Abstract
We propose an electronic institution approach to build a virtual market as an open multi-agent system that handles several negotiation protocols in a coherent and flexible fashion. This proposal has been inspired by the work in mWater, which is developed as a regulated environment where autonomous agents trade rights for the use of water in a closed basin. We also present a generic negotiation framework that is enabled with tools to specify performance indicators, to spawn agent populations and allow humans, as well as software agents, to participate in simulations of water-right virtual trading. This demonstrates an interesting aid for data organisation, and for communication and negotiation among the different stakeholders of a basin.
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Notes
- 1.
At a glance, a performative structure represents complex interaction models and procedural prescriptions. The dynamic execution is modeled trough arcs and transitions, by which the different participating roles of the institution may navigate synchronously (AND transitions) or asynchronously (OR/XOR transitions). See Arcos et al. (2005) for further details on this type of notation.
- 2.
In our current implementation, these additional decision points rely on a random basis, but we want to extend them to include other issues such as short-term planning, trust, argumentation and ethical values.
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Acknowledgements
This work was partially funded by the Consolider AT project CSD2007-0022 INGENIO 2010 of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation; the MICINN project TIN2011-27652-C03-01; and the Valencian Prometeo project 2008/051.
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Garrido, A., Giret, A., Botti, V., Noriega, P. (2013). mWater, a Case Study for Modeling Virtual Markets. In: Ossowski, S. (eds) Agreement Technologies. Law, Governance and Technology Series, vol 8. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5583-3_33
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