The book focusses on questions of individual and collective action, the emergence and dynamics of social norms and the feedback between individual behaviour and social phenomena. It discusses traditional modelling approaches to social norms and shows the usefulness of agent-based modelling for the study of these micro-macro interactions. Existing agent-based models of social norms are discussed and it is shown that so far too much priority has been given to parsimonious models and questions of the emergence of norms, with many aspects of social norms, such as norm-change, not being modelled. Juvenile delinquency, group radicalisation and moral decision making are used as case studies for agent-based models of collective action extending existing models by providing an embedding into social networks, social influence via argumentation and a causal action theory of moral decision making. The major contribution of the book is to highlight the multifaceted nature of the dynamics of social norms, consisting not only of emergence, and the importance of embedding of agent-based models into existing theory.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the International Workshop on Coordination, Organization, Institutions and Norms in Agent Systems, COIN 2006, held as two events at AAMAS 2006, the 5th International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems in Hakodate, Japan, and ECAI 2006, the 17th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Riva del Garda, Italy.

This book is dedicated to Marek Sergot, Professor in Computational Logic at Imperial College London, on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Professor Sergot’s scientific contributions range over many different fields. He has developed a series of novel ideas and formal methods bridging areas including artificial intelligence, computational logic, philosophical logic, legal theory, artificial intelligence and law, multi-agent systems and bioinformatics. By combining his background in logic and computing with his interest in the law, deontic logic, action, and related areas, and applying to all his capacity to understand the subtleties of social interaction and normative reasoning, Professor Sergot has opened up new directions of research, and has been a reference, an inspiration, and a model for many researchers in the fields to which he has contributed. The Festschrift includes several reminiscences and introductory essays describing Professor Sergot's achievements, followed by a series of articles on logic programming, temporal reasoning and action languages, artificial intelligence and law, deontic logic and norm-governed systems, and logical approaches to policies.

Precise and flawless medical practice is imperative due to the delicate nature of patient lives and health. Without methods and technologies to detect medical mistakes, many lives would be compromised. Impact of Medical Errors and Malpractice on Health Economics, Quality, and Patient Safety is an essential reference source for the latest research on the detection and analysis of the various implications of medical errors and addresses the hidden malpractices that exist in healthcare systems globally. Featuring extensive coverage on a broad range of topics such as clinical pathways, decision-making techniques, and health information technology, this book is ideally designed for practitioners, professionals, and researchers seeking current research on various issues in healthcare provision.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 9th International Workshops on Coordination, Organizations, Institutions and Norms in Agent Systems, COIN 2013. The workshops were co-located with AAMAS 2013, held in St. Paul, MN, USA in May 2013, and with PRIMA 2013, held in Dunedin, New Zealand, in December 2013. The 18 full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 28 submissions and are presented together with two invited papers. The papers are organized in topical sections such as coordination, organizations, institutions, norms, norm conflict, and norm-aware agents.

Using the O.D.D. (Overview, Design concepts, Detail) protocol, this title explores the role of agent-based modeling in predicting the feasibility of various approaches to sustainability. The chapters incorporated in this volume consist of real case studies to illustrate the utility of agent-based modeling and complexity theory in discovering a path to more efficient and sustainable lifestyles. The topics covered within include: households' attitudes toward recycling, designing decision trees for representing sustainable behaviors, negotiation-based parking allocation, auction-based traffic signal control, and others. This selection of papers will be of interest to social scientists who wish to learn more about agent-based modeling as well as experts in the field of agent-based modeling.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the International Workshop on Coordination, Organization, Institutions and Norms in Agent Systems, COIN 2009.

Using the investigation of criminal culture as an example application, this edited volume presents a novel approach to agent-based simulation: interpretive agent-based social simulation as a methodological and transdisciplinary approach to examining the potential of qualitative data and methods for agent-based modelling (ABM). Featuring updated articles as well as original chapters which provide a cohesive and novel approach to the digital humanities, the book challenges the common conviction that hermeneutics and simulation are two mutually exclusive ways to understand and explain human behaviour and social change. Exploring how methodology benefits from taking cultural complexities into account and bringing these methods together in an innovative combination of qualitative-hermeneutic and digital techniques, the book unites experts in the field to connect ABM to narrative theories, thereby providing a novel tool for cultural studies. An innovative methodological contribution to narrative theory, this volume will be of primary benefit to researchers, scholars, and academics in the fields of ABM, hermeneutics, and criminology. The book will also appeal to those working in policing, security, and forensic consultation.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 16th International Conference of the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence, AI*IA 2017, held in Bari, Italy, in November 2017. The 37 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 91 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on applications of AI; natural language processing; knowledge representation and reasoning; knowledge engineering, ontologies and the semantic web; machinelearning; philosophical foundations, metacognitive modeling and ethics; and planning and scheduling.

This book constitutes the thoroughly reviewed joint post-conference proceedings of two international workshops on Coordination, Organization, Institutions and Norms in Agent Systems, COIN@AAMAS 2011, held in Taipei, Taiwan in May 2011 and COIN@WI-IAT 2011, held in Lyon, France in August 2011. The 12 revised full papers presented were carefully selected for presentations. The papers are organized in topical sections on agent coordination, norm-aware agent reasoning, as well as norm creation and enforcement.