Proceedings of the eighteenth workshop on Parallel and distributed simulation

Welcome to the 2004 Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Simulation (PADS 2004), held this year in the little town Kufstein in the Austrian province Tyrol at its young University of Applied Sciences FHS KufsteinTirol.In 788, a monk sat hunched over a paper in St. Peter's monastery in Salzburg and carefully recorded all the properties of his abbot, arch-bishop Arno of Salzburg, Austria. It was a long list because his master was the owner of many properties, among others there was also a small place called Caofstein. However, the first step is always the hardest. After the first mentioning of Kufstein, it took several centuries during which Kufstein was an unimportant hamlet. Later, the strategically advantageous position of Kufstein was reinforced by the construction of a fortress and a bridge over the River Inn, thus leading to an upward trend in the region. As a consequence, Kufstein was awarded the status of "Markt" (small town with trading rights) and later became a town (awarded by Stefan III, Duke of Bavaria). In 1504, Kufstein became part of Tirol as Emperor Maximilian I had received it as a reward for joining the "right" side in the hereditary succession conflict in Bavaria. In 1703, Kufstein was again taken by Bavarian forces. Only after the fall of Napoleon, Kufstein was given back to Tirol. The end of the 19th century was a period of enormous economic boom for the region. Within a short time, the population multiplied and important companies were founded.On the education sector, Kufstein showed its innovativeness by establishing a kindergarten with the first kindergarten school of the Monarchy, and especially by founding a high school. The foundations for today's face of the district capital were laid. A younger contribution to the educational sector of the region is the University of Applied Sciences (FHS KufsteinTirol) founded in 1997. Today this institution offers five degree programs: International Business Studies; Facility Management; Real Estate and Facility Management; Sports, Culture and Event Management; and Business Informatics (since 2002).A premiere of PADS 2004 is the fact that in this year we offer a workshop/tutorial combination co-located in two countries: following Kufstein's tradition as a (from a historical point of view) part-time Bavarian city, preceding the main PADS 2004 workshop, tutorials are given in Bavarian's capital at the University of the Federal Armed Forces Munich, Germany. It is our pleasure to welcome the honorary member of the PADS Steering Committee and one of the driving forces of the PADS community Richard Fujimoto (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA), presenting the tutorial "State of the Art in Parallel and Distributed Simulation." Who would be more appropriate to give that tutorial? The second tutorial entitled "PADS in the Military Domain: Training, Experimentation, and Support of Operations" is presented by Andreas Tolk (Virginia Modeling, Analysis & Simulation Center, Old Dominion University, USA).We are also very happy to announce two excellent keynote speakers for the PADS 2004 workshop:.. Alois Ferscha (Johannes Keppler University Linz, Austria): "Beyond Time Warp: Space Warp".. Alexander Verbraeck (Technical University Delft, The Netherlands): "Component-Based Distributed Simulations. The Way forward?"and we look forward to hearing some exciting, challenging, and perhaps provocative talks.