Minutes of the TC 9-5 Meeting in Toulouse 2017, IFAC World Congress.
Minutes of the TC 9-5 Meeting in Toulouse, IFAC World Congress.
Prepared by P.Kopacek and L.Stapleton
Location: Conference Room Tangovio, Toulouse
Time: Thursday July 13, 2017, 16.00 pm – 17.00 pm
1. Open and welcome,
The outgoing TC Chair L. Stapleton welcomed the participants especially the new TC Members. New members were especially welcomed from Australia, a new country NMO to the TC.
2. Formal appointment and welcome of incoming chair, Prof. Peter Kopacek.
The outgoing TC Chair L. Stapleton handed over the chairmanship to the incoming TC Chair. P. Kopacek. Professor Kopacek was thanked for taking on the role again (he has been a former chairperson).
The new TC Chair, P. Kopacek, expressed his thanks to L.Stapleton for his tremendous and successful work in the last two triennia.
3. Technical Committee, CC and Technical Board Updates, including summary of new members to TC 9-5 and work on new NMOs.
This work was before the Technical Board for discussion (especially in respect of Azerbaijan) and updates will be furnished in due course.
The next steps will be the updating of the TC- 9.5 homepage as well as the preparation of the thesis events 2018 and 2019. The successful bid for 2018 was reviewed (Baku, Azerbaijan – a new country to TC 9-5).
4. Review proposed agenda and minutes of last meeting
The minutes of the last TC Meeting in Durres were approved.
5. Review of TECIS 2016 Event
TECIS 2016 in Duress was very successful. A detailed report will be available soon at the TC – 9.5 Homepage.
6. Review of IFAC World Congress TC 9.5 Sessions and related outcomes.
Larry Stapleton reported that TC 9.5 was responsible for two invited sessions and two technical sessions, including a session designed to generate discussion on an IFAC agenda in the area of international stability and world peace, driven by the Young Members WG (see below). This represented the strongest presence of TC 9-5 at a world congress that can be remembered and great tribute was paid to the hard work of all members of the TC. Fourteen papers were accepted for publication. However, it was also noted that a large number of TC 9-5 members from developing countries were unable to attend due to high costs. Nevertheless and in spite of the challenges, the TC had a strong presence at IFAC WC. This all underlined the great support that TC 9-5 enjoys from the IFAC Council and Technical Board. This support was formally acknowledged at the meeting and minutes for the record.
7. TECIS upcoming events: announcement of TECIS 2018 in Baku. The proposal of Austrian IFAC NMO for TECIS 2018 in Baku, Azerbaijan was approved by the IFAC TB and will take place September 13-15. 2018. The first call was distributed to the participants. The Bulgarian proposal for TECIS 2019 is a current priority for next triennium. However, attendees sought clarity on the 2019 situation as it had been signaled that there would be a possible bid from Bulgaria to be reviewed at the meeting. It was confirmed that 2019 remained an open “slot”. It was recognized that a strong TC 9-5 community existed in Bulgaria who had held a very successful conference in2 015. Contact with the Bulgarian NMO would be made to ascertain the status of their bid and invite them to bring the 2019 bid to the TB via the TC 9-5 chair.
8. Review of TC 9-5 Working Group Activities and updates
a. Cost Oriented Automation (COA) - Prof Peter Kopacek
This working Group was proposed by colleagues from Bulgaria at the TC Meeting in Sozopol 2015. The TECIS 2015 original proposal was specially focussed on cost-oriented automation. The intention was to reinvigorate work in this important area. However, whilst a small number of papers were submitted to the TECIS 2016 event, there were nearly no activities at the World Congress 2017.
Dr. Stapleton described the possible continuing development of new research units are under development at member NMOs (especially Bulgaria, Kosovo and Ireland). It is hoped that, over the next triennium, work in this space will intensify and consolidate.
b. Ethics WG – Dr. Marion Hersh
This working Group was very active over the last Triennium and continues to have an important and significant impact upon IFAC activity. A book had been published, edited by Dr. Hersh, TC vice-chair and chair of the WG, through Springer with contributions from TC 9-5 members and proceeds going to Scientists for Social Responsibility (see former TC 9-5 minutes for more information). Organization of two invited sessions at the world congress were successful, making the working group one of the most active in all IFAC. Tribute was paid to Dr. Hersh for her tremendous efforts. She briefed the TC on another book on “Ethics in Engineering” which is in preparation.
c. End of Life Management - Dr Bernd Kopacek
This remains a hot topic not only across many scientific disciplines and of particular interest to control and automation sciences. Currently mostly computing equipment and goods of consumer electronics and other automation equipment are considered by this WG although more extensive manufacturing processes have also come into scope. The working Group contributed with 1 paper for TECIS 2016 and 1 for the IFAC World Congress 2017.
d. Non-Technical Aspects of ICT and Automation - Bogdan Lewoc
No activities were reported and no report was submitted for consideration by the WG chair. Although the WG was formerly active the status of the WG is now unclear.
e. New “Young Members” Working Group - Amy Stapleton and Natalia Kobza
It was recognized that the chairs of the WG had put a lot of work to develop the new WG and had proposed a revised name for discussion at this TC meeting. The title was “'Building Bridges for International Stability”. It was felt by the TC that this name was too long. After some discussion the proposed name of the working Group is now ”Young Researchers in Technology and International Stability”. As Amy and Natalia were not able to attend the meeting it was proposed that this would be reverted back to them for consideration. In the meantime they will prepare a detailed scope and suggestions of future activities for this Working Group.
9. TC 9-5 promoted events for 2018
TC 9-2 event in Cyber-Physical Human Systems (CPHS 2018) for December 2018 will be cosponsored by the TC.
10. TC9-5 Special International Journal Issue Updates, Announcements and Planning.
In the past three years two special journal issues emanating from TC 9-5 have been successfully published. A third special issue is in development and has been agreed with Artificial Intelligence and Society. The special issue focuses particularly on Control, Automation and World Peace. The proposal was accepted by Artificial Intelligence and Society senior editorial team. All contributors are TC 9-5 members and we plan to have approximately 15 papers in the special issue. We have also agreed with the senior editors that the special issue will include a special space for NCAS WG contributions, to help promote emerging IFAC researchers to this audience. At the meeting it was announced that 15 papers had been submitted. Of these three were industry/open forum papers, five were from the new young members working group and seven submitted as main (regular) journal contributions. One paper had been rejected/withdrawn. The reviewing process was projected to be complete by end August and it was hope that all revised papers would be ready in the autumn with the journal issue published in 2018.
11. IFAC Applicability and Relevance to International Stability:
Since Sozopol 2015 TC 9-5 have embarked on a project to develop guidance and generate discussion more broadly in IFAC on this theme. As incoming CC9 chairperson, Dr. Stapleton announced provisionally that he would continue to drive and support this effort. He had met with some other TB members, CC9 TCs and also a non-CC9 TC who had all agreed in principle to contribute in this space. This is in very early stages but it is hoped that concrete, tangible results would be achieved over the next triennium. He asked for continuing efforts of TC 9-5 who had laid the ground for these developments and indicated that he would be in contact in due course to further develop this initiative.
12. Next Meeting
The next TC meeting will take place during TECIS 2018 in Baku, with more details of time and venue to come in due course.
13. Closing
P. Kopacek closed the Meeting at 05:00 p.m.