Conference Overview

Aim and Scope

GECON 2021 builds upon the very successful tradition of the conference previous editions since 2003 (http://www.gecon-conference.org). GECON solicits contributions that are interdisciplinary, combining business and economic aspects with engineering and computer science related themes. Contributions to this conference can include extensions to existing technologies, successful deployments of technologies, economic analyses, analyses of technology adoptions, and theoretical models. We welcome papers that combine micro- and macro-economic principles with resource management strategies in computer science and engineering. Case studies, which demonstrate practical use of economic strategies, benefits and limitations, are particularly encouraged. The purpose of this event is to gather original work and build a strong multidisciplinary community in this increasingly important area of a future information and knowledge economy.

Important Dates

Deadlines for full papers and short papers (work-in-progress papers) are:

  • Deadline for Abstract Submission of Full Paper and Short Paper (Work-in-Progress Paper): May 31st, 2021 June 14th, 2021
  • Full Paper and Short Paper (Work-in-Progress Paper) Submission Deadline:  June 7th, 2021 June 21st, 2021
  • New-Idea-Papers, Poster Submission deadline: July 12th, 2021
  • Notification of Acceptance:  July 19th, 2021 July 26th, 2021
  • Camera-Ready deadline:  July 26th, 2021 August 2nd, 2021

Deadlines for special topic session proposals and tutorial proposals are:

  • Deadline for Proposal Submission: May 31st, 2021
  • Notification of Acceptance: June 7th, 2021

Deadlines for Workshop on Trustworthy Services, Information Exchange and Content Handling in the Context of Blockchain:

  • Special Session Short Paper (Type: Work-in-Progress Paper) Submission Deadline: August 2nd, 2021
  • Notification of Acceptance: August August 9th, 2021
  • Camera-Ready deadline: August August 15th, 2021

Please visit the submission page for more information on the publication and reviewing process. 

Topics of Interest

Advances in distributed systems technology have allowed for the provisioning of IT services on an unprecedented scale and with increasing flexibility. As a global market for infrastructures, platforms and software services emerge the need to understand and deal with these implications, and a multitude of new interdisciplinary challenges is quickly growing. Therefore, GECON encourages the submission of papers which combine at least one economic/legal area and one technology area.

GECON’s list of areas includes, but is not limited to:

Economics

  • Trustworthiness of services
  • Ecosystem economics
  • Incentive design, strategic behavior & game theory
  • Market mechanisms, auctions models, and bidding languages
  • Economic efficiency
  • Techno-Economic analysis and modelling
  • Pricing schemes and revenue models
  • Metering, accounting, and billing
  • Cost‐benefit analysis
  • Automated trading and bidding support tools
  • Trust, reputation, security, and risk management
  • Performance monitoring, optimization, and prediction
  • Energy efficiency
  • Sustainability
  • Business models and strategies
  • Decision support
  • Ecosystems

Law and Legal aspects

  • Standardization, interoperability, and legal aspects
  • Service level agreements (SLAs)
  • Negotiation, monitoring, and enforcement
  • Open source ecosystems
  • Privacy

Clouds, Grids, Systems and Services

  • IaaS, SaaS, PaaS, and federation of resources
  • Vertical scaling, burstable computing, vertical elasticity
  • Resource management: allocation, sharing, scheduling
  • Capacity planning
  • Virtualization and containers
  • Service science, management and engineering (SSME)
  • Software engineering
  • Security

Applications and Technologies Transforming the Economy

  • Smart grids, smart cities, and smart buildings
  • Energy-aware infrastructures and services
  • Fog, edge, osmosis computing
  • Micro‐services, serverless computing
  • Internet‐of‐Things
  • Blockchains
  • Community networks
  • Social networks
  • Social computing
  • Big data
  • Reports on industry test-beds and operational markets
  • Data stream ingestion and complex event processing
  • Open source

 

Special Sessions 

Special Topic Workshop: Trustworthy Services, Information Exchange and Content Handling in the Context of Blockchain. 

