A Formal Framework of Virtual Organisations as Agent Societies

Jarred McGinnis
(Royal Holloway, University of London)
Kostas Stathis
(Royal Holloway, University of London)
Francesca Toni
(Imperial College London)

We propose a formal framework that supports a model of agent-based Virtual Organisations (VOs) for service grids and provides an associated operational model for the creation of VOs. The framework is intended to be used for describing different service grid applications based on multiple agents and, as a result, it abstracts away from any realisation choices of the service grid application, the agents involved to support the applications and their interactions. Within the proposed framework VOs are seen as emerging from societies of agents, where agents are abstractly characterised by goals and roles they can play within VOs. In turn, VOs are abstractly characterised by the agents participating in them with specific roles, as well as the workflow of services and corresponding contracts suitable for achieving the goals of the participating agents. We illustrate the proposed framework with an earth observation scenario.

In Jeremy Bryans and John Fitzgerald: Proceedings Second Workshop on Formal Aspects of Virtual Organisations (FAVO 2009), Eindhoven, The Netherlands, 3rd November 2009, Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science 16, pp. 1–14.
Published: 29th January 2010.

ArXived at: https://dx.doi.org/10.4204/EPTCS.16.1 bibtex PDF

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