Using mobile systems to monitor an ambulatory patient

Medical diagnostics and vital signs monitoring demands more technological solutions to cope with new methods of treatment. Continuous monitoring and information processing tools are vital to a physician with several patients under his care. In this work, a system that relies on agents and mobile and wireless devices is presented. Its use with small scale sensors allows to collect and analyse vital data in real-time, triggering appropriate reactions in case of eminent danger. This includes real-time notifications to practitioners. In cases in which the physician is unable to divide his attention among all his patients, the system is able to drive his attention to one patient only and, when it is necessary, to another one, according to their medical state. This concept represents a breakthrough in terms of the physician’s time and task management, being possible to apply it two major scenarios: patient recovery in a hospital environment or elderly living alone in a domestic environment. In that sense, we present a brief contextualiation of the problem as well as the architecture and technologies used to implement the proposed work

Modelling water allocation in community irrigation using multi-agent system : A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Lincoln University

Insufficient water for irrigation is a common problem in New Zealand, particularly in the Canterbury region, where the use and demand have been steadily increasing over the past 20 years (PCE, 2004; The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, 2004). As a limited resource, there are restrictions around its use. While farmers who need water for irrigation can apply for consent through Environment Canterbury, the process takes a long time and is expensive. As a result, only those with large farms or those who will be able to realise greater financial benefits and higher levels of productivity tend to apply. Instead, most farmers apply to a community irrigation scheme such as Central Plain Water Limited (CPWL) who sells water to individual farmers. As a farmer must pay for each unit of water that s/he uses, s/he needs to have a good irrigation plan in place to ensure they obtain the maximum profit from their investment. In New Zealand, most farmers use computer programmes to estimate their irrigation requirements. The two most common programmes in New Zealand are IrriCalc and OVERSEER. However, both have some limitations: they can only be used to calculate the water needs of an individual farm and neither can prioritise crop water needs during periods of water scarcity. To deal with this problem, we designed an agent-based irrigation management system that can be used to optimise water allocation around the farm which is particularly useful during periods of water scarcity by taking into account the crop types and prioritising them based on the crop utility value. As it calculates the water savings based on each crop’s growth stage and prioritises it in terms of its potential sales price, this agent-based system provides a way to increase farmers’ profitability and to enables them to thrive during periods of water scarcity. During the water reduction exercise, most farms suffer from water shortages. However, there are farmers (who may have overestimated their water needs) who will have excess water. Recognising this situation, we developed a multi-agent system to improve water allocation within a community of water users (where each individual agent represents a farm) and investigated the efficiency of water distribution mechanisms among farms. Farmers can use the proposed multi-agent water management system to negotiate with each other to buy and sell water among themselves. One of the most well-known and simplest methods to achieve this is by using an auction. The choice of an auction was deliberate as it allows agents to buy water at a price, they are comfortable with. An agent must consider how much they are willing to pay for a specific volume of water to ensure their farm remains profitable. This study considered three-auction types and compared the results of each auction in terms of fair water distribution, profit for the sellers and reductions in losses for bidders. We found that the pay-per-bid auctions (discriminatory and uniform) are the best strategies for water distribution that balance between water distribution and gaining profit in water community. In addition, we also investigated how varying behaviours of sellers and buyer affect the outcome of the auction

Flexible Communication of Agents based on FIPA-ACL

Communication in multi-agent systems is an important subject of the current research. In this paper, the syntax and semantics of a multi-agent programming language, called ECCS, are defined. We focus specially on the communication of agents. The main contribution of this paper is a new and flexible way of communication of agents. We finally work out a well known protocol as an example. Keywords: Multi-agent systems, agent communication languages, FIPA-ACL

Flexible Communication of Agents based on FIPA-ACL Abstract

Communication in multi-agent systems is an important subject of the current research. In this paper, the syntax and semantics of a multi-agent programming language, called ECCS, are defined. We focus specially on the communication of agents. The main contribution of this paper is a new and flexible way of communication of agents. We finally work out a well known protocol as an example. Key words: Multi-agent systems, agent communication languages, FIPA-ACL.