End Date: 2012-12-21

Description:

The e-Book can be accessed through the Springer web site. The product flyer is available here.

End Date: 2013-08-02

Description:

The AT-2013 web site is accessible through this link. The event will be co-located with IJCAI-2013. More information on the International Conference Series on Agreement Technologies is available here.

End Date: 2012-10-15

Host Institution: University of Otago

Host Country: New Zealand

Home Institution: University of Bath

Home Country: UK

Description:

Two topics are proposed for this action: (i) issues arising from intelligent agents in virtual environments - this builds on the complementary research of the applicant and host (ii) open policy models - this is the initial exploration of a new research topic identified by the host and the applicant with potential for the wider application and uptake of Agreement Technologies.

Report

End Date: 2009-06-12

Location: Barcelona

Country: ES

Description:

ICAIL is an event that  gathers the best-known figures in the of Artificial Intelligence and Law. ICAIL-2009 topics were quite close to the Agreement technologies COST action agenda. Thus, in particular, two of the four invited talks were on agreement technologies.

Report

End Date: 2009-06-05

Location: London

Country: UK

Description:

The Workshop Joint action, Commitment and Agreement was organised by the Institute of Philosophy of the Univers ity of London and the University of Manchester. It took place on 5th June 2009, ST274/275, Stewart House,University of London.

Report

End Date: 2012-10-17

Description:

COST Action IC0801 on Agreement Technologies was finished sucessfully. A big “thank you” to all members of the community for their valuable contributions and continous support!

End Date: 2010-12-31

Description:

This project is carried out in cooperation between HES-SO and University of Lugano in the framework of the COST Agreement Technologies. Its goal is to prove that open interaction systems, conceived as systems of interacting artificial institutions, can be used to support human collaboration. To reach this goal we extend the existing meta-model OCeAN of artificial institutions, and use this extension to specify and design a demonstrative system as a negotiation platform interconnecting hospitals.

The possibility to specify open interaction systems, which can be dynamically entered and left by heterogeneous, autonomous, and self-interested agents, is widely recognized to be a crucial requirement for the development of intrinsically distributed applications on the Internet. In its past research, Prof. Colombetti’s team in University of Lugano has developed OCeAN, a normative meta-model for the specification of artificial institutions, and a complete Agent Communication Language (ACL) that can be used to model open interaction systems where heterogeneous software and human agents may interact. This approach on normative multi-agent systems (MAS) is focusing on the social properties of the system in order to predict the evolution of open MASs in time.

The current problem with artificial institutions approaches is that while they offer an interaction space and a normative framework for the agents, there is neither a clear model nor an appropriate infrastructure to specify how the mediation of agents’ interaction is being guaranteed.

For that, we propose the usage of a governing environment to structure and shape the space of interaction within open MAS. This governing perspective mainly allows managing agent interactions from an external point-of-view, and has the following advantages: i) it provides a software layer for the mediation of agent interactions; ii) it provides an infrastructure that offers all the necessary services; and iii) it offers an interface for the agents to use the low level resources of the system. Furthermore, it provides a middleware to run the agents, providing them services for their existence.

In summary, we want to further investigate and specify this governing environment applied to open interaction systems by expanding the OCeAN meta model with a focus on mixing human and artificial agents in hybrid multi agent systems. In particular, we plan to develop a demonstrative system able to support the activities of an e-health marketplace.

more information

End Date: 2015-09-30

Description:

The GLODERS research project is directed towards development of an ICT model for understanding a specific aspect of the dynamics of the global financial system: Extortion Racket Systems (ERSs). ERSs, of which the Mafia is but one example, are spreading globally from a small number of seed locations, causing massive disruption to economies. Yet there is no good understanding of their dynamics and thus how they may be countered. ERSs are not only powerful criminal organizations, operating at several hierarchical levels, but also prosperous economic enterprises and highly dynamic systems, likely to reinvest in new markets. If stakeholders - legislators and law enforcers - are to be successful in attacking ERSs, they need the much better understanding of the evolution of ERSs that computational models and ICT tools can give them.

GLODERS will provide a theory-driven set of computational tools, developed through a process of participatory modelling with stakeholders, to study, monitor, and possibly predict the dynamics of ERSs, as they spread from local through regional into global influence.

The research will draw on expertise already developed in the small, but highly experienced multidisciplinary consortium to use:
- computer-assisted qualitative text mining of documentary evidence;
- guided semi-automatic semantic analysis of stakeholder narratives and other textual data; and
- multi-level, stakeholder-centred agent-based modelling of the distributed negotiations between normative agents.
These methods will advance the state of the art for using data to inform policy decisions.

Throughout, the project will interact with a large, international group of stakeholder representatives from EU Ministries of Justice and police forces. The output will provide a set of ICT tools to facilitate strategic policies that could prevent the further penetration and extension of the global menace posed by ERSs.

more information