Multi-Agent Systems

A multi-agent system (MAS) is a system composed of multiple interacting intelligent agents. Multi-agent systems can be used to solve problems which are difficult or impossible for an individual agent or monolithic system to solve. Agent systems are open and extensible systems that allow for the deployment of autonomous and proactive software components. Multi-agent systems have been brought up and used in several application domains

Programming Languages and Systems

This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 29th European Symposium on Programming, ESOP 2020, which was planned to take place in Dublin, Ireland, in April 2020, as Part of the European Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, ETAPS 2020. The actual ETAPS 2020 meeting was postponed due to the Corona pandemic. The papers deal with fundamental issues in the specification, design, analysis, and implementation of programming languages and systems

ISIPTA'07: Proceedings of the Fifth International Symposium on Imprecise Probability: Theories and Applications

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General contractor’s project of projects – a meta-project: understanding the new paradigm and its implications through the lens of entropy

Why do Koskela and others argue that the underlying theory of project management (PM) is obsolete? Project management works for the manufacturing industry, and for the construction industry at both the physical production level and the subcontractor level. Stakeholders, including the owner (along with due diligence, and O&M teams), architect (and the design team), general contractor (and its subcontractor team) create, transmit, process, manage and use information. The boundary between information (creation and transmission) and physical production is where PM controls and predicts cost and schedule and where quality controls fail to work as intended. This paper argues that subcontractors give project numbers for the physical part of the project, while general contractors ’ project numbers are actually a project of projects (those of the subcontractors). The general contractor manages a meta-project (term and de fi nition, as related to building construction, coined by Fernandez-Solis). The meta-project paradigm has signi fi cant consequences and is the key to a novel understanding of the general contractor role. Lean construction ’ s percent (or promise) plan complete (PPC) gages the reliability of promises made, is a useful and viable indicator of the quality of the schedule, and serves as a surrogate measure of project fl ow – how smoothly or chaotically a project runs. The PPC is operationalized as an index that meta-project stakeholders can use to calibrate the reliability of work in progress and provide feedback on the predictability/variability of logistic plans. The methodology of this paper uses conceptual analysis, the metonymic mapping of key concepts from the thermodynamics domain to the construction domain and showcases the concepts through PPC case studies. Information entropy theories are discerned in the PPC reports. In conclusion, scienti fi c information theories, principles and characteristics of fl ow, in contrast to managerial principles, provide a clearer background for visualizing a novel understanding of the state of the project fl ow at the meta-project level. It could be argued that this paper is about de fi ning a reference discipline and construed as “ construction science viewed through the lens of entropy ” but this is not the focus of this paper but the topic of the next

Arithmetic and Modularity in Declarative Languages for Knowledge Representation

The past decade has witnessed the development of many important declarative languages for knowledge representation and reasoning such as answer set programming (ASP) languages and languages that extend first-order logic. Also, since these languages depend on background solvers, the recent advancements in the efficiency of solvers has positively affected the usability of such languages. This thesis studies extensions of knowledge representation (KR) languages with arithmetical operators and methods to combine different KR languages. With respect to arithmetic in declarative KR languages, we show that existing KR languages suffer from a huge disparity between their expressiveness and their computational power. Therefore, we develop an ideal KR language that captures the complexity class NP for arithmetical search problems and guarantees universality and efficiency for solving such problems. Moreover, we introduce a framework to language-independently combine modules from different KR languages. We study complexity and expressiveness of our framework and develop algorithms to solve modular systems. We define two semantics for modular systems based on (1) a model-theoretical view and (2) an operational view on modular systems. We prove that our two semantics coincide and also develop mechanisms to approximate answers to modular systems using the operational view. We augment our algorithm these approximation mechanisms to speed up the process of solving modular system. We further generalize our modular framework with supported model semantics that disallows self-justifying models. We show that supported model semantics generalizes our two previous model-theoretical and operational semantics. We compare and contrast the expressiveness of our framework under supported model semantics with another framework for interlinking knowledge bases, i.e., multi-context systems, and prove that supported model semantics generalizes and unifies different semantics of multi-context systems. Motivated by the wide expressiveness of supported models, we also define a new supported equilibrium semantics for multi-context systems and show that supported equilibrium semantics generalizes previous semantics for multi-context systems. Furthermore, we also define supported semantics for propositional programs and show that supported model semnatics generalizes the acclaimed stable model semantics and extends the two celebrated properties of rationality and minimality of intended models beyond the scope of logic programs

Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems

This open access two-volume set constitutes the proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems, TACAS 2021, which was held during March 27 – April 1, 2021, as part of the European Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, ETAPS 2021. The conference was planned to take place in Luxembourg and changed to an online format due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The total of 41 full papers presented in the proceedings was carefully reviewed and selected from 141 submissions. The volume also contains 7 tool papers; 6 Tool Demo papers, 9 SV-Comp Competition Papers. The papers are organized in topical sections as follows: Part I: Game Theory; SMT Verification; Probabilities; Timed Systems; Neural Networks; Analysis of Network Communication. Part II: Verification Techniques (not SMT); Case Studies; Proof Generation/Validation; Tool Papers; Tool Demo Papers; SV-Comp Tool Competition Papers