Pittsburgh, USA
  Paolo Avesani, FBK-IT, Italy
  Ralph Bergmann, University of Trier, Germany
  Enrico Blanzieri, University of Trento, Italy
  Derek Bridge, University College Cork, Ireland
  Robin Burke, De Paul University, USA
  Hans-Dieter Burkhard, Humboldt University Berlin, Germany
  Susan Craw, Robert Gordon University, Scotland
  Padraig Cunningham, University College Dublin, Ireland
  Belen Diaz-Agudo, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain
  Peter Funk, Mälardalen University, Sweden
  Ashok Goel, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
  Mehmet Göker, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, USA
  Andrew Golding, Lycos Inc, USA
  Pedro Gonzalez Calero, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain
  Christiane Gresse von Wangenheim, Uni. do Vale do Itajai, Brazil
  Kalyan Moy Gupta, Knexus Research Corporation, USA
  Eyke Hüllermeier, University of Marburg, Germany
  Igor Jurisica, Ontario Cancer Institute, Canada
  Deepak Khemani, IIT Madras, India 
  Luc Lamontagne, Université Laval, Canada 
  David Leake, Indiana University, USA
  Ramon Lopez de Mantaras, IIIACSIC, Spain
  Michel Manago, kiolis, France
  Cindy Marling, Ohio University, USA
  David McSherry, University of Ulster, Northern Ireland
  Mirjam Minor, University of Trier, Germany
  Hector Munoz-Avila, Lehigh University, USA
  David Patterson, University of Ulster, Northern Ireland
  Petra Perner, Institute of Computer Vision and Applied CS, Germany
  Enric Plaza, IIIACSIC, Spain
  Luigi Portinale, University of Eastern Piedmont, Italy
  Lisa Purvis, Xerox Corporation, NY, USA
  Francesco Ricci, ITC-irst, Italy
  Michael Richter, University of Calgary, Canada
  Thomas Roth-Berghofer, DFKI, Germany
  Rainer Schmidt, University of Rostock, Germany
  Barry Smyth, University College Dublin, Ireland
  Raja Sooriamurthi, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
  Armin Stahl, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Germany
  Brigitte Trousse, INRIA Sophia Antipolis, France
  Ian Watson, University of Auckland, New Zealand
  Rosina Weber, Drexel University, USA
  Nirmalie Wiratunga, Robert Gordon University, Scotland
  Qiang Yang, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong
  

Location

Seattle is a major port, transportation hub, and manufacturing center and the principal city of Washington State and of the Pacific Northwest. Built on seven hills, with unmatched mountain and water views, the wealth of natural beauty in and around Seattle astonishes first-time visitors. Bounded on the west by Puget Sound, an inland arm of the Pacific Ocean, and on the east by Lake Washington, the city occupies a north-south corridor, slender at the waist, with hundreds of miles of salt and freshwater shore-line literally touch the city's boundaries. The Cascade mountain range is east of the city, and the Olympic Mountains are to the west. Thousands of square miles of evergreen forest extend out from the city, and, on a clear day, the views of mountains and water are spectacular.

Some of Seattle's best-known attractions are the Space Needle, Pike Place Market, Pioneer Square, Woodland Park Zoo, Waterfront, Ballard Locks, and the new Experience Music Project. These urban landmarks are clustered in pedestrian-scale sections, best savored on foot. Central business district buses are free, and the Monorail speeds quickly between downtown and the Seattle Center (site of both the Space Needle and the Experience Music Project).

Seattle has a mild climate all year round. The Olympic Mountains protect the Puget Sound area from heavy rainfall and high winds from the west. On the east, the Cascade Mountains shield the area from winter cold. Winter days are short, but summer days are long, with 16 hours of daylight in midsummer. The average summer temperature is 73 degrees (22.8 C), and maximum afternoon temperatures of 90 degrees (32.2 C) or more are uncommon. Average yearly rainfall in Seattle is 36.2 inches (92 cm).

Venue

The University of Washington (UW) is located near the center of scenic downtown Seattle. There are several hotels at walking distance from the university, including a 3 diamond hotel, the University Tower Hotel, and many hotels at close distance have free shuttles to the university. The University is surrounded by restaurants and cafes in a busy quarter of the city, located at 15 minutes from downtown Seattle by bus - many of them running 24 hours a day.

Registration

Conference registration is now available online or via fax/post through the University of Washington Conference Registration and Housing Reservation Registration Site for ICCBR'09.

Travel

The main driving routes reaching Seattle are I-5 running north and south, and I-90 from the east.

The best airport to fly to is Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SeaTac). SeaTac is 12 miles (19km) south of Seattle (travel time 20-40 minutes) and 20 miles (32km) north of Tacoma. Airlines flying to and from there include: Aer Lingus, American, British Airways, Continental, Delta, Japan, Northwest, and United.

For those intending to attend the IJCAI'09 conference the week before (i.e., 11-17 July) in Pasadena, California direct flights to SeaTac are available from the Bob Hope Burbank airport, as well as Ontario and Los Angeles International Airports.

Getting to and from the airport takes about 20-30 minutes by car. Expect to pay about $25 for a taxi. Car hire is also available. Other options include Gray Line Airport Express, Shuttle Express, and the metro bus.

