“Mission-Critical Networking (MCN)” refers to networking for application domains where life or livelihood may be at risk. Typical application domains for MCN include critical infrastructure protection, emergency and crisis intervention, and military operations. Such networking is essential for safety, security and economic vitality in our complex world characterized by uncertainty, heterogeneity and emergent behaviors. MCN should comprise the best possible networking technology, infrastructure and services that may alleviate the risk and help save the lives of both the general public and the network users. As advances in pervasive computing, wireless communication, ad hoc and mesh networking and networked sensor systems continue, more opportunities are being opened to mission-critical networks to benefit from these technologies. 

A primary challenge to the operations of mission-critical networks is to deploy a communication network that is dependable, autonomic, secure, and rapidly deployable. In order to operate effectively, the deployed networks should support services such as location determination of authorized and unauthorized entities, audio and video communication, secure emergency calling and alerting, and in-situ and remote sensing and control in a secure and dependable manner. In addition, efficient operation of such networks that typically include numerous resource-constrained components may benefit from cross-layer optimization, cognition, resource engineering, visual analytics, and service-oriented architecture. Another key feature for mission-critical networking is to support interactions among multiple heterogeneous networks. 

This workshop solicits high quality technical contributions to the area of mission-critical networking. The manuscript must explicitly address relevance to MCN. Topics include, but are not limited to the following:

• Smart environments and infrastructures
• Rapidly deployable services and networks
• Vehicular networks 
• Body sensor networks
• Cognitive and autonomic networks, protocols, and services
• Ubiquitous networking and services
• Security, dependability, privacy, QoS and performance awareness and trade-offs
• Sensor and actuator networks for information gathering and real-time control
• Decentralized and peer-to-peer resource management and allocation 
• Trust management, security, interoperability, survivability and QoS support 
• Context-aware network and service management
• Location determination and tracking 
• Energy efficiency
• Admission, load and flow control
• Visual analytics
• Critical traffic and mobility analysis
• Cross-layer design and optimization
• Components and architectures for next-generation emergency calling and alerting
• Network policy management 
• Testbeds, benchmarks, performance and experimental studies

General Chairs: 
   • Mohamed Eltoweissy, Virginia Tech, USA
   • Henning Schulzerinne, Columbia University, USA

Program Chairs 
   • Hannes Tschofenig, Nokia Siemens Networks and University of Goettingen, Germany
   • Moustafa Youssef, Alexandria University, Egypt

Publicity Chairs: 
   • Silvia Girodano, University of Applied Science, Switzerland
   • Mohamed Younis, University of Maryland Baltimore County, USA

Panels Chair: 
   • Stephan Olariu, Old Dominion University, USA 

Awards Chair: 
   • Ashok Agrawala, University of Maryland, USA
   • Mohamed Gouda, University of Texas, USA

Technical Program Committee:
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• Ehab Al-Shaer, DePaul University, USA
• Nils Aschenbruck, University of Bonn, Germany 
• Cory Beard, University of Missouri Kansas City, USA
• David Du, National Science Foundation (University of Minnesota), USA
• Hossam Hassanein,  Queens University, Canada
• Wendi Heinzelman, University of Rochester, USA. 
• Sushil Jajodia., George Mason University, USA
• James Joshi, University of Pittsburgh, USA. 
• Deepa Kundur, Texas A&M University, USA
• Victor Leung, University of British Columbia, Canada
• Scott Midkiff, Virginia Tech, USA. 
• Nader Moayeri, NIST, USA
• Farid Nait-Abdesselam, Univ. of Sciences and Tech. of Lille, France 
• Cristina Pinotti, University of Perguia, Italy
• Jean-Jacque Quisquater, Catholic University, Belgium
• Pedro M. Ruiz, University of Murcia, Spain
• Krishna Sivalingam, University of Maryland Baltimore County, USA
• Robin Sommer, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA
• Doru Tiliute, University of Suceava, Romania
• Gene Tsudik, University of California Irvine, USA
• Stephen D. Wolthusen, University of London, UK 
• Naoki Wakamiya, Osaka University, Japan
• Michele Weigle, Old Dominion University, USA


Manuscript Submission:
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Submitted papers must be unpublished and must not be currently under review for any other publication. All paper submissions will be handled electronically in EDAS. Authors should prepare a Portable Document Format (PDF) version of their full paper. Papers must be no longer than 6 pages and in font size no smaller than 11 points. Please refer to the INFOCOM manuscript preparation page for details and make sure the manuscript conforms to the format/font/page requirements. Manuscripts that are not compliant with the requirements may be declined without review. 

All submitted papers will be judged based on their quality through peer reviewing, where TPC members are invited to assess the scientific contributions of papers. Proceedings will appear in IEEE Xplore and INFOCOM CD. For more information send email to info@criticalnet.org.

Important Dates:
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Abstract Submission:           February 7, 2008
Paper Submission:              February 15, 2008
Acceptance Notification:       March 10, 2008
Camera Ready Due:              March 18, 2008
Workshop Date:                 April 18, 2008