"The book presents, analyzes and compares the most significant methodological approaches currently available for the creation of agent-oriented software systems"--Provided by publisher.

Information systems have become the backbone of all kinds of organizations - day. In almost every sector – manufacturing, education, health care, government and businesses large and small – information systems are relied upon for - eryday work, communication, information gathering and decision-making. Yet, the in?exibilities in current technologies and methods have also resulted in poor performance, incompatibilities and obstacles to change. As many organizations are reinventing themselves to meet the challenges of global competition and e-commerce, there is increasing pressure to develop and deploy new technologies that are ?exible, robust and responsive to rapid and unexpected change. Agent concepts hold great promise for responding to the new realities of - formation systems. They o?er higher-level abstractions and mechanisms which address issues such as knowledge representation and reasoning, communication, coordination, cooperation among heterogeneous and autonomous parties, p- ception, commitments, goals, beliefs, intentions, etc., all of which need conc- tual modelling. On the one hand, the concrete implementation of these concepts can lead to advanced functionalities, e.g., in inference-based query answering, transaction control, adaptive work ?ows, brokering and integration of disparate information sources, and automated communication processes. On the other hand, their rich representational capabilities allow for more faithful and ?- ible treatments of complex organizational processes, leading to more e?ective requirements analysis and architectural/detailed design.

Thisproceedingsvolumeofthe5thAOISWorkshopisanopportunityforlooking back at ?ve years of organizing AOIS workshops. What did we achieve with the AOIS workshop series? Where were we ?ve years ago, where are we now? Did ourthemeimpactontheinformationsystems?eldinthewaythatwehadhoped for? AOIS workshops have taken place in Seattle, Heidelberg, Stockholm, Austin, Montr ́ eal, Interlaken, Toronto, Bologna, Melbourne, and Chicago, always in c- junction with a major conference on either multiagent systems in arti?cial - telligence (AI/MAS) or information systems (IS). We have tried to innovate in holding these workshops as biconference events (each year AOIS held two wo- shop events, one at an AI/MAS conference and one at an IS conference), as well as using the AOIS web site as a medium for communication among researchers. So, certainly, we have reached a wide audience of researchers around the world from both the AI/MAS and IS communities. But did we also manage to build up a dedicated AOIS community? Five years ago, we wrote: “Agent concepts could fundamentally alter the nature of information systems of the future, and how we build them, much like structured analysis, ER modeling, and Object-Orientation has precipitated fundamental changes in IS practice. ” Of course, a period of ?ve years is too short for evaluating the success or failure of a new scienti?c paradigm. But still we may observe that while most IS conferences meanwhile list agents as one of their many preferred topics, agent-orientation is generally not considered to be a fundamental IS paradigm.

Thisproceedingsvolumeofthe5thAOISWorkshopisanopportunityforlooking back at ?ve years of organizing AOIS workshops. What did we achieve with the AOIS workshop series? Where were we ?ve years ago, where are we now? Did ourthemeimpactontheinformationsystems?eldinthewaythatwehadhoped for? AOIS workshops have taken place in Seattle, Heidelberg, Stockholm, Austin, Montr ́ eal, Interlaken, Toronto, Bologna, Melbourne, and Chicago, always in c- junction with a major conference on either multiagent systems in arti?cial - telligence (AI/MAS) or information systems (IS). We have tried to innovate in holding these workshops as biconference events (each year AOIS held two wo- shop events, one at an AI/MAS conference and one at an IS conference), as well as using the AOIS web site as a medium for communication among researchers. So, certainly, we have reached a wide audience of researchers around the world from both the AI/MAS and IS communities. But did we also manage to build up a dedicated AOIS community? Five years ago, we wrote: “Agent concepts could fundamentally alter the nature of information systems of the future, and how we build them, much like structured analysis, ER modeling, and Object-Orientation has precipitated fundamental changes in IS practice. ” Of course, a period of ?ve years is too short for evaluating the success or failure of a new scienti?c paradigm. But still we may observe that while most IS conferences meanwhile list agents as one of their many preferred topics, agent-orientation is generally not considered to be a fundamental IS paradigm.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 7th International Bi-Conference Workshop on Agent-Oriented Information Systems, AOIS 2005, held in Utrecht, Netherlands, in July 2005 and in Klagenfurt, Austria, in October 2005. The 19 revised full papers are organized in topical sections on agent behavior, communications and reasoning, methodologies and ontologies, agent-oriented software engineering, as well as applications.

Since the late 1980s, the CAiSE conferences have provided a forum for the p- sentation and exchange of research results and practical experiences within the ?eld of Information Systems Engineering. CAiSE 2001 was the 13th conference in this series and was held from 4th to 8th June 2001 in the resort of Int- laken located near the three famous Swiss mountains – the Eiger, M ̈ onch, and Jungfrau. The ?rst two days consisted of pre-conference workshops and tutorials. The workshop themes included requirements engineering, evaluation of modeling methods, data integration over the Web, agent-oriented information systems, and the design and management of data warehouses. Continuing the tradition of recent CAiSE conferences, there was also a doctoral consortium. The p- conference tutorials were on the themes of e-business models and XML appli- tion development. The main conference program included three invited speakers, two tuto- als, and a panel discussion in addition to presentations of the papers in these proceedings. We also included a special ‘practice and experience’ session to give presentersanopportunitytoreportonanddiscussexperiencesandinvestigations on the use of methods and technologies in practice. Weextendourthankstothemembersoftheprogramcommitteeandallother referees without whom such conferences would not be possible. The program committee, whose members came from 20 di?erent countries, selected 27 hi- quality research papers and 3 experience reports from a total of 97 submissions. The topics of these papers span the wide-range of topics relevant to information systems engineering – from requirements and design through to implementation and operation of complex and dynamic systems.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 8th International Bi-Conference Workshop on Agent-Oriented Information Systems, AOIS 2005, held in Hakodate, Japan, May9, 2006 and Luxembourg, Luxembourg, June 6, 2006. The 13 revised full papers presented have gone through two rounds of reviewing and improvement and were carefully selected for inclusion in the book. The papers are organized in topical sections on Modelling, Methodologies, Agent-oriented Software Engineering, and Applications.

Multi-agent Systems (MAS) are one of the most exciting research areas in Artificial Intelligence meanwhile Environmental Studies is a research area of strategic interest. Both areas can provide society with solutions for many real applications, in order to use and protect the environment. Human activities imply intervention into nature, but properly managed, these interventions can not be only ecologically sound but also favourable to the sustainable development of civilisation. The encounter between these fields is a new challenge for many researchers of both communities. This book presents a comprehensive reference of state-of-the-art efforts. Specifically, it presents current and future ways in which adaptive information technologies, techniques, protocols and architectures, such as software agent technologies and multi-agent systems, can be used to support the development of real-world agent-based systems in the area of e-Environment.