Managing Ubiquitous Communications and Services 2012

Ubiquitous Communications and Services, being part of pervasive computing and smart space applications, present a set of important management challenges for the successful delivery of highly adaptive services across heterogeneous networks, mobile networks, ad-hoc networks, middleware, applications, and devices. Such challenges include: managing user-centric services and context services, extreme distribution and scalability, extensive system and network and semantic heterogeneity, ad-hoc formation and disassociation of systems and services, and intelligent support for user centric applications. Today's management systems need to keep pace with the complexity, heterogeneity, and automation required by the pervasive computing vision. The MUCS workshop builds up synergies between the domains of Ubiquitous Computing and Communications Management, providing a forum for researchers and practitioners to explore the theoretical, technological, and organisational challenges, and to present advances in management techniques and technologies, for pervasive computing and smart space applications. The workshop in 2012 provided a single-track scientific program containing a blend of a keynote presentation, peer-reviewed papers, and workshop interaction. The key topics presented in the workshop covered the areas of managing ubiquitous services and policies, managing smart environments, and managing Wireless Sensors. The position papers cover multimodal service frameworks, measuring security, collaboration in smart spaces, and cloud deployment. These topics provide both a unique insight into the current state of the art in management in ubiquitous communications and services and suggest avenues for future research in this area. The keynote for MUCS 2012 was given by Prof. Sajal Das, University of Texas at Arlington, U.S.A. on a perfectly well fitting topic termed "Pervasive Computing vs. Cyber-Physical Systems: A Perspective from Smart Environments", which discusses the challenges in providing desired information quality, assurance, and reliability for intelligent decision making in critical applications of smart environments, like smart health care and pervasive security. The 9th International Workshop on Managing Ubiquitous Communications and Services (MUCS 2012) was held in Lugano, Switzerland, March 19, 2012, as an integrated part of the 10th Annual IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (PerCom 2012).