Special Session Organiser: Prof. George Roussos, Birkbeck College, UK

Intelligent environments are invading every aspect of the modern city creating the Metapolis of the information era. In this new situation our place of work, entertainment, family and personal life may be occupy the same location but be delimited by different information spaces and their digital ecologies. Such changes fundamentally transform our concepts of community and of our identities within them: traditional urban organization ideas such as zoning have no longer meaning; and concepts of community take an altogether digital significance for example neighborhoods become environments of direct individual relations across nations and geographic barriers. Indeed, in the Metapolis complete urban environments that until recently remained distinct in their function, for example dwelling, leisure, commerce and education, are now collocated within the same space, differentiated only by the activities of their inhabitants at any one time.

This special session aims to bring together researchers from distinct backgrounds with an interest to explore the new phenomena and social structures that emerge by the rise of the Metapolis. We ask how it affects architectural design, how it affects communities and our sense of identity. What are new forms of social interaction that emerge and in what new ways we re-invent ourselves as citizens of the Metapolis. We invite those who create technologies to transform the urban experience, those who design its new spaces as well as those who explore the unexpected implications of this fusion to contribute to this discussion with their experiences.

Keeping with the themes of the conference, of particular interest in this session are contributions that:

• Explore critical findings, issues and other factors that affect the adoption of Intelligent Environments in the real world
• Invite to new disciplines to forge collaborations, create constituencies and exchange ideas in the context of focus research initiatives
• Identify theoretical barriers and technology limitations
• Explore how the contribution of different disciplines can create new research directions in IE research
• Identify best cases and design patterns
• Identify implications for particular communities, especially those excluded by the technologies of the Metapolis
• Showcase the state of the art in urban Intelligent Environments research

Instructions for Manuscripts

Authors are requested to submit a PDF file for their manuscript The paper should not be more than 10 pages long and has to follow strictly the Institution of Engineering and Technology's guidelines which are available at http://www.theiet.org/Events/ConfExh/layout.pdf

All manuscripts should be Emailed to the special session organizer at the following email : g.roussos@dcs.bbk.ac.uk. All manuscripts should be received by the workshop deadline for paper submission which is the 4th April 2006.

For more information please contact:
Prof. George Roussos - g.roussos@dcs.bbk.ac.uk, Birkbeck College, UK

Programme chair:
Irene Lopez de Vallejo, UCL