In terms of rail transportation options, the daily Amtrak passenger service the Empire Builder runs between Seattle/Portland and Chicago. The passenger service the Coast Starlight runs between Los Angeles and Seattle. The Cascades service runs between Vancouver, British Columbia and Eugene-Springfield, Oregon and stops in Seattle.

A useful official guide to Seattle can be accessed online at http://www.seattle.gov/html/visitor/.

Proceedings

ICCBR-09 Proceedings are available online from Springer.

Best Paper Award

The ICCBR-09 Best Paper Award went to Lisa Cummins and Derek Bridge for their paper entitled: "Maintenance by a Committee of Experts: The MACE Approach to Case-Base Maintenance."

Program

Details are available in the preprint ICCBR-09 Program of Events.

Keynote Speakers

Professor Susan Craw

We're Wiser Together
Case-Based Reasoning solves new problems by reusing solutions from individual experiences stored in the case base. This paper explores beyond the explicit knowledge captured as individual experiences for problem-solving. Instead, the collective knowledge of the case base provides additional implicit knowledge that may be exploited to improve traditional case-based reasoning systems through additional knowledge containers and to provide a new form of self-adaptive case-based reasoning. This paper presents a view that individual experiences are more fully utilised through the wisdom of collective memory.

Susan Craw is Director of the Research Institute for Innovation, DEsign And Sustainability (IDEAS) at the Robert Gordon University. She joined the School of Computing at RGU in 1983, was awarded a Chair in 1998, became Head of the School of Computing in 2001, and Head of Research & Graduate Studies for Design & Technology in 2006.

She holds a BSc Honours degree and MSc by Research in Mathematics and a PhD in Computing Science from the University of Aberdeen.

Her research develops machine learning and data mining techniques to discover knowledge for intelligent, decision support and product design software systems. Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) is a major focus of her research in which problem-solving is achieved by retrieving and reusing solutions for previously solved problems. Application domains include pharmaceutical product design, electronic patient records, SmartHouse devices, intelligent Web agents, space satellites. Collaborators include IPI Bradford, AstraZeneca, ESA, LogicaCMG, IntelliCorp, ISoft (France).

Externally, she is a member of EPSRC Peer College; the Boards of SICSA and its Graduate Academy, the NRP Computational Systems Board, the programme committees of ECCBR, ICCBR, ECML/PKDD. She was a member of the IJCAI Executive Committee (2007); ECCBR Conference Chair (2002); the selection panel for Frank Knox scholarships to Harvard (2005-2009); and holder of a Fulbright Scholar award (1999).

Professor Edwina Rissland

Black Swans, Gray Cygnets and other Rare Birds
Surprising, exceptional cases - so-called black swans - can provoke extraordinary change in the way we do things or conceptualize the world. While it is not unreasonable to be surprised by a black swan, to be surprised by subsequent cases that are similar enough that they might cause the same sort of upheaval is unforgivable. The problem is how to reason about these almost novel, not totally unforeseen, subsequent cases that I call gray cygnets.

Professor Edwina L. Rissland received her Sc.B. in Applied Mathematics with Honors magna cum laude from Brown University, M.A. in Mathematics from Brandeis University, and Ph.D. in Mathematics from MIT. She currently holds the rank of Professor. She is recognized as a founder and world leader in the areas of Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) and AI & Law, and was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) in 1991.

For the 1982-83 academic year, she was a Fellow of Law and Computer Science at the Harvard Law School. From 1985 through 1996, she held an appointment as Lecturer on Law at the Harvard Law School, where she taught a seminar on Artificial Intelligence and Legal Reasoning.

Her current research interests include case-based reasoning (CBR), AI and legal reasoning, CBR and information retrieval, mixed paradigm reasoning, and cyberlaw.

Professor Rissland recently served as NSF Program Director for the Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science (AICS) Program in the Division of Information and Intelligence Systems (IIS) within the CISE Directorate of the National Science Foundation, as well as leader for the Robust Intelligence cluster. Professor Rissland has served as President of the International Association for Artificial Intelligence and Law, and on the Board of Councilors of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), as well as on numerous program committees, including the national conferences of the AAAI, the international conferences on case-based reasoning (ICCBR), and the biennial international conferences on AI & Law (ICAIL). She has served as guest editor/co-editor for several special journal issues, including the special issue of the journal Artificial Intelligence and Law (Fall 2002) in memory of the contributions of Don Berman and the recent double issue of Artificial Intelligence on AI and Law (Vol 150, Nos 1-2, Nov. 2003). She has authored over 100 articles, books, and technical reports. She is a co-author of the text Cognitive Science: An Integrated Approach published by MIT Press/Bradford Books. She was Co-Editor of the MIT Press series on AI and Law, and is a founding member of the editorial board of the journal Artificial Intelligence and Law.

Links

• CBR Resources
  • CBR Wiki
• ICCBR-09 Information
  • Call for Papers - Main Technical Program (pdf)
  • Call for Papers - Main Technical Program (txt)
  • Call for Workshop Proposals (pdf)
  • Call for Workshop Proposals (txt)
  • Computer Cooking Competition Call for Participation (pdf)
  • Computer Cooking Competition Call for Participation (txt)
• CBR in 2009
  • CBR Special Track at FLAIRS-22. Sanibel Island, Florida, USA. May 19-21, 2009.
  • CBR Workshop on Multimedia Data at ICDM-2009. Leipzig, Germany. July 22, 2009.
• Current Sponsor Details
  • Verdande Technology product sheet

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Current Sponsor Details