The 15th International Conference on Quantitative Evaluation of
SysTems will be held in
Beijing, China, on September 4 – 7, 2018.
http://www.qest.org/qest2018/ (Home page)
https://goo.gl/a3ib1U (Poster, printable)

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Conference Highlights

Special Issue:
Extended versions of the best papers will be considered for possible
fast-track publication in the ACM Transactions on Modeling and
Performance Evaluation of Computing Systems (TOMPECS,
https://tompecs.acm.org).

General Chair
– Huimin Lin, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

Program Co-chairs
– Andras Horvath, University of Turin, Italy
– Annabelle McIver, Macquarie University, Australia

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QEST 2018 as part of CONFESTA (http://confesta2018.csp. escience.cn/dct/page/1)

is co-located with
CONCUR (Int. Conf. on Concurrency Theory),
FORMATS (Int. Conf. on Formal Modeling and Analysis of Timed Systems) and
SETTA (Symposium on Dependable Software Engineering).

Scope and Topics

The International Conference on Quantitative Evaluation of SysTems
(QEST) is the leading forum on quantitative evaluation and
verification of computer systems and networks. Areas of interest
include quantitative specification methods, stochastic and
non-deterministic models and metrics for performance, reliability,
safety, correctness, and security. QEST is interested in both
theoretical and experimental research. QEST welcomes a diversity of
modelling formalisms, programming languages and methodologies that
incorporate quantitative aspects such as probabilities, temporal
properties and other forms of non-determinism.  Papers may advance
empirical, simulation and analytic methods. Of particular interest are
case studies that highlight the role of quantitative specification,
modelling and evaluation in the design of systems. Systems of interest
include computer hardware and software architectures, communication
systems, cyber-physical systems, infrastructural systems, and
biological systems. Papers that describe novel tools to support the
practical application of research results in all of the above areas
are also welcome.

Special Sessions

To encourage submissions of papers in frontier topics, submissions in
selected areas are encouraged. Paper submitted to special sessions
will be treated as regular submitted papers, they will be peer
reviewed, and subject to the same quality requirements. A special
session with accepted papers on the selected topics will be organised
during the conference. This year selected topics are:

== Quantitative aspects of system security
Security of computer systems relies critically on the control of
confidential information. In recent years there has been great
interest in measuring various aspects of system behaviour that
can impact untoward release of secret information. There is a
general recognition that it is not possible to avoid all information
leaks and therefore it has become important to determine whether
a particular leak constitutes a serious breach.

We solicit papers on the topic of measurement of quantitative
aspects of system security. We are interested in new theoretical
perspectives on this problem as well as practicalities of
implementation and case studies show casing new techniques.

== Industrial strength techniques
We call for contributions on quantitative techniques focussing on
industrial applications. We are particularly interested in
techniques that have the potential to scale up or address
important safety, security, performance or reliability aspects of
industrial strength systems. We are interested both in new
techniques and experience reports of applying quantitative
analysis in an industrial setting.

Special Issue

Extended versions of the best papers will be considered for possible
fast-track publication in the ACM Transactions on Modeling and
Performance Evaluation of Computing Systems (TOMPECS,
https://tompecs.acm.org).

Important Dates

Abstract submission:  18 March 2018
Paper and tool submission:  25 March 2018
Author notification:  30 May 2018
Final version due: 22 June 2018
Conference: 4-7 September 2018

Submissions

All accepted papers (including tool demonstrations) must be presented
at the conference by one of the authors. The QEST 2018
proceedings will be published in the Springer LNCS series and indexed
by ISI Web of Science, Scopus, ACM Digital Library, dblp,
Google Scholar. All submitted papers will be evaluated by at least
three reviewers on the basis of their originality, technical quality,
scientific or practical contribution to the state of the art,
methodology, clarity, and adequacy of references.  QEST considers five
types of papers:

Theoretical: advance our understanding, apply to non-trivial
problems and be mathematically rigorous.

Methodological and technical: describe situations that
require the development and proposal of new analysis
processes and techniques.

Application: describes a novel application, and compares with
previous results.

Tools: should motivate the development of the new tools and
the formalisms they support, with a focus on the software
architecture and practical capabilities.

Tool demonstration: describe a relevant tool, as well as its
features, evaluation, or any other information that may
demonstrate the merits of the tool.

Submissions must be prepared in LaTeX, following Springer’s LNCS
guidelines. Submitted papers should not exceed 16 pages (4 pages for
tool demonstrations). Papers must be unpublished and not be submitted
for publication elsewhere. Authors of tool papers (both regular and
demonstration) must make their tools and input data available to
reviewers; reproducibility of results will be taken into account
during the evaluation process, and the conference will include a demo
session. Authors should present use cases, distinctive features, and
computational/memory requirements through motivating examples.
Theoretical background need not be presented in tool demonstration
papers; substantial improvements are required for existing tools.

Papers should be submitted electronically using the EasyChair online
submission system.

All accepted papers (including tool demonstrations) must be presented
at the conference by one of the authors.