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.

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

This book presents a coherent, well-balanced survey of recent advances in software engineering approaches to the design and analysis of realistic large-scale multi-agent systems (MAS). The chapters included are devoted to various techniques and methods used to cope with the complexity of real-world MAS. Reflecting the importance of agent properties in today's software systems, the power of agent-based software engineering is illustrated using examples that are representative of successful applications.

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.

This is the era of Big Data and computational social science. It is an era that requires tools which can do more than visualise data but also model the complex relation between data and human action, and interaction. Agent-Based Models (ABM) - computational models which simulate human action and interaction – do just that. This textbook explains how to design and build ABM and how to link the models to Geographical Information Systems. It guides you from the basics through to constructing more complex models which work with data and human behaviour in a spatial context. All of the fundamental concepts are explained and related to practical examples to facilitate learning (with models developed in NetLogo with all code examples available on the accompanying website). You will be able to use these models to develop your own applications and link, where appropriate, to Geographical Information Systems. All of the key ideas and methods are explained in detail: geographical modelling; an introduction to ABM; the fundamentals of Geographical Information Science; why ABM and GIS; using QGIS; designing and building an ABM; calibration and validation; modelling human behavior. An applied primer, that provides fundamental knowledge and practical skills, it will provide you with the skills to build and run your own models, and to begin your own research projects.

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.

The aim of the CEEMAS conference series is to provide a biennial forum for the presentation of multi-agent research and development results. With its p- ticular geographicalorientation towards Central and Eastern Europe, CEEMAS has become an internationally recognised event with participants from all over the world. After the successful CEEMAS conferences in St. Petersburg (1999), Cracow (2001) and Prague (2003), the 2005 CEEMAS conference takes place in Budapest. The programme committee of the conference series consists of est- lished researchers from the region and renowned international colleagues, sh- ing the prominent rank of CEEMAS among the leading events in multi-agent systems. In the very competitive ?eld of agent oriented conferences and workshops nowadays(suchasAAMAS,WI/IAT,EUMAS,CIA,MATES)thespecialpro?le of CEEMAS is that it is trying to bridge the gap between applied research achievements and theoretical research activities. Our ambition is to provide a forum for presenting theoretical research with an evident application potential, implemented application prototypes and their properties, as well as industrial case studies of successful (but also unsuccessful) agent technology deployments. This is why the CEEMAS proceedings volume provides a collection of research and application papers. The technical research paper section of the proceedings (see pages 11–499) contains pure research papers as well as research results in application settings while the application papers section (see pages 500–530) contains papers focused on application aspects. The goal is to demonstrate the real life value and commercial reality of multi-agent systems as well as to foster communication between academia and industry in this ?eld.