The Role of Norms and Electronic Institutions in Multi-Agent Systems

I Applying Electronic Institutions and Norms to Complex Domains.- 1 Introduction.- 1.1 Autonomy.- 1.2 Coordination and Coordination Theories.- 1.2.1 Social Structures.- 1.2.2 Commitments and Conventions.- 1.3 Institutions.- 1.3.1 Human Institutions.- 1.3.2 Types of Institutions.- 1.3.3 Electronic Institutions.- 1.4 Summary.- 2 CARREL: an Agent-Mediated System for Organ and Tissue Allocation.- 2.1 Introduction.- 2.2 Medical Informatics and Agents.- 2.2.1 Patient-Oriented Information Management.- 2.2.2 Cooperative Management of Patients.- 2.2.3 Autonomous Monitoring and Diagnosis of Patients.- 2.2.4 Remote Health Care Services.- 2.2.5 Agents and the Transplant Domain.- 2.3 The Organ and Tissue Allocation Problem.- 2.3.1 Coordination Structure: the Spanish Model.- 2.3.2 The Organ and Tissue Allocation Process.- 2.4 The CARREL System.- 2.4.1 Analysis of the System.- 2.4.2 Important Requirements.- 2.5 Formalizing the CARREL System.- 2.5.1 The Performative Structure.- 2.5.2 Describing the Scene Protocols.- 2.5.3 Normative Rules.- 2.5.4 The Textual Specification.- 2.5.5 The Agent Architecture.- 2.5.6 A Network of CARREL Institutions.- 2.6 Discussion.- 3 Norms, Agents and Electronic Institutions.- 3.1 What is a Norm?.- 3.1.1 The View of Norms in Social Theory.- 3.1.2 The View of Norms in Legal Theory.- 3.1.3 The View of Norms in Computer Science.- 3.2 Social Interaction from the Individual’s Point of View.- 3.2.1 Formalizing Norms.- 3.2.2 Norm Autonomous Agents.- 3.2.3 Discussion about Agent-Centric Views.- 3.3 Social Interaction from the Society’s Point of View.- 3.3.1 Definition and Formalization of Social Systems.- 3.3.2 Discussion about Social-Centric Views.- 3.4 Building Electronic Institutions. Multi-Agent Methodologies and Frameworks.- 3.4.1 Agent Methodologies without Normative Aspects.- 3.4.2 Agent Methodologies with Normative Aspects.- 3.4.3 Electronic Institutions vs. Electronic Organizations.- 3.5 Summary.- II HARmoNIA: a New Approach to Model Electronic Institutions.- 4 A Multi-Layered Normative Framework for Agents.- 4.1 Intuitive Description of the Impact of Norms in Agents.- 4.1.1 Knowledge and Beliefs.- 4.1.2 Goals.- 4.1.3 Beliefs and Knowledge about Norms and Roles.- 4.2 Conceptualization of Norms in Terms of Possible Worlds.- 4.2.1 Norms as Legally Accessible Worlds.- 4.2.2 Context.- 4.2.3 Abstract and Concrete Norms.- 4.2.4 Rules.- 4.2.5 Roles.- 4.3 Norms and the BDI Cycle.- 4.4 Enforcing and Following Norms. Police Agents.- 4.5 Summary.- 5 A Multi-Layered Framework for Organizations.- 5.1 Creating E-Organizations.- 5.1.1 Using Norms inside E-Organizations.- 5.1.2 Four Levels of Abstraction.- 5.2 The Abstract Level: Statutes, Objectives, Values and Norms.- 5.2.1 From Values to Norms.- 5.2.2 Representing Norms.- 5.3 The Concrete Level: from Abstract Norms to Concrete Norms.- 5.3.1 Sources of Abstraction.- 5.3.2 Limitations of Norms.- 5.4 The Rule Level: Translating Norms into Rules.- 5.5 The Procedure Level.- 5.6 Policies.- 5.7 Role Hierarchy.- 5.8 Ontologies.- 5.9 Influence of the E-Organization’s Context. Regulations.- 5.10 Influence of the Background Knowledge.- 5.11 Creating Electronic Institutions.- 5.12 Summary.- 6 Applying HARMONÍA to the Organ and Tissue Allocation Problem.- 6.1 The Abstract Level in CARREL.- 6.1.1 Defining ONT Statutes.- 6.1.2 Defining the Abstract Norms.- 6.1.3 Summary: the Abstract Level in CARREL.- 6.2 Role Hierarchy and Goal Distribution.- 6.3 The Concrete Level in CARREL.- 6.3.1 The Organ and Tissue Allocation Policies.- 6.3.2 The Security Policy.- 6.3.3 Summary: the Concrete Level in CARREL.- 6.4 The Rule Level in CARREL.- 6.4.1 The Organ and Tissue Allocation Policies.- 6.4.2 The Security Policy.- 6.4.3 Violations and Sanctions.- 6.4.4 Summary: the Rule Level in CARREL.- 6.5 The Procedure Level in CARREL.- 6.5.1 Implementation Decisions.- 6.5.2 Refining the Role Hierarchy.- 6.5.3 Refining the Violations and Sanctions.- 6.5.4 The Procedure Level in ISLANDER.- 6.6 Summary.- 7 Conclusions.- 7.1 Our Proposal of a New Framework.- 7.2 Original Contributions.- 7.2.1 Distinction between Normative and Operational.- 7.2.2 Normative Systems and Contexts.- 7.2.3 New Terminology.- 7.2.4 Connection between Formal Specification and Agent Implemen-tation.- 7.2.5 Norm Enforcement as Detecting Illegal Worlds.- 7.3 Ongoing Work.- 7.3.1 Definition of a Modular Architecture for E-Organizations.- 7.3.2 Creation of Tools for E-Organizations.- 7.3.3 Testing the Framework in New Domains.- 7.4 Suggestions for Further Research.- III Appendix and Bibliography.- A Medical Data Protection and the Internet.- A.1 Medicine, Information Technology and Privacy.- A.2 Advantages of Electronic Formats for Medical Data.- A.3 Requirements to be Fulfilled.- A.3.1 Requirements from the Medical Community.- A.3.2 Law-Enforced Requirements.- A.4 Privacy and Security of Electronic Medical Data.- A.5 Security Measures for Medical Information Systems.- A.6 Desirable Characteristics of a Medical Information System.- A.7 The New Users of Medical Data.- A.8 Summary.- B The UCTx System.- B.1 Creating a Multi-Agent System for a Hospital’s Transplant Unit.- B.2 An Example: The Cornea Transplantation.- B.3 Summary.- List of Acronyms.- Authors Index.