Towards a satisfactory conversion of messages among agent-based information systems

Over the last years, there has been a change of perspective concerning the management of information systems, since they are no longer isolated and need to communicate with others. However, from a semantic point of view, real communication is difficult to achieve due to the heterogeneity of the systems. We present a proposal which, considering information systems are represented by software agents, provides a framework that favors a semantic communication among them, overcoming the heterogeneity of their agent communication languages. The main components of the framework are a suite of ontologies – conceptualizing communication acts – that will be used for generating the communication conversion, and an Event Calculus interpretation of the communications, which will be used for formalizing the notion of a satisfactory conversion. Moreover, we present a motivating example in order to complete the explanation of the whole picture.The work of Idoia Berges was supported by a grant of the Basque Government (Programa de Formación de Investigadores del Departamento de Educación, Universidades e Investigación). This work is also supported the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science TIN2010–21387-C02–01

Exploring the resource recovery potentials of municipal solid waste: a review of solid wastes composting in developing countries

Population explosion, high urbanization and improved living standards have induced rapid changes in quantities and materiacompositions of solid waste generation globally. Until recently solid waste disposal in landfills and open dump sites waconsidered more economical and it is the most widely used methods in developing countries. Hence the potentials in the othealternative methods such as the resource recovery and recycling and their integration into waste management have been scarcelassessed. However, the ever growing challenges posed by the rapidly increasing quantities and compositions of solid wastes ideveloping countries led to the searching for alternative waste disposal methods. In this regard the paper presented an assessmenof the resource potentials of municipal solid waste materials arising from cities in developing countries as a strategy fosustainable solid waste management. Using published data on solid waste composition the paper has identified that there is higpotentials of composting in the solid waste stream from cities in developing countries. In conclusion, it recommended the recoverof organic waste material and papers for composting and the recycling of plastic, metals, textiles and others to explore their resource recovery potentials. This will largely reduce the ultimate quantities of solid waste for disposal and lower the operatincosts. This strategy will achieve sustainable waste management in developing countries. It is hoped that the paper has provided useful guide for wastes management policy decisions in developing countries

Inter-organizational Interoperability through integration of Multiagent, Web Service, and Semantic Web Technologies

This paper presents a software architecture for inter-organizational multiagent systems. The architecture integrates Web service technology into multiagent systems to overcome the technical interoperability problem of current multiagent systems in the fast growing service-oriented environments. We integrate Semantic Web technology to make multiagent systems semantically interoperable. We address the problem of interoperability regarding interfaces, messaging protocols, data exchanged, and security whilst considering a dynamic e-business environment. The proposed architecture enables service virtualization, secure service access across organizational boundaries, service-to-agent communication, and OWL reasoning within agents

Implementing MAS agreement processes based on consensus networks

[EN] Consensus is a negotiation process where agents need to agree upon certain quantities of interest. The theoretical framework for solving consensus problems in dynamic networks of agents was formally introduced by Olfati-Saber and Murray, and is based on algebraic graph theory, matrix theory and control theory. Consensus problems are usually simulated using mathematical frameworks. However, implementation using multi-agent system platforms is a very difficult task due to problems such as synchronization, distributed finalization, and monitorization among others. The aim of this paper is to propose a protocol for the consensus agreement process in MAS in order to check the correctness of the algorithm and validate the protocol. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2013.This work is supported by ww and PROMETEO/2008/051 projects of the Spanish government, CONSOLIDER-INGENIO 2010 under grant CSD2007-00022, TIN2012-36586-C03-01 and PAID-06-11-2084.Palomares Chust, A.; Carrascosa Casamayor, C.; Rebollo Pedruelo, M.; Gómez, Y. (2013). Implementing MAS agreement processes based on consensus networks. Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence. 217:553-560. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00551-5_66S553560217Argente, E.: et al: An Abstract Architecture for Virtual Organizations: The THOMAS approach. Knowledge and Information Systems 29(2), 379–403 (2011)Búrdalo, L.: et al: TRAMMAS: A tracing model for multiagent systems. Eng. Appl. Artif. Intel. 24(7), 1110–1119 (2011)Fogués, R.L., et al.: Towards Dynamic Agent Interaction Support in Open Multiagent Systems. In: Proc. of the 13th CCIA, vol. 220, pp. 89–98. IOS Press (2010)Luck, M., et al.: Agent technology: Computing as interaction (a roadmap for agent based computing). Eng. Appl. Artif. Intel. (2005)Mailler, R., Lesser, V.: Solving distributed constraint optimization problems using cooperative mediation. In: AAMAS 2004, pp. 438–445 (2004)Olfati-Saber, R., Fax, J.A., Murray, R.M.: Consensus and cooperation in networked multi-agent systems. Proceedings of the IEEE 95(1), 215–233 (2007)Pujol-Gonzalez, M.: Multi-agent coordination: Dcops and beyond. In: Proc. of IJCAI, pp. 2838–2839 (2011)Such, J.: et al: Magentix2: A privacy-enhancing agent platform. Eng. Appl. Artif. Intel. 26(1), 96–109 (2013)Vinyals, M., et al.: Constructing a unifying theory of dynamic programming dcop algorithms via the generalized distributive law. Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems 22, 439–464 (2011