An agent-based service oriented architecture for risk mining

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.Risk Mining (RM) is the process of analyzing data including risk information by data mining methods, with the mining results for risk prevention. In the last few years, some researchers have proposed the combination of data mining and agent technology (agent mining) to improve the performance of data mining methodology in the heterogeneous business environments. However, problems exist for further research with the application of risk mining systems in real industry environments to enhance the robustness of system architect, dynamic business process and model accuracy etc. Therefore, in this thesis we present an Agent-based Service-oriented Risk Mining Architecture (ABSORM), which has been designed to facilitate the development of agent mining systems to address the above issues. This thesis focuses on developing the following strategies: • The integration of agent technology with web service. In this framework, we propose a new and easier method, by which the system functions are not integrated into the structure of the agents, rather modeled as distributed services and applications which are invoked by the agents acting as controllers and coordinators. Therefore, techniques developed in this framework can improve the interoperability between different modules, distribution of resources, and the lack of dependency of programming languages. • The integration of agent technology with business process management. In this work, we develop the autonomous agents that can collaborate in a business flow, which not only increases the reusability of the system, but also eases the system development in terms of re-usability of the computational resources. A group of agents solves problems in the following way: each individual agent solves the problem individually, and then interacts with each other to finalize a business process. • The integration of agent technology with ensemble learning methods. In this thesis, we are interested in developing agent-based ensemble learning strategies for risk mining: each ensemble agent individually gathers the evidence about model evaluation, and then ensembles learning methods like bagging and boosting is used to obtain prediction from the individually gathered evidence. Agent based ensemble learning can provide a critical boost to risk mining where predictive accuracy is more vital than model interpretability. The proposed architecture has been evaluated for building an online banking fraud detection system and a student risk management system. These two applications have been proved to be a sophisticated, yet user friendly, risk analysis and management tool. They are modular, interactive, dynamic and globally oriented

Integration of Distributed Expert Systems: An Open System Approach.

The integrated use of expert systems distributed on a network is a topic of practical importance. Through the proper integration methods, powerful expert systems could emerge. Several approaches exist for distributed problem solving, but most of them assume that the individual agents possess sufficient knowledge and skills to communicate and negotiate results and plans. In practice, however, what is needed is a simple, easy-to-implement, approach that allows the integrated use of a distributed (probably existing) set of expert systems or agents. In this thesis the OSDES approach (which stands for Open System of Distributed Expert Systems) is presented. It entails the open systems perspective (originated from Hewitt), as well as the centralized version of multiagent planning. This approach sets a minimum requirement which specifies the types of interfaces that OSDES can handle. Almost any expert system can interface with OSDES through input and output redirection at the user interface level. The heart of the integrated system is the Experts Directory Assistance (EDA) which is a service that all the agents in the system can utilize. The EDA keeps all the information about all the expert systems currently contributing to the system. Whenever an agent is added or removed, the EDA is notified to update its database. Another major part in the integrated system is the communicator, which acts as the mediator between the individual agents, as well as between the agents and the EDA. Each agent in the system has a communicator associated with it. The communicator also provides a user interface, and a simple scheduler to plan the execution sequence of the remote agents. The communicator incorporates a Generic User Interface (GUI), a Generic Agent Interface (GAD), a Distributed System Interface module (DSI), and a Kernel (or planner) module. The OSDES approach was implemented on the IBM-PC/AT running MS-DOS 3.3. The communicator and the EDA were written using Microsoft ‘C’ compiler version 5.1, and 1st-Class (an expert systems building tool) was used to develop the sample expert systems. To implement the communication protocols, a Remote Procedure Call (RPC) development tool (Netwise RPC) was used. The underlying network is an Ethernet based Novell 386 Local Area Network (LAN), but given the proper RPC compiler and libraries, any other LAN can be used. Further improvement includes developing new agent interfaces using memory mailboxes or interactive remote input and output. It also includes eliminating the current DOS limitations by adapting OSDES in a multi-threaded environment such as UNIX or OS/2. environment

A MAS-based infrastructure for negotiation and its application to a water-right market

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10796-013-9443-8This paper presents a MAS-based infrastructure for the specification of a negotiation framework that handles multiple negotiation protocols in a coherent and flexible way. Although it may be used to implement one single type of agreement mechanism, it has been designed in such a way that multiple mechanisms may be available at any given time, to be activated and tailored on demand (on-line) by participating agents. The framework is also generic enough so that new protocols may be easily added. This infrastructure has been successfully used in a case study to implement a simulation tool as a component of a larger framework based on an electronic market of water rights.This paper was partially funded by the Consolider AT project CSD2007-0022 INGENIO 2010 of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation; the MICINN projects TIN2011-27652-C03-01 and TIN2009-13839-C03-01; and the Valencian Prometeo project 2008/051.Alfonso Espinosa, B.; Botti Navarro, VJ.; Garrido Tejero, A.; Giret Boggino, AS. (2014). A MAS-based infrastructure for negotiation and its application to a water-right market. Information Systems Frontiers. 16(2):183-199. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-013-9443-8S183199162Alberola, J.M., Such, J.M., Espinosa, A., Botti, V., García-Fornes, A. (2008). Magentix: a multiagent platform integrated in linux. In EUMAS (pp. 1–10).Alfonso, B., Vivancos, E., Botti, V., García-Fornes, A. (2011). Integrating jason in a multi-agent platform with support for interaction protocols. 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(1987). A foundation for the study of group decision support systems. Knowledge based systems, 33(5), 589–609.Eckersley, P. (2003). Virtual markets for virtual goods. Available at http://www.ipria.com/publications/wp/2003/IPRIAWP02.2003.pdf (Accessed April 2012).Fjermestad, J., & Hiltz, S. (2001). Group support systems: a descriptive evaluation of case and field studies. Journal of Management Information Systems, 17(3), 115–161.Fogués, R.L., Alberola, J.M., Such, J.M., Espinosa, A., García-Fornes, A. (2010). Towards dynamic agent interaction support in open multiagent systems. In Proceedings of the 13th international conference of the catalan association for artificial intelligence (Vol. 220, pp. 89–98). IOS Press.Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents. (2001). FIPA interaction protocol library specification XC00025E. FIPA Consortium.Garrido, A., Arangu, M., Onaindia, E. (2009). A constraint programming formulation for planning: from plan scheduling to plan generatio. Journal of Scheduling, 12(3), 227–256.Giret, A., Garrido, A., Gimeno, J.A., Botti, V., Noriega, P. (2011). A MAS decision support tool for water-right markets. In Proceedings of the tenth international conference on autonomous agents and multiagent systems (Demonstrations@AAMAS) (pp. 1305–1306).Gomez-Limon, J., & Martinez, Y. (2006). Multi-criteria modelling of irrigation water market at basin level: a Spanish case study. European Journal of Operational Research, 173, 313–336.Janjua, N.K., Hussain, F.K., Hussain, O.K. (2013). Semantic information and knowledge integration through argumentative reasoning to support intelligent decision making. Information Systems Frontiers, 15(2), 167–192.jen Hsu, J.Y., Lin, K.-J., Chang, T.-H., ju Ho, C., Huang, H.-S., rong Jih, W. (2006). Parameter learning of personalized trust models in broker-based distributed trust management. Information Systems Frontiers, 8(4), 321–333.Kersten, G., & Lai, H. (2007). 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Distributed service orchestration : eventually consistent cloud operation and integration

Both researchers and industry players are facing the same obstacles when entering the big data field. Deploying and testing distributed data technologies requires a big up-front investment of both time and knowledge. Existing cloud automation solutions are not well suited for managing complex distributed data solutions. This paper proposes a distributed service orchestration architecture to better handle the complex orchestration logic needed in these cases. A novel service-engine based approach is proposed to cope with the versatility of the individual components. A hybrid integration approach bridges the gap between cloud modeling languages, automation artifacts, image-based schedulers and PaaS solutions. This approach is integrated in the distributed data experimentation platform Tengu, making it more flexible and robust

Distributed machining control and monitoring using smart sensors/actuators

The study of smart sensors and actuators led, during the past few years, to the development of facilities which improve traditional sensors and actuators in a necessary way to automate production systems. In an other context, many studies are carried out aiming at defining a decisional structure for production activity control and the increasing need of reactivity leads to the autonomization of decisional levels close to the operational system. We suggest in this paper to study the natural convergence between these two approaches and we propose an integration architecture dealing with machine tool and machining control that enables the exploitation of distributed smart sensors and actuators in the decisional system

Integrated engineering environments for large complex products

An introduction is given to the Engineering Design Centre at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, along with a brief explanation of the main focus towards large made-to-order products. Three key areas of research at the Centre, which have evolved as a result of collaboration with industrial partners from various sectors of industry, are identified as (1) decision support and optimisation, (2) design for lifecycle, and (3) design integration and co-ordination. A summary of the unique features of large made-to-order products is then presented, which includes the need for integration and co-ordination technologies. Thus, an overview of the existing integration and co-ordination technologies is presented followed by a brief explanation of research in these areas at the Engineering Design Centre. A more detailed description is then presented regarding the co-ordination aspect of research being conducted at the Engineering Design Centre, in collaboration with the CAD Centre at the University of Strathclyde. Concurrent Engineering is acknowledged as a strategy for improving the design process, however design coordination is viewed as a principal requirement for its successful implementation. That is, design co-ordination is proposed as being the key to a mechanism that is able to maximise and realise any potential opportunity of concurrency. Thus, an agentoriented approach to co-ordination is presented, which incorporates various types of agents responsible for managing their respective activities. The co-ordinated approach, which is implemented within the Design Co-ordination System, includes features such as resource management and monitoring, dynamic scheduling, activity direction, task enactment, and information management. An application of the Design Co-ordination System, in conjunction with a robust concept exploration tool, shows that the computational design analysis involved in evaluating many design concepts can be performed more efficiently through a co-ordinated approach