Summary

The concept of CAST as Computer Aided Systems Theory was introduced by F. Pichler in the late 1980s to encompass computer-theoretical and practical developments as tools for problem-solving in system science. It was thought of as the third of three components (the other two being CAD and CAM) that together provide a complete picture of the path from computer and systems sciences to practical developments in science and engineering. Franz Pichler, of the University of Linz, organized the first CAST workshop in April 1988, which demonstrated the acceptance of the concepts by the scientific and technical community. Next, the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria joined the University of Linz to organize the first international meeting on CAST (Las Palmas, February 1989), under the name EUROCAST 1989. This proved to be a very successful gathering of systems theorists, computer scientists and engineers from Europe, North America and Japan. It was agreed that EUROCAST international conferences would be organized every two years. Thus, successive EUROCAST meetings have taken place in Krems (1991), Las Palmas (1993), Innsbruck (1995), Las Palmas (1997), Vienna (1999), Las Palmas (2001), Las Palmas (2003) and Las Palmas (2005), in addition to an extra- European CAST Conference in Ottawa in 1994. Selected papers from those meetings were published in springer's Lecture Notes in Computer Science series, as numbers 410, 585, 763, 1030, 1333, 1798, 2178, 2809 and 3643, and in several special issues of the international journal Cybernetics and Systems.