Blockchain is by nature a decentralized and trustless platform, i.e., only a minimum  level of trust is required regarding executing the transactions properly which is  achieved by means of a consensus mechanism and an economic game that  incentivizes actors to comply with the rules defined by the protocol. At the same  time, there are no guarantees on service quality or seller behavior in a service  exchange. For example, the service purchased may be of lower quality than  expected, and the trustworthiness or provenance of data employed can be  questionable. To this end, the Workshop on Trustworthy Services, Information  Exchange and Content Handling in the Context of Blockchain will address  challenges, problems, and solutions in this context. Topics of interest include, but  are not limited to, the following:

  • Blockchain e-markets
  • Trustworthy Smart Oracles
  • Smart Contracts for SLA-compliance
  • Blockchain business models
  • Decentralized auctions in the blockchain
  • Information asymmetry in the blockchain
  • Decentralized Reputation Models
  • Decentralized Recommendation Systems
  • Privacy-preserving, secure decentralized data storage and its economics
  • DIDs and anonymity
  • Tokenization paradigms
  • Token distribution strategies
  • Data Provenance
  • Chains of trust in the blockchain
  • Data access control in the blockchain
  • Gas fee determination and stabilization

Organizers
Thanasis Papaioannou, AUEB, Greece
Vlado Stankovski, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Anthony Simonet-Boulogne, iExec
Alberto Ciaramella, IntelliSemantic
Caroline Barelle, European Dynamics
Oscar Corcho, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
Antonella Del Pozzo, CEA List, France
Massimo Bartoletti, Università degli studi di Cagliari, Italy

Tutorial:  Energy Efficiency Methodologies in Cloud Computing by Karim Djemame (Leeds University)

Computer systems have faced significant power consumption  challenges over the past 20 years. The dual challenge of both power and performance has in recent years shifted from the devices and circuits level, to their current position as first-order constraints for system architects and software developers. A common theme is the need for low-power computing systems that are fully interconnected, self-aware, context-aware and self-optimising within application boundaries.

The tutorial presents a number of energy efficiency methodologies and their use in domains such as cloud computing, which makes up a large proportion of the total ICT energy consumption. Cloud  computing providers resort to a variety of techniques to improve energy consumption at each level of the cloud computing stack: application design, programming model, middleware, virtualisation, hardware. Therefore, research on energy efficiency in cloud computing has attracted considerable attention and has focused on many aspects including ICT equipment (servers, networks) as well as software solutions running on top of ICT equipment (cloud management system domain for managing the cloud infrastructure).

Special Topic Session: Law & Computer Science

As Law and Computer science develop, they pose each other new challenges. These challenges are expressed in questions  such as: Where must computer scientists stretch their abilities  to provide law with adequate solutions? What legal developments  are required to deal with new computer science achievements?

In this panel, hosted by Orna Agmon Ben-Yehuda of the CRI  institute at the University of Haifa, we will hear answers from:

  • Niva Elkin-Koren, of Tel-Aviv University Faculty of Law,  Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.
  • Supreeth Shastri, of the University of Iowa
  • Vincent Mueller, of Leeds university 

Special Topic Session: Climate Change and Computer Science

The purpose of this special session is to promote the focus of research on climate change challenges related to computer science. As the GECON community comprises multi-disciplinary skills for addressing these challenges, we are optimistic that this special session will bring highly useful ideas and results. Special session topics include but are not limited to technology, cost, benefit, and society aspects of:

  • Digital support to pandemic control policies
  • Digital support to climate change prevention
  • Fintech platforms to facilitate SME credit and supporting small businesses: big data, blockchain finance, supply chain finance
  • Analytical and simulation capabilities of models and data involved in climate research: resource allocation systems, health diffusion, population dynamics, individual behavior.
  • Ecosystem of active and reactive involvement of the citizens and other actors.
  • Collaborative tools for data, models, methods, and resources sharing to support decision making.
  • Recommender systems

 

Contact information

All questions about paper submissions should be emailed to <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>