An embodied conversational agent for intelligent web interaction on pandemic crisis communication

In times of crisis, an effective communication mechanism is paramount in providing accurate and timely information to the community. In this paper we study the use of an intelligent embodied conversational agent (EGA) as the front end interface with the public for a Crisis Communication Network Portal (CCNet). The proposed system, CCNet, is an integration of the intelligent conversation agent, AINI, and an Automated Knowledge Extraction Agent (AKEA). AKEA retrieves first hand information from relevant sources such as government departments and news channels. In this paper, we compare the interaction of AINI against two popular search engines, two question answering systems and two conversational systems

Applying tropos to socio-technical system design and runtime configuration

Recent trends in Software Engineering have introduced the importance of reconsidering the traditional idea of software design as a socio-tecnical problem, where human agents are integral part of the system along with hardware and software components. Design and runtime support for Socio-Technical Systems (STSs) requires appropriate modeling techniques and non-traditional infrastructures. Agent-oriented software methodologies are natural solutions to the development of STSs, both humans and technical components are conceptualized and analyzed as part of the same system. In this paper, we illustrate a number of Tropos features that we believe fundamental to support the development and runtime reconfiguration of STSs. Particularly, we focus on two critical design issues: risk analysis and location variability. We show how they are integrated and used into a planning-based approach to support the designer in evaluating and choosing the best design alternative. Finally, we present a generic framework to develop self-reconfigurable STSs

SEMA4A: An ontology for emergency notification systems accessibility

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Expert Systems with Applications. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2009 Elsevier B.V.Providing alert communication in emergency situations is vital to reduce the number of victims. Reaching this goal is challenging due to users’ diversity: people with disabilities, elderly and children, and other vulnerable groups. Notifications are critical when an emergency scenario is going to happen (e.g. a typhoon approaching) so the ability to transmit notifications to different kind of users is a crucial feature for such systems. In this work an ontology was developed by investigating different sources: accessibility guidelines, emergency response systems, communication devices and technologies, taking into account the different abilities of people to react to different alarms (e.g. mobile phone vibration as an alarm for deafblind people). We think that the proposed ontology addresses the information needs for sharing and integrating emergency notification messages over distinct emergency response information systems providing accessibility under different conditions and for different kind of users.Ministerio de Educación y Cienci

An information assistant system for the prevention of tunnel vision in crisis management

In the crisis management environment, tunnel vision is a set of bias in decision makers’ cognitive process which often leads to incorrect understanding of the real crisis situation, biased perception of information, and improper decisions. The tunnel vision phenomenon is a consequence of both the challenges in the task and the natural limitation in a human being’s cognitive process. An information assistant system is proposed with the purpose of preventing tunnel vision. The system serves as a platform for monitoring the on-going crisis event. All information goes through the system before arrives at the user. The system enhances the data quality, reduces the data quantity and presents the crisis information in a manner that prevents or repairs the user’s cognitive overload. While working with such a system, the users (crisis managers) are expected to be more likely to stay aware of the actual situation, stay open minded to possibilities, and make proper decisions

Anytime Cognition: An information agent for emergency response

Planning under pressure in time-constrained environments while relying on uncertain information is a challenging task. This is particularly true for planning the response during an ongoing disaster in a urban area, be that a natural one, or a deliberate attack on the civilian population. As the various activities pertaining to the emergency response need to be coordinated in response to multiple reports from the disaster site, a user finds itself cognitively overloaded. To address this issue, we designed the Anytime Cognition (ANTICO) concept to assist human users working in time-constrained environments by maintaining a manageable level of cognitive workload over time. Based on the ANTICO concept, we develop an agent framework for proactively managing a user’s changing information requirements by integrating information management techniques with probabilistic plan recognition. In this paper, we describe a prototype emergency response application in the context of a subset of the attacks devised by the American Department of Homeland Security

Designinig Coordination among Human and Software Agents

The goal of this paper is to propose a new methodology for designing coordination between human angents and software agents and, ultimately, among software agents. The methodology is based on two key ideas. The first is that coordination should be designed in steps, according to a precise software engineering methodology, and starting from the specification of early requirements. The second is that coordination should be modeled as dependency between actors. Two actors may depend on one another because they want to achieve goals, acquire resources or execute a plan. The methodology used is based on Tropos, an agent oriented software engineering methodology presented in earlier papers. The methodology is presented with the help of a case study