Modeling human and organizational behavior using a relation-centric multi-agent system design paradigm

Today's modeling and simulation communities are being challenged to create rich, detailed models incorporating human decision-making and organizational behavior. Recent advances in distributed artificial intelligence and complex systems theory have demonstrated that such ill-defined problems can be effectively modeled with agent-based simulation techniques using multiple, autonomoous, adaptive entities. RELATE, a relation-centric design paradigm for multi-agent systems (MAS), is presented to assist developers incorporate MAS solutions into their simulations. RELATe focuses the designer on six key concepts of MAS simulations: relationships, environment, laws, agents, things, and effectors. A library of Java classes is presented which enables the user to rapidly prototype an agent-based simulation. This library utilizes the Java programming language to support cross-platform and web based designs. All Java classes and interfaces are fully documented using HTML Javadoc format. Two reference cases are provided that allow for easy code reuse and modification. Finally, an existing metworked DIS-Java-VRML simulation was modified to demonstrate the ability to utilize the RELATE library to add agents to existing applications. LCDR Kim Roddy focused on the development and refinement of the RELATE design paradigm, while LT Mike Dickson focused on the actual Java implementation. Joint work was conducted on all research and reference caseshttp://www.archive.org/details/modelinghumanorg00roddU.S. Navy (U.S.N.) author

A Review of Platforms for the Development of Agent Systems

Agent-based computing is an active field of research with the goal of building autonomous software of hardware entities. This task is often facilitated by the use of dedicated, specialized frameworks. For almost thirty years, many such agent platforms have been developed. Meanwhile, some of them have been abandoned, others continue their development and new platforms are released. This paper presents a up-to-date review of the existing agent platforms and also a historical perspective of this domain. It aims to serve as a reference point for people interested in developing agent systems. This work details the main characteristics of the included agent platforms, together with links to specific projects where they have been used. It distinguishes between the active platforms and those no longer under development or with unclear status. It also classifies the agent platforms as general purpose ones, free or commercial, and specialized ones, which can be used for particular types of applications.Comment: 40 pages, 2 figures, 9 tables, 83 reference

Dairy development in the Philippines : Visions for the future: uniformity and/or diversity, community and/or commodity

Although milk has been produced and processed in the Philippines for a long time, the country does not have a strong dairy tradition. Climate and ecology are not very favourable for high yields. Moreover, policies have been erratic and the country has not used the momentum towards dairy development like some of its neighbours. This report reviews the current state of the dairy sector, with a view to developing visions for the future. Dairy sector fragmentation is partly due to the fact that the country is an archipelago with different ecological and demographic conditions - good markets and favourable ecology often do not come together. The report analyses selected aspects of production systems, value chains, and management, particularly focusing on roles of public and private sector. The country should a) consider its variation as strength and not as weakness and b) focus (use of its public) resources for development of a dairy sector that mainly produces local milk for local markets, rather than trying to become self-sufficient in milk products that can be imported much more cheaply. The country has much to gain from taking development of its dairy sector seriously. Government should become a facilitator, rather than being directly in charge of services like cattle imports, insemination services, and research & education