3rd IFAC Workshop on Cyber-Physical and Human Systems (CPHS 2020)
Shanghai, China
December 3 - 5, 2020
CPHS 2020 Invited Session Call for Paper

• Title of the Session:
DevOps for Machine Learning driven Social Systems

• List of Topics:
Machine learning (ML) has gained much attention in recent years because of its successful adoptions in many data rich domains, including social systems. However, the development of ML-driven systems in real-world settings is non-trivial and several scientific challenges are encountered in practice during development, debugging, maintenance, deployment and governance of ML systems. On one hand, the development lifecycle of data-driven and ML-driven systems differs from that of traditional software systems. Previous software engineering tools and practices may be not applicable to the development of ML-driven systems (e.g. code/model/data co-versioning and reuse, exponentially difficult debugging). On the other hand, risks of incorporation of ML in software system development have been increasingly concerned due to dataset/model quality risk and DevOps challenges in ML driven systems. New methods are needed to ensure ML development and operation is conducted in a trustworthy manner.

Although some research efforts have been made on software engineering for ML-driven social systems, there is still a need for more comprehensive DevOps theoretical approaches and tooling support for ML-driven social systems. In this special issue, we are looking for cutting edge technologies, novel studies, and promising developments, which can improve DevOps of ML-driven social systems. Topics of interests include, but are not limited to:
• Microservices Architecture for DevOps of ML-driven social systems
• Code/model/data co-versioning and reuse for ML-driven social systems
• Continuous validation for ML-driven social systems
• Continuous governance (e.g. auditing/certifying assets) in ML-driven social systems
• DevOps tooling support for ML-driven social systems
• Case studies for DevOps of ML-driven social systems
• Session Chairs:
Weishan Zhang, China University of Petroleum, zhangws@upc.edu.cn
Qinghua Lu, CSIRO, Australia, qinghua.lu@data61.csiro.au (Contact Session Chair)

• Submission:
Submissions are invited in the following categories:
• Full papers (6 pages maximum) will be peer-reviewed and, if accepted, presented at the workshop. Review, Tutorial and Vision papers are also welcome.
• Extended abstracts (2-4 pages) addressing topics of interest will be subject to the same review process as full papers and, if accepted, authors will be invited to present the work at the workshop.
The workshop program will only include papers of the highest standard as selected by the IPC, in accordance with the IFAC guidelines (https://www.ifac-control.org/publications/overview). All papers and abstracts will be accepted with the understanding that the authors will present them at the CPHS Workshop. At least one author of every accepted paper will be required to register for the workshop before uploading the final version. Accepted papers and abstracts will be presented either in oral or poster format. Accepted papers will be included in the workshop “preprints” (USB drive) and published in the online workshop proceedings. Accepted abstracts will only be included as preprints and not published in the proceedings. All papers, abstracts, and invited session proposals must be submitted through the workshop website http://www.cphs2020.org, and conform to the policy found therein.

The IFAC CPHS Young Author Prize will be awarded to the best paper by a student author, the CPHS Best Poster Prize to the best interactive presentation, the CPHS Best Paper Prize to the best research contribution, and the CPHS Best Practice Prize to the best application contribution. Please see http://www.cphs2020.org for details of the nomination procedure.


• Publication:
The CPHS 2020 proceedings will be published by Elsevier and submitted to Ei Compendex for indexing. Upon extended modifications, selected CPHS 2020 papers will be recommended for submissions to the following journals:
• Automatica (SCIE, IF 6.355)
• IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics (SCIE, IF 10.387)
• IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica (SCIE, CiteScore 5.31)
• IEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems (ESCI)

• Key Dates:
• Submission Due Date: Jun. 30, 2020
• Author Notification: Sep. 30, 2020
• Workshop: Dec. 3-5, 2020