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Organisational Rules as an Abstraction for the Analysis and Design of Multi-Agent Systems

Organisational Rules as an Abstraction for the Analysis and Design of Multi-Agent Systems
Organisational Rules as an Abstraction for the Analysis and Design of Multi-Agent Systems
Multi-agent systems can very naturally be viewed as computational organisations. For this reason, we believe organisational abstractions offer a promising set of metaphors and models that can be exploited in the analysis and design of such systems. To this end, the concept of role models is increasingly being used to specify and design multi-agent systems. However, this is not the full picture. In this paper we introduce three additional organisational concepts - organisational rules , organisational structures, and organisational patterns - and discuss why we believe they are necessary for the complete specification of computational organisations. In particular, we focus on the concept of organisational rules and introduce a formalism, based on temporal logic, to specify them. This formalism is then used to drive the definition of the organisational structure and the identification of the organisational patterns. Finally, the paper sketches some guidelines for a methodology for agent-oriented systems based on our expanded set of organisational abstractions.
Organisational abstractions, multi-agent systems, agent-oriented software engineering, computational organisations.
303-328
Zambonelli, F.
ab093383-4d27-44eb-8776-c5961793eedd
Jennings, N. R.
ab3d94cc-247c-4545-9d1e-65873d6cdb30
Wooldridge, M.
955b6c39-0d07-430e-b68d-b9a96d6e14e7
Zambonelli, F.
ab093383-4d27-44eb-8776-c5961793eedd
Jennings, N. R.
ab3d94cc-247c-4545-9d1e-65873d6cdb30
Wooldridge, M.
955b6c39-0d07-430e-b68d-b9a96d6e14e7

Zambonelli, F., Jennings, N. R. and Wooldridge, M. (2001) Organisational Rules as an Abstraction for the Analysis and Design of Multi-Agent Systems. International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, 11 (3), 303-328.

Record type: Article

Abstract

Multi-agent systems can very naturally be viewed as computational organisations. For this reason, we believe organisational abstractions offer a promising set of metaphors and models that can be exploited in the analysis and design of such systems. To this end, the concept of role models is increasingly being used to specify and design multi-agent systems. However, this is not the full picture. In this paper we introduce three additional organisational concepts - organisational rules , organisational structures, and organisational patterns - and discuss why we believe they are necessary for the complete specification of computational organisations. In particular, we focus on the concept of organisational rules and introduce a formalism, based on temporal logic, to specify them. This formalism is then used to drive the definition of the organisational structure and the identification of the organisational patterns. Finally, the paper sketches some guidelines for a methodology for agent-oriented systems based on our expanded set of organisational abstractions.

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Published date: 2001
Keywords: Organisational abstractions, multi-agent systems, agent-oriented software engineering, computational organisations.
Organisations: Agents, Interactions & Complexity

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 254232
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/254232
PURE UUID: d615ed49-4cca-4df2-8d85-cb5142293a87

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Date deposited: 04 Dec 2001
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 05:31

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Contributors

Author: F. Zambonelli
Author: N. R. Jennings
Author: M. Wooldridge

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