Engineering Multi-Agent Systems: State of Affairs and the Road Ahead

The continuous integration of software-intensive systems together with the ever-increasing computing power offer a breeding ground for intelligent agents and multi-agent systems (MAS) more than ever before. Over the past two decades, a wide variety of languages, models, techniques and methodologies have been proposed to engineer agents and MAS. Despite this substantial body of knowledge and expertise, the systematic engineering of large-scale and open MAS still poses many challenges. Researchers and engineers still face fundamental questions regarding theories, architectures, languages, processes, and platforms for designing, implementing, running, maintaining, and evolving MAS. This paper reports on the results of the 6th International Workshop on Engineering Multi-Agent Systems (EMAS 2018, 14th-15th of July, 2018, Stockholm, Sweden), where participants discussed the issues above focusing on the state of affairs and the road ahead for researchers and engineers in this area

Design and implementation of a visualization module for agent-based social simulations applied to radicalism spread

Agent-based Social Simulation tools have been developed as one of the applications of agent technology. It constitutes the intersection of three scienti_c _elds, namely, agentbased computing, the social sciences, and computer simulation. Due to its increasingly use in social context, in this thesis, a web interface for its visualization is presented. The aim of this project is to develop a web application which allows the user to visualize and analyze the results of a simulation. It allows the user to analyze data in real time and launch new simulations which can be con_gured from the web. For this purpose, a model which tries to simulate the growth of radicalism in a society is developed. The model aims at improving the understanding of the inuence of social links on radicalism spread. The model consists of two main entities, a spread model and a network model. The network model updates the agent relationships based on proximity and homophily, it simulates information di_usion and updates the agents' beliefs. The model has been implemented in Python with the agent-based social simulator Soil and it has been evaluated using a sensitivity analysis while the application uses D3.js, which is a powerful JavaScript library, for rendering the results of the simulation and analyze them. This thesis is divided in three phases: the design and implementation of the visualization module, the analysis and research necessary to acquire the knowledge for modeling radicalism di_usion and the implementation of the model as well as making the application auto-con_gurable to simulate the model from it

Design and implementation of a visualization module for agent-based social simulations applied to radicalism spread

Agent-based Social Simulation tools have been developed as one of the applications of agent technology. It constitutes the intersection of three scienti_c _elds, namely, agentbased computing, the social sciences, and computer simulation. Due to its increasingly use in social context, in this thesis, a web interface for its visualization is presented. The aim of this project is to develop a web application which allows the user to visualize and analyze the results of a simulation. It allows the user to analyze data in real time and launch new simulations which can be con_gured from the web. For this purpose, a model which tries to simulate the growth of radicalism in a society is developed. The model aims at improving the understanding of the inuence of social links on radicalism spread. The model consists of two main entities, a spread model and a network model. The network model updates the agent relationships based on proximity and homophily, it simulates information di_usion and updates the agents' beliefs. The model has been implemented in Python with the agent-based social simulator Soil and it has been evaluated using a sensitivity analysis while the application uses D3.js, which is a powerful JavaScript library, for rendering the results of the simulation and analyze them. This thesis is divided in three phases: the design and implementation of the visualization module, the analysis and research necessary to acquire the knowledge for modeling radicalism di_usion and the implementation of the model as well as making the application auto-con_gurable to simulate the model from it

Engineering multi-agent systems: State of affairs and the road ahead

The continuous integration of software-intensive systems together with the ever-increasing computing power offer a breeding ground for intelligent agents and multi-agent systems (MAS) more than ever before. Over the past two decades, a wide variety of languages, models, techniques and methodologies have been proposed to engineer agents and MAS. Despite this substantial body of knowledge and expertise, the systematic engineering of large-scale and open MAS still poses many challenges. Researchers and engineers still face fundamental questions regarding theories, architectures, languages, processes, and platforms for designing, implementing, running, maintaining, and evolving MAS. This paper reports on the results of the 6th International Workshop on Engineering Multi-Agent Systems (EMAS 2018, 14th-15th of July, 2018, Stockholm, Sweden), where participants discussed the issues above focusing on the state of affairs and the road ahead for researchers and engineers in this area