• 17:00-17:20 Presenter: Fabrício Sperandio (Moderator: João Tiago Jacob)
  Modeling and Simulation in the Health Care Domain
  The current work is an overview of applications, challenges and trends in the area, with a focus on simulation-based decision support systems. The work starts with a broad view of applications in the healthcare domain, highlighting two wide fields: education and decision support. Afterwards, the work focuses on decision support systems, detailing applications such as human body models, tactical/operational models and strategic whole-system models. Some key implementation issues are presented and discussed; the reasons for a relatively low implementation success rate are explored, as well as key trends for the future.

• 17:20-17:40 Presenter: Helder Martins Fontes (Moderator: Zafeiris Kokkinogenis)
  Complex Networks Simulation
  This work aims to give to the audience an overview of the Complex Networks Simulation investigation topic. First, its origins and general motivations as an investigation topic are identified; Second, the data structure generally used to model the reality in such simulations is introduced; Third, some examples of the most used models in Complex Networks Simulation are presented and explained; Fourth, some of the higher indexed journals related to the topic are listed and; Fifth, a sample model that comes with Netlogo, a multi-agent programmable modeling environment, is executed as a possible application example, simulating the propagation of a computer virus in a computer network. Finally, some conclusions are drawn, showing that Complex Networks Simulation remains an active and important investigation topic, serving as a basis for other related investigation topics such as Social Networks and Computer Networks.

• 17:40-18:00 Presenter: João Emilio Almeida (Moderator: Tiago Fernandes)
  Agent Architectures and Interaction Models for Agent-Based Modeling & Simulation
  This presentation aims to give the audience some insights into agent architectures and interaction models for agent-based modelling and simulation (ABMS). We start by defining the ABMS concept, which is followed by the presentation of agent architectures, how agents sense the world, process the information and act somehow upon the environment. Another topic to be discussed is the way agents interact, resulting in social behaviours such as collaboration, co-operation, co-ordination and competition. Some examples related to crowd modeling and simulation applied to emergency and evacuation scenarios will be discussed to illustrate the different approaches.

• 18:00-18:20 Presenter: João Tiago Jacob (Moderator: Luis Filipe Teofilo)
  Simulation as a training tool: the role of Serious Games in Education
  Serious games date from almost the dawn of virtual games. However, they were discarded up until this decade. Only now have these serious games been considered as a viable alternativa to other pedagogic tools. This was made possible thanks to the simulation aspect of these games, as this aspect allows for a “sandbox” approach to learning by creating a virtual place where a student may test his skills in a near-life-like environment with minimal effort, costs or risk. Hopefully this will open up new ways of educating our students for the next century.

• 18:40-19:00 Presenter: Luis Filipe Teofilo (Moderator: Helder Martins Fontes)
  Evolutionary Agents in Noncooperative Games and Simulation
  This presentation aims to provide an overview about agent evolution and selection in a simulated environment where the agents' role in the system is to play a non-cooperative game. In these systems the agent model is dynamic, which means that it evolves over time. Model evolution does not mean the creation of a more capable agent, but through natural selection and the Charles Darwin's principle - “survival of the fittest” - the worst agents are discarded. For this reason, at the end of the simulation, the surviving agents will theoretically end up with a more optimal strategy for the game in question.

• 19:00-18:20 Presenter: Pedro Brandão Silva (Moderator: João Emilio Almeida)
  Visual Interactive Modeling and Simulation
  This presentation aims to provide an insight into the concepts of Visual Interactive Modeling (VIM) and Visual Interactive Simulation (VIS), presenting their advantages, architectures and most common features. Since its theory has been studied for about three decades now, it is not a recent subject, but both concepts have become almost a must in every simulation software. This presentation will also address hybrid approaches of VIM and VIS, focusing on Building Information Modeling (BIM), a more concrete example which concerns urban architecture modeling and simulation.

• 19:20-19:40 Presenter: Tiago Fernandes (Moderator: Fabrício Sperandio)
  Serious Games for Health
  This presentation gives an overview of the serious game industry for health care with a specific focus on autism and facial recognition. Usual therapies are described for this case and new approaches are presented. These new approaches are mostly based on the work developed by the researcher Paul Ekman, but it will also be focused on some other projects. The LIFEisGAME project will be described although there are no images due to copyright restrictions.

• 19:40-20:00 Presenter: Zafeiris Kokkinogenis (Moderator: Pedro Brandão Silva)
  Validation and calibration: an overview of traditional and agent-based M&S
  On the one hand Modeling and Simulation (M&S) are expected to play an increasing role in system design, acquisition, and training. On the other hand, the quality of M&S is hard to define since technical communities have varying concepts about what is important. Validation is a set of processes/steps, within the simulation's life cycle that apply incremental reviews, analyses, evaluations, and testing to M&S products for the purpose of establishing M&S credibility and reducing risk to the user. Validation addresses two questions: “Is the model realistic?” (Conceptual Model Validation) and “Are the results of the simulation realistic?” (Results/Data Validation). This presentation will try to give a brief overview over the methodologies/approaches adopted by the M&S community and will try to discuss the challenges the M&S community currently is facing.“

• 17:00-17:30 Presenter: Ivo Timóteo (MIEIC) and Miguel Araújo (MIEIC)
  A MAS-based Cross-Simulator Tool to support the creation of Traffic Management Solutions
  We believe that Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) are the most appropriate metaphor to deal with complex stochastic domains such as road networks and traffic management and control systems. However, the majority of microscopic traffic simulators are oriented to a rather strict and conservative perspective which is very difficult to adapt to support new performance measures and, therefore, do not provide any support for MAS or real-time interaction. This work presents a MAS-oriented framework built at a higher-level of abstraction over microscopic simulators enabling real-time interactions, the possibility of running the same implementation over different simulations with total code reuse and the comparison of the different results obtained.

• 17:30-18:00 Presenter: José Luis Pereira (MIEEC)
  Towards a Unified Traffic Network Editor
  Traffic modelling and simulation tools are crucial to the optimization of traffic control and management, analysis of different scenarios and the performance of the whole network accounting for different criteria. With the emergence of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) and different requirements for the Future Urban Transport (FUT), these tools are also intended to allow engineers and practitioners to deploy new IT-based infrastructures as a means to improve efficiency, safety, accessibility and other social and environmental measures. Although integrating different analysis tools is quite desirable in this scenario, typical commercial solutions do not seem to support each others' file formats, compromising flexibility and more complex studies that could benefit from different tools applied to the same model of the traffic network being analysed. This presentation introduces the netEditor, an open-source traffic network modelling tool devised on the concept of plug-ins to support the addition of import/export interfaces in a collaborative environment.

• 18:00-18:30 Presenter: António Pereira (DEI/FEUP, LIACC/UP)
  Intelligent Simulation of Coastal Ecosystems
  Coastal ecosystems concentrate a great part of the human population and activities. One challenge for the XXI century is to manage the balance between the activities and the impacts produced on coastal ecosystems. The objective of this talk is the presentation of one framework that integrates models for realistic simulations of coastal ecosystems, i.e. intelligent agents to generate “what if” scenarios for optimization and a decision support system to consider opposite interests in the management of real coastal ecosystems. The implemented tool is also intended to be easy to extend and easy to be used by users with small or no expertise in ecological processes, allowing for a more intuitive and straightforward decision-making support.

• 18:30-19:00 Presenter: Pedro Abreu (DEI/FEUP, LIACC/UP)
  Soccer vs. FSX: ­ The use of two simulators to improve soccer team¹s performance and support multi-robot missions using autonomous heterogeneous vehicles
  In several areas, researchers face themselves with a common problem: they need a simulating software that allows them to test with their work in a configurable environment and repeatedly, without the need to conduct money- and time-consuming tests in the real world. However, developing such simulating software often involves using resources that are either not available or is not desired. As such, many researchers use existing software that provides them with the solutions they need. In this presentation, two different approaches with distinct goals will be presented using as a base two previously existing simulators. For the first approach, the RoboCup 2D Simulation League simulator was used to help improving the performance of FCPortugal team. In the second scenario, Flight Simulator X was used as a visual simulating environment to help create robot missions for autonomous heterogeneous vehicles.

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