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Clare Grasso, Dr. Tim Finin, Dr. Yelena Yesha, Dr. Anupam Joshi, Dr. Michael Grasso
UMBC◦ Expert knowledge of agent systems at large
What could conceivably be done
UICDS Partners & Emergency Responders◦ Emergency Response domain experts
What should be done
Collaboration + Technologists◦ What is a practical to do for UICDS
Conventional Systems
Current Computing Environment
SOA, Web Services, and Multi-Agent Systems
Agent Standards
Types of Agents
Agent Systems – Success Stories
Agent R&D in Emergency Response
Agents and UICDS
Centralized◦ Vertical organization
Centralized Control
Information locked in proprietary silos
Problems with◦ Isolation
◦ Scalability
◦ Survivability
◦ Changeability
Internet and ubiquitous computing◦ Horizontal organization
Heterogeneous systems must interact
Across organizational boundaries
Operate effectively within rapidly changing circumstances
With dramatically increasing quantities of available information
◦ Collaboration
◦ Dynamicity
◦ Personalization
Web services are one type of SOA◦ Distributed Heterogeneous interoperable systems based on standards
◦ Autonomous Self-contained, Self-described, component objects
◦ Message based Client / Server Request / Response Synchronous – they are invoked
◦ Passive –advertised, discovered, invoked◦ Static Once they are deployed, the don’t tend to change
◦ Mature in design and development Based on a well understood object-oriented paradigm
Agents are another implementation of SOA◦ Distributed within and across agent platforms◦ Autonomous Self-contained, Self-described, agent-based Self-controlled- are not “invoked”
◦ Message based Peer to Peer Asynchronous - control uncoupling Data driven vs. procedure driven
◦ Active Perceive and react to their environment
◦ Dynamic Can change their behavior based on their environment
◦ Immature in design and development Much research left to be done on the agent-oriented
paradigm
1996 Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA) was formed◦ 1999-2002 Specifications for heterogeneous and
interacting agent based systems were developed
Defines standards for ◦ Abstract architecture
◦ Agent life-cycle management
◦ Agent communication
◦ Message transport
Most widely used part of the standard◦ ACL – Agent Communication Language
*http://www.fipa.org/
*2005, Michal Laclav´ık, Zolt´an Balogh, Mari´an Bab´ık,LadislavHluch´y, “AgentOWL- Semantic Knowledge Model and Agent Architecture”,Computing and Informatics, Vol. 25, 2006, 419–437
Agents as Web Service Consumers◦ Any Java-based agent can access web services
Agents as Web Service Providers◦ Require a gateway / bridge translate between the two
◦ FIPA is in the process of standardizing WS interaction
Dynamic Web Services◦ Web Services can be created/destroyed dynamically
based on WSDL file
◦ Allows for dynamic composition of multiple Web Services into a new kind of service
Reactive◦ Event Driven Architecture
Workflow Oriented◦ A workflow is composed of tasks that are executed in
order specified by precedence constraints. ◦ Easy to use graphical Workflow IDEs to create agents
Cognitive – BDI (AI)◦ Modeled after human intelligence◦ Offers a higher level of abstraction The paradigm map easily to the language people use to
describe their reasoning and actions in everyday life◦ Relatively mature framework Successfully used in a number of medium to large scale
software systems
Large number of simple agents that can produce an overall intelligent behavior leading to the solution.
Job Scheduling◦ For a given number of machines and a given number of
orders, assign the operations so that 1) the machine only works on one job at a time and 2) the total time for all jobs is minimized.
Vehicle Routing◦ Minimize cost of routing based on 1) vehicle load capacity
2) maximum route length 2) all vehicles start and end their routes at the depot and 4) each customer is visited once.
Telecom Italia◦ Provides fixed and mobile telephony and broadband
services to more than 20 million customers
◦ Created a single Security Operations Centre that would monitor the entire network infrastructure
◦ Deployed agents to monitor logs from the company's firewalls, antivirus software and operating systems, routers and Intrusion Detection Systems
◦ Simple Web interface provides access to detailed security reports, and to a high-level dashboard with key risk and performance indicators displayed graphically.
◦ In a single month, they have registered as many as 120 million events, and managed 800 security incidents
DTE Energy◦ Handle massive outages based on a finite amount
of resources – including those from other states or countries
◦ Contract Net Protocol A Request-for-Proposal goes out across agent system
Self-interested agents use market-oriented mechanisms to bid. Each resource is represented by an agent that bids for that
work based on how much it would cost to accommodate that request (based on time, distance, dollar cost, etc.)
Resources with lowest bid wins until there are no more requests
John Deere◦ Centralized program ran several hours over night to
optimize production schedules for the shop floor the next day.
◦ Problem: If key resource becomes unavailable, centralized program must start from scratch. You have to re-optimize the entire shop when all you have is a local disruption.
◦ Answer: If one resource is no longer available, agents can look for a replacement and “contract” with alternative resources. If the resources are going to be delayed, agents in a supply chain can determine which way to solve the delay with the least impact.
◦ Top-down vs. Bottom-up processing
Ebay Auction Sniper
◦ Bids on your behalf in the last seconds of an auction.
◦ You just enter a maximum amount and the sniper tool will bid up to that amount in the waning seconds of the auction.
◦ If you participate in several different auctions for a single item, the sniper will bid until you win one of the auctions – canceling all other auctions in the group automatically.
DEFACTO Training Tool for Incident Commanders◦ Provide first responders and rescue personnel
with tools and techniques that will enable them to
evaluate response readiness and tactics,
measure inter-agency coordination and
improve training and decision making capability.
AAMAS’05, July 25-29, 2005, “DEFACTO: Training Tool for Incident Commanders”, Utrecht, Netherlands.
Intelligent agents assess a complex situation◦ Make on-the-fly decisions on how to proceed with
based on real-time data and events◦ Suggest the rescue actions in the form of
workflows, ◦ Responders follow the workflows to execute the
rescue plan based on real-time data and events.
Cognitive BDI / Workflow Agent Hybrids◦ Built on control structures that allow the agent to
be function-based on data rather than explicit procedural instructions Agents don’t need to be reprogrammed to react to a
changing environment.
"Agent based emergency response workflow management", Tepfenhart, W.; Jiacun Wang; Rosca, D.; INFORMS International Conference on Service Operations, Logistics and Informatics, 2009. Page(s):140 – 146
What are the gaps in UICDS that agents could fill?◦ Now that you have all that information in one place,
what else can you do with it?
Distributed information vs. distributed services
Requirements◦ Open Source◦ No additional ports to open◦ No software to install
Browser based◦ Applets◦ XML/XLST transformation Embedded JavaScript
HTTP content and forms
Texting and Text messaging
Alerts
Context agents ◦ Integrate information from multiple sources to provide
an overall context for individual incidents or a set of incidents occurring in or impacting a region.
Personal Profiling◦ Allow users to prioritize and filter information and alerts
based on their generic role in UICDS
Collaborative filtering ◦ Suggest new notifications that someone might want to
sign up for. "Responders like you also have subscribed to X and Y" or "Responders who subside to X often subscribe to Y as well."
XMPP ◦ Built in security mechanisms
◦ Can be run on top of HTTP
◦ Presence awareness
Very powerful for user interfaces