More and more transactions, whether in business or related to leisure activities, are mediated automatically by computers and computer networks, and this trend is having a significant impact on the conception and design of new computer applications. The next generation of these applications will be based on software agents to which increasingly complex tasks can be delegated, and which interact with each other in sophisticated ways so as to forge agreements in the interest of their human users. The wide variety of technologies supporting this vision is the subject of this volume. It summarises the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action project on Agreement Technologies (AT), during which approximately 200 researchers from 25 European countries, along with eight institutions from non-COST countries, cooperated as part of a number of working groups. The book is the first to provide a comprehensive overview of the emerging field of Agreement Technologies, written and coordinated by the leading researchers in the field. The results set out here are due for wide dissemination beyond the computing sector, involving law and social science as well.

Autorentext
Sascha Ossowski is a Full Professor of Computer Science and the Director of the Centre for Intelligent Information Technologies (CETINIA) at University Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid. Formerly, he was an HCM/TMR research fellow at the AI Department of Technical University of Madrid. He obtained his MSc degree in Informatics from the University of Oldenburg (Germany) in 1993, and received a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from UPM in 1997. Prof. Ossowski is holding several research grants in the field of advanced software systems, funded by the European Commission and the Spanish Government. He has authored more than 150 research papers, focusing on the application of Artificial Intelligence techniques to real world problems such as transportation management, m-Health, or e-Commerce. Recently, he has been particularly active in the field of Multiagent Systems and the Semantic Web. He is co-editor of more than 20 books, proceedings, and special issues of international journals. He is chair of the COST Action on Agreement Technologies, chairs the Board of Directors of the European Association for Multiagent Systems (EURAMAS), and is a member of the steering committee of the ACM Annual Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC). He also serves as a member of the editorial board for several international journals, and acts as programme committee member for numerous international conferences and workshops.

Inhalt

Foreword.- Preface.- Acknowledgement.- Part I Foundations.- 1 Agreement Technologies: A Computing perspective; Sascha Ossowski, Carles Sierra and Vicente Botti.- 2 Agreement and Relational Justice: A Perspective from Philosophy and Sociology of Law; Pompeu Casanovas.- 3 Agreements as the Grease (not the Glue) of Society: A Cognitive and Social Science Perspective; Fabio Paglieri.- Part II Semantics in Agreement Technologies.- 4 Agreement Technologies and the Semantic Web; Axel Polleres.- 5 Logical formalisms for Agreement Technologies; Antoine Zimmermann.- 6 Reconciling heterogeneous knowledge with ontology matching; Cássia Trojahn and George Vouros.- 7 Semantics in Multi-Agent Systems; Nicoletta Fornara, Gordan Jezi c, Mario KuSek, Ignac Lovrek, Vedran Podobnik, Krunoslav Trzec.- 8 SemanticWeb Services in Agreement Technologies; Zijie Cong and Alberto Fernández.- 9 Using ontologies to manage resources in Grid computing-practical aspects; Michal Drozdowicz, Maria Ganzha, Katarzyna Wasielewska, MarcinPaprzycki and Pawel Szmeja.- Part III Norms.- 10 Deontic logic; Jan Broersen, Dov Gabbay, Andreas Herzig, Emiliano Lorini, John-Jules Meyer, Xavier Parent and Leendert van der Torre.- 11 (Social) Norms and Agent-Based Simulation; Giulia Andrighetto, Stephen Cranefield, Rosaria Conte, Martin Purvis, Maryam Purvis, Bastin Tony Roy Savarimuthu and Daniel Villatoro.- 12 Norms in Game Theory; Davide Grossi, Luca Tummolini and Paolo Turrini.- 13 AI and Law; Giovanni Sartor and Antonino Rotolo.- 14 Normative Agents; Michael Luck, Samhar Mahmoud, Felipe Meneguzzi, Martin Kollingbaum, Timothy J. Norman, Natalia Criado and Moser SilvaFagundes.- 15 Norms and Trust; Rino Falcone, Cristiano Castelfranchi, Henrique Lopes Cardoso, Andrew Jones and Eugénio Oliveira.- 16 Norms and Argumentation; Nir Oren, Antonino Rotolo, Leendert van der Torre and Serena Villata.- Part IV Organisations and Institutions.- 17 Describing agent organisations; Estefanía Argente, OlivierBoissier, Sergio Esparcia, Jana Görmer, Kristi Kirikal and Kuldar Taveter.- 18 Modelling Agent Institutions; Nicoletta Fornara, Henrique Lopes Cardoso, Pablo Noriega, Eugénio Oliveira and Charalampos Tampitsikas.- 19 Organisational Reasoning Agents; Olivier Boissier and M. Birna van Riemsdijk.- 20 Adaptive Agent Organisations; Estefanía Argente, Holger Billhardt, Carlos Cuesta, Sergio Esparcia, Jana Görmer, Ramón Hermoso, Kristi Kirikal, Marin Lujak, José-Santiago Pérez-Sotelo and Kuldar Taveter.- Part V Argumentation and Negotiation.- 21 The Added Value of Argumentation; Sanjay Modgil, Francesca Toni, Floris Bex, Ivan Bratko, Carlos I. Chesñevar, Wolfgang Dvörák, Marcelo A. Falappa, Xiuyi Fan, Sarah Alice Gaggl, Alejandro J. García, María P. González, Thomas F. Gordon, João Leite, Martin Mozina, Chris Reed, Guillermo R. Simari, Stefan Szeider, Paolo Torroni and Stefan Woltran.- 22 Trends in Multiagent Negotiation: from Bilateral Bargaining to Consensus Policies; Enrique de la Hoz, Miguel A. López-Carmona and Iván Marsá-Maestre.- Part VI Trust and Reputation.- 23 A Socio-Cognitive Perspective of Trust; Joana Urbano, Ana Paula Rocha and Eugénio Oliveira.- 24 Qualitative Assessment Dynamics - QAD; Denis Tr cek.- 25 Argumentation and Trust; Andrew Koster, Jordi Sabater-Mir and Marco Schorlemmer.- 26 Ontology, Semantics and Reputation; Andrew Koster and Jeff Z. Pan.- 27 Attacks and Vulnerabilities of Trust and Reputation Models; Jose M. Such.- 28 Reputation and Organisations; Olivier Boissier, Jomi Fred Hübner and Laurent Vercouter.- 29 Building Relationships with Trust; Carles Sierra and John Debenham.- Part VII Applications.- 30 Arguing to Support Customers: the Call Centre Study Case; Stella Heras, Jaume Jordán, Vicente Botti and Vicente Julián.- 31 Agreement Technologies for Supporting the Planning and Execution of Transports; Paul Davidsson, Marie Gustafsson Friberger, Johan Holmgren, Andreas Jacobsson and Jan A. Persson.- 32 ANTE:Agreement Negotiation in Normative and Trust-enabled Environments; Henrique Lopes Cardoso, Joana Urbano, Ana Paula Rocha, António J. M. Castro and Eugénio Oliveira.- 33 mWater, a Case Study for Modeling Virtual Markets; Antonio Garrido, Adriana Giret, Vicente Botti and Pablo Noriega.- 34 v-mWater: an e-Government Application for Water Rights Agreements; Pablo Almajano, Tomas Trescak, Marc Esteva, Inmaculada Rodríguez and Maite López-Sánchez.- 35 Coordinating Emergency Medical Assistance; Marin Lujak and Holger Billhardt.- 36 An environment to build and track agent-based business collaborations; Toni Penya-Alba, Boris Mikhaylov, Marc Pujol-González, Bruno Rosell, Jesús Cerquides, Juan A. Rodríguez-Aguilar, Marc Esteva, Àngela Fàbregues, Jordi Madrenas, Carles Sierra, Carlos Carrascosa, Vicente Julián, Mario Rodrigo and Matteo Vasirani.- 37 A Virtual Selling Agent which is Persuasive and Adaptive; Fabien Delecroix, Maxime Morge and Jean-Christophe Routier.- A Editors' Short Bios.