An agent-based architecture for multifaceted online dispute resolution tools

Abstract

The Twenty-fourth International Conference on Industrial, Engineering and Other Applications of Applied Intelligent Systems (IEA/AIE 2011), 2011Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) tools are being seen as a way to settle disputes out of courts, namely under virtual environments. However, the acceptance of these alternative methods is still relatively restricted, once existing tools are relatively undemanding and domain-centered. Indeed, there is the need for conceptual tools whose parts may be arranged for particular use, i.e., to operate in different domains. Following this line of attack, in this paper it will be presented a new agent-based approach to ODR. It comes in an abstract and formal form, in order to be independent of the legal domains, but specific enough to be applied to concrete ones. The main advantage is that functionality reuse is maximized, making architectures simpler to implement and to expandThe work described in this paper was developed under the TIARAC - Telematics and Artificial Intelligence in Alternative Conflict Resolution Project (PTDC/JUR/71354/2006), a research project supported by FCT (Science & Technology Foundation), Portugal