The annual international symposium on Knowledge and Systems Sciences aims to promote the exchange and interaction of knowledge across disciplines and borders to explore the new territories and new frontiers. With over 13-year continuous endeavors, attempts to strictly define the knowledge science may be still ambitious, but a very tolerant, broad-based and open-minded approach to the discipline can be taken. Knowledge science and systems science can be used for one another as methodology and tool and benefit each other. Around these disciplines, the first International Symposium on Knowledge and Systems Sciences, initiated and organized by Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, was held in September of 2000 (KSS2000), then KSS2001 (Dalian, China), KSS2002 (Shanghai, China), KSS2003 (Guangzhou, China), KSS2004 (JAIST, Japan), KSS2005 (Vienna, Austria), KSS2006 (Beijing, China), KSS2007 (JAIST, Japan), KSS2008 (Guangzhou, China), KSS2009 (Hong Kong, China), KSS2010 (Xi'an, China), KSS2011 (Hull, UK) and KSS2012 (JAIST, Japan) had been held successfully and many scientists and researchers, from different countries, contributed to all those symposia. Within 14 years, people interested in Knowledge and Systems Sciences have been growing up into a community and a specific international society has already existed for 10 years. KSS symposia exhibit the particular views toward complex problems solving even from the name.

This year, the 14th KSS symposium is still expected to provide excellent opportunities for presenting interesting new research results, facilitating interdisciplinary discussion, and leading to knowledge transfer and the synergetic generation of new ideas during October 25-27, 2013 in Ningbo, China.

The presentations and papers at KSS2013 are expected to cover but not limited to the following areas:

• Creation of agent-based social systems sciences
• Collective intelligence learning on systems thinking and knowledge management
• Complex system modeling and complexity
• Decision analysis and decision support systems
• Knowledge creation, creativity support, awareness support, etc.
• Knowledge discovery, data mining, text mining, recommendation system, etc.
• Knowledge systems engineering, knowledge management
• Meta-synthesis and advanced modeling
• Problem structuring methods and system methodologies toward wicked problems
• Service systems science
• Smart city
• Social dynamic network modeling
• Social media and societal management
• Web intelligence tools
etc.