The design of multi-agent systems in complex, open environments can benefit from social abstractions in order to cope with problems in coordination, cooperation and trust among agents, problems which are also present in human societies. This book presents HARMONIA, a new framework for electronic organizations that defines a multi-level structure, from the most abstract level of the normative system to the final multi-agent implementation. Applications include scenarios such as electronic health care and e-government.

A survey on current approaches is presented The different abstraction levels involved in a normative framework (values, norms, rules, procedures) are identified and connected The influence of context for each abstraction level is identified A real example in the medical domain is presented, applying the new approach

Inhalt
I Applying Electronic Institutions and Norms to Complex Domains.- 1 Introduction.- 2 CARREL: an Agent-Mediated System for Organ and Tissue Allocation.- 3 Norms, Agents and Electronic Institutions.- II HARmoNIA: a New Approach to Model Electronic Institutions.- 4 A Multi-Layered Normative Framework for Agents.- 5 A Multi-Layered Framework for Organizations.- 6 Applying HARMONÍA to the Organ and Tissue Allocation Problem.- 7 Conclusions.- III Appendix and Bibliography.- A Medical Data Protection and the Internet.- A.1 Medicine, Information Technology and Privacy.- A.2 Advantages of Electronic Formats for Medical Data.- A.3 Requirements to be Fulfilled.- A.3.1 Requirements from the Medical Community.- A.3.2 Law-Enforced Requirements.- A.4 Privacy and Security of Electronic Medical Data.- A.5 Security Measures for Medical Information Systems.- A.6 Desirable Characteristics of a Medical Information System.- A.7 The New Users of Medical Data.- A.8 Summary.- B The UCTx System.- B.1 Creating a Multi-Agent System for a Hospital's Transplant Unit.- B.2 An Example: The Cornea Transplantation.- B.3 Summary.- List of Acronyms.- Authors Index.