Renovating the conference series CSEPC (Cognitive Systems Engineering in Process Control) which had started in 1996 in Kyoto, Japan and continued until 2011 by cooperating to the Joint International Conference ICI2011, Taejon, Korea, the first International Symposium on Socially and Technically Symbiotic System (STSS2012)　will be held during August 29-31, 2012 at Okayama University, Okayama, Japan. The STSS2012 is organized to provide an international forum for the researchers, engineers and industrial practitioners from all over the world who are contributing to the advancement of socially and technically symbiotic systems for sustainable development of human society. The categories of the conference are as follows:

• Category 1:
  Social factors, human factors, socio-technical systems, risk engineering, risk communication,
• Category 2:
  Human interfaces including the new concepts such as affective interfaces, semiotics, and the new methodologies in virtual reality, augmented reality, sensing, signal processing, support systems for plant operation and maintenance, skill inheritance, etc.,
• Category 3:
  Symbiotic energy systems including new energy production systems, smart grid, concepts for energy saving, etc.
• Category 4:
  Information and robot systems for rescue activities.