El Workshop on Engineering Applications 2016: Avanzando hacia el Reconocimiento Internacional

Workshop on Engineering Applications 2016: A step closer towards international recognition

WEA 2017 has had an important boost since its proceedings have been swit-ched to Springer Communications in Computer and Information Sciences (CCIS) which is one of the most recognized publishers in engineering. The quality of the accepted papers has been increased since only 37 % of the reviewed papers have been accepted for publication in our proceedings, similar other high quality conference in the world.

This positive change has an important impact in the Colombian conferences standards since WEA 2016 has become the first 100 % Colombian academic event that signed to Springer as its proceedings publisher. For future versions, the Program Committee (PC) has the expectation to become a recognized international conference, and they are working hard to achieve this goal.

There are different aspects we need to improve, and we know it's a gradual and progressive process. We are working on strengthening relationships with our friends from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Corporació Uni-ficada Nacional (CUN), Universidad Tecnológica de Bolívar, IEEE UD and UN Student Branches, IISE 985 Student Chapter among others in order to form to community dedicated to spread of knowledge.

WEA 2016 has kept the window open to different engineering and science topics including statistics, geosciences, operations research, discre te event si-mulation, system dynamics, muti-agent modeling, uncertainty analysis, DSP, computational intelligence, IoT, machine learning, soft computing, etc., orga-nized in thirteen sessions, two tutorials, a panel discussion, and six international plenary speakers.

This special section of the Revista Ingeniería of the Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas is the result of a selection performed by our PC members of the best papers, based on their quality, technical contents, and its presentation during the oral sessions. On behalf of WEA 2016 PC mem-bers, we thank all authors, volunteers, teachers, reviewers, and the staff of the Engineering Faculties of the Universidad Distrital, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and Corporación Unificada Nacional (CUN)... Keep an eye upon us, WEA 2017 is coming!

Juan Carlos Figueroa García, PhD.

Eduyn Ramiro López Santana PhD.

Roberto Ferro Escobar PhD.

Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas.