Agreement Technologies

More and more transactions, whether in business or related to leisure activities, are mediated automatically by computers and computer networks, and this trend is having a significant impact on the conception and design of new computer applications. The next generation of these applications will be based on software agents to which increasingly complex tasks can be delegated, and which interact with each other in sophisticated ways so as to forge agreements in the interest of their human users. The wide variety of technologies supporting this vision is the subject of this volume. It summarises the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action project on Agreement Technologies (AT), during which approximately 200 researchers from 25 European countries, along with eight institutions from non-COST countries, cooperated as part of a number of working groups. The book is the first to provide a comprehensive overview of the emerging field of Agreement Technologies, written and coordinated by the leading researchers in the field. The results set out here are due for wide dissemination beyond the computer technology sector, involving law and social science as well.


Sascha Ossowski is a Full Professor of Computer Science and the Director of the Centre for Intelligent Information Technologies (CETINIA) at University Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid. Formerly, he was an HCM/TMR research fellow at the AI Department of Technical University of Madrid. He obtained his MSc degree in Informatics from the University of Oldenburg (Germany) in 1993, and received a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from UPM in 1997. Prof. Ossowski is holding several research grants in the field of advanced software systems, funded by the European Commission and the Spanish Government. He has authored more than 150 research papers, focusing on the application of Artificial Intelligence techniques to real world problems such as transportation management, m-Health, or e-Commerce. Recently, he has been particularly active in the field of Multiagent Systems and the Semantic Web. He is co-editor of more than 20 books, proceedings, and special issues of international journals. He is chair of the COST Action on Agreement Technologies, chairs the Board of Directors of the European Association for Multiagent Systems (EURAMAS), and is a member of the steering committee of the ACM Annual