A Generic Agent Organisation Framework For Autonomic Systems

Autonomic computing is being advocated as a tool for managing large, complex computing systems. Specifically, self-organisation provides a suitable approach for developing such autonomic systems by incorporating self-management and adaptation properties into large-scale distributed systems. To aid in this development, this paper details a generic problem-solving agent organisation framework that can act as a modelling and simulation platform for autonomic systems. Our framework describes a set of service-providing agents accomplishing tasks through social interactions in dynamically changing organisations. We particularly focus on the organisational structure as it can be used as the basis for the design, development and evaluation of generic algorithms for self-organisation and other approaches towards autonomic systems

Agent Based Modeling and Simulation: An Informatics Perspective

The term computer simulation is related to the usage of a computational model in order to improve the understanding of a system's behavior and/or to evaluate strategies for its operation, in explanatory or predictive schemes. There are cases in which practical or ethical reasons make it impossible to realize direct observations: in these cases, the possibility of realizing 'in-machina' experiments may represent the only way to study, analyze and evaluate models of those realities. Different situations and systems are characterized by the presence of autonomous entities whose local behaviors (actions and interactions) determine the evolution of the overall system; agent-based models are particularly suited to support the definition of models of such systems, but also to support the design and implementation of simulators. Agent-Based models and Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) have been adopted to simulate very different kinds of complex systems, from the simulation of socio-economic systems to the elaboration of scenarios for logistics optimization, from biological systems to urban planning. This paper discusses the specific aspects of this approach to modeling and simulation from the perspective of Informatics, describing the typical elements of an agent-based simulation model and the relevant research.Multi-Agent Systems, Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation

Trust Strategies for the Semantic Web

Everyone agrees on the importance of enabling trust on the SemanticWebto ensure more efficient agent interaction. Current research on trust seems to focus on developing computational models, semantic representations, inference techniques, etc. However, little attention has been given to the plausible trust strategies or tactics that an agent can follow when interacting with other agents on the Semantic Web. In this paper we identify five most common strategies of trust and discuss their envisaged costs and benefits. The aim is to provide some guidelines to help system developers appreciate the risks and gains involved with each trust strategy

Trust on the Web: Some Web Science Research Challenges

Web Science is the interdisciplinary study of the World Wide Web as a first-order object in order to understand its relationship with the wider societies in which it is embedded, and in order to facilitate its future engineering as a beneficial object. In this paper, research issues and challenges relating to the vital topic of trust are reviewed, showing how the Web Science agenda requires trust to be addressed, and how addressing the challenges requires a range of disciplinary skills applied in an integrated manner

Trajectories in Physical Space out of Communications in Acquaintance Space: An Agent-Based Model of a Textile Industrial District

This article presents an agent-based model of an Italian textile district where thousands of small firms specialize in particular phases of fabrics production. It is an empirical and methodological model that reconstructs the communications between firms when they arrange production chains. In their turn, production chains reflect into road traffic in the geographical areas where the district extends. The reconstructed traffic exhibits a pattern that has been observed, but not foreseen, by policy makers

Utility-Based Mechanism for Structural Self-Organization in Service-Oriented MAS

Structural relations established among agents influence the performance of decentralized service discovery process in multiagent systems. Moreover, distributed systems should be able to adapt their structural relations to changes in environmental conditions. In this article, we present a service-oriented multiagent systems, where agents initially self-organize their structural relations based on the similarity of their services. During the service discovery process, agents integrate a mechanism that facilitates the self-organization of their structural relations to adapt the structure of the system to the service demand. This mechanism facilitates the task of decentralized service discovery and improves its performance. Each agent has local knowledge about its direct neighbors and the queries received during discovery processes. With this information, an agent is able to analyze its structural relations and decide when it is more appropriate to modify its direct neighbors and select the most suitable acquaintances to replace them. The experimental evaluation shows how this self-organization mechanism improves the overall performance of the service discovery process in the system when the service demand changesThis work is partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through grants CSD2007-0022 (CONSOLIDER-INGENIO 2010), TIN2012-36586-C03-01, TIN2012-36586-C03-01, TIN2012-36586-C03-02, PROMETEOII/2013/019, and FPU grant AP-2008-00601 awarded to E. Del Val.Del Val Noguera, E.; Rebollo Pedruelo, M.; Vasirani, M.; Fernández, A. (2014). Utility-Based Mechanism for Structural Self-Organization in Service-Oriented MAS. ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems. 9(3):1-24. https://doi.org/10.1145/2651423S12493Sherief Abdallah and Victor Lesser. 2007. 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How Can Social Networks Ever Become Complex? Modelling the Emergence of Complex Networks from Local Social Exchanges

Small-world and power-law network structures have been prominently proposed as models of large networks. However, the assumptions of these models usually lack sociological grounding. We present a computational model grounded in social exchange theory. Agents search attractive exchange partners in a diverse population. Agent use simple decision heuristics, based on imperfect, local information. Computer simulations show that the topological structure of the emergent social network depends heavily upon two sets of conditions, harshness of the exchange game and learning capacities of the agents. Further analysis show that a combination of these conditions affects whether star-like, small-world or power-law structures emerge.Complex Networks, Power-Law, Scale-Free, Small-World, Agent-Based Modeling, Social Exchange Theory, Structural Emergence

'Women's agency and the fallacy of autonomy: the example of rape and sexual consent'

This edited collection explores the agency of women who do violence and have violence done to them. Topics covered include rape, pornography, prostitution, suicide bombing and domestic violence. The volume contributes to the philosophical and theoretical debate, as well as offering practical, social and political responses to the issues examined

Reorganization in Dynamic Agent Societies

En la nueva era de tecnologías de la información, los sistemas tienden a ser cada vez más dinámicos, compuestos por entidades heterogéneas capaces de entrar y salir del sistema, interaccionar entre ellas, y adaptarse a las necesidades del entorno. Los sistemas multiagente han contribuído en los ultimos años, a modelar, diseñar e implementar sistemas autónomos con capacidad de interacción y comunicación. Estos sistemas se han modelado principalmente, a través de sociedades de agentes, las cuales facilitan la interación, organización y cooperación de agentes heterogéneos para conseguir diferentes objetivos. Para que estos paradigmas puedan ser utilizados para el desarrollo de nuevas generaciones de sistemas, características como dinamicidad y capacidad de reorganización deben estar incorporadas en el modelado, gestión y ejecución de estas sociedades de agentes. Concretamente, la reorganización en sociedades de agentes ofrece un paradigma para diseñar aplicaciones abiertas, dinámicas y adaptativas. Este proceso requiere determinar las consecuencias de cambiar el sistema, no sólo en términos de los beneficios conseguidos sinó además, midiendo los costes de adaptación así como el impacto que estos cambios tienen en todos los componentes del sistema. Las propuestas actuales de reorganización, básicamente abordan este proceso como respuestas de la sociedad cuando ocurre un cambio, o bien como un mecanismo para mejorar la utilidad del sistema. Sin embargo, no se pueden definir procesos complejos de decisión que obtengan la mejor configuración de los componentes organizacionales en cada momento, basándose en una evaluación de los beneficios que se podrían obtener así como de los costes asociados al proceso. Teniendo en cuenta este objetivo, esta tesis explora el área de reorganización en sociedades de agentes y se centra principalmente, en una propuesta novedosa para reorganización. Nuestra propuesta ofrece un soporte de toma de decisiones que considera cambios en múltiplesAlberola Oltra, JM. (2013). Reorganization in Dynamic Agent Societies [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/19243Palanci