24,973 research outputs found
Obligation Norm Identification in Agent Societies
Most works on norms have investigated how norms are regulated using institutional mechanisms. Very few works have focused on how an agent may infer the norms of a society without the norm being explicitly given to the agent. This paper describes a mechanism for identifying one type of norm, an obligation norm. The Obligation Norm Inference (ONI) algorithm described in this paper makes use of an association rule mining approach to identify obligation norms. Using agent based simulation of a virtual restaurant we demonstrate how an agent can identify the tipping norm. The experiments that we have conducted demonstrate that an agent in the system is able to add, remove and modify norms dynamically. An agent can also flexibly modify the parameters of the system based on whether it is successful in identifying a norm.Norms, Social Norms, Obligations, Norm Identification, Agent-Based Simulation, Simulation of Norms, Artificial Societies, Normative Multi-Agent Systems (NorMAS)
Automating decision making to help establish norm-based regulations
Norms have been extensively proposed as coordination mechanisms for both
agent and human societies. Nevertheless, choosing the norms to regulate a
society is by no means straightforward. The reasons are twofold. First, the
norms to choose from may not be independent (i.e, they can be related to each
other). Second, different preference criteria may be applied when choosing the
norms to enact. This paper advances the state of the art by modeling a series
of decision-making problems that regulation authorities confront when choosing
the policies to establish. In order to do so, we first identify three different
norm relationships -namely, generalisation, exclusivity, and substitutability-
and we then consider norm representation power, cost, and associated moral
values as alternative preference criteria. Thereafter, we show that the
decision-making problems faced by policy makers can be encoded as linear
programs, and hence solved with the aid of state-of-the-art solvers
Policy-driven planning in coalitions - A case study
(c)IFAAMASPeer reviewedPostprin
Norm violation in online communities -- A study of Stack Overflow comments
Norms are behavioral expectations in communities. Online communities are also
expected to abide by the rules and regulations that are expressed in the code
of conduct of a system. Even though community authorities continuously prompt
their users to follow the regulations, it is observed that hate speech and
abusive language usage are on the rise. In this paper, we quantify and analyze
the patterns of violations of normative behaviour among the users of Stack
Overflow (SO) - a well-known technical question-answer site for professionals
and enthusiast programmers, while posting a comment. Even though the site has
been dedicated to technical problem solving and debugging, hate speech as well
as posting offensive comments make the community "toxic". By identifying and
minimising various patterns of norm violations in different SO communities, the
community would become less toxic and thereby the community can engage more
effectively in its goal of knowledge sharing. Moreover, through automatic
detection of such comments, the authors can be warned by the moderators, so
that it is less likely to be repeated, thereby the reputation of the site and
community can be improved. Based on the comments extracted from two different
data sources on SO, this work first presents a taxonomy of norms that are
violated. Second, it demonstrates the sanctions for certain norm violations.
Third, it proposes a recommendation system that can be used to warn users that
they are about to violate a norm. This can help achieve norm adherence in
online communities.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figures, 2 table
Using the event calculus for tracking the normative state of contracts
In this work, we have been principally concerned with the representation of contracts so that their normative state may be tracked in an automated fashion over their deployment lifetime. The normative state of a contract, at a particular time, is the aggregation of instances of normative relations that hold between contract parties at that time, plus the current values of contract variables. The effects of contract events on the normative state of a contract are specified using an XML formalisation of the Event Calculus, called ecXML. We use an example mail service agreement from the domain of web services to ground the discussion of our work. We give a characterisation of the agreement according to the normative concepts of: obligation, power and permission, and show how the ecXML representation may be used to track the state of the agreement, according to a narrative of contract events. We also give a description of a state tracking architecture, and a contract deployment tool, both of which have been implemented in the course of our work.
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
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