Decision Making in Complex Systems: The DeciMaS Agent-based Interdisciplinary Framework Approach (Intelligent Systems Reference Library, 30)

✍ Scribed by Marina V. Sokolova, Antonio Fernández Caballero

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 2012
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 196
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

The study of complex systems attracts the attention of many researchers in diverse fields. Complex systems are characterized by a high number of entities and a high degree of interactions. One of the most important features is that they do not involve a central organizing authority, but the various elements that make up the systems are self-organized. Moreover, some complex systems possess an emergency priority: climate change and sustainable development research, studies of public health, ecosystem habitats, epidemiology, and medicine, among others.

Unfortunately, a great number of today’s overlapping approaches fail to meet the needs of decision makers when managing complex domains. Indeed, the design of complex systems often requires the integration of a number of artificial intelligence tools and techniques. The problem can be viewed in terms of goals, states, and actions, choosing the best action to move the system toward its desired state or behavior. This is why agent-based approaches are used to model complex systems.

The main objective of this book is to bring together existing methods for decision support systems creation within a coherent agent-based framework and to provide an interdisciplinary and flexible methodology for modeling complex and systemic domains.

 

✦ Table of Contents

Title
Preface
Contents
Decision Making in Complex Systems
Introduction
Modeling of Natural and Complex Phenomena
Complex Systems: Definition and Principal Characteristics
Decision Making and Decision Support Systems
Decision Making
The Evolution of Decision Support Systems
Decision Making in Complex Systems
Composite Decisions
Motivation
Frameworks for the Design of Decision Support Systems
The Need for an Interdisciplinary Approach
Multi-agent Paradigm for Complex Systems Modeling
A Review on Frameworks for Decision Support
Systems
Introduction
Decision Support Systems in Academy and Research
Agent-Based Frameworks for Decision Support Systems
Frameworks for Multi-agent Systems Planning
Software Tools for Multi-agent Systems Design and Implementation
Comparison of Agent-Based Frameworks
Design and Implementation of the DeciMaS
Framework
Introduction
The DeciMaS Framework
Approach towards Ontology Creation
The General Structure of the System
Description of the Ontological Basis of the Multi-agent Architecture
The Domain of Interest Ontology
The MAS Architecture Ontology
The Tasks Ontology
The Agent Ontology
The Interactions Ontology
The Distributed Meta-Ontology
Data Mining Methods in the DeciMaS Framework
Methods for Information Fusion and Preprocessing
Methods for Knowledge Discovery
Methods for Decision Generation
A Case Study for the DeciMaS Framework
Introduction
Human Health Environmental Impact Assessment
Environment and Human Health
Environmental Impact Assessment
Design of the Agent-Based Decision Support System
Meta-ontology of the System
Logical Levels of the ADSS
The Principal Abstractions of the System
Implementation in Jack
Program Architecture
Defining Agents in JACK
Data and Results
Introduction
Data for Experiment
Data Retrieval and Fusion
Information Fusion and Preprocessing
Detection and Elimination of Artifacts
Filling of Missing Values
Smoothing Results
Normalization Results
Results of the Correlation Analysis
Decomposition Results
Knowledge Discovery Results
Regression Models
Neural Network Models
Models Obtained with the Group Method of Data Handling
Committee Machines
Environmental Impact Assessment Results
Decision Making
Discussion of the Experiment
Conclusions
Conclusions
Future Work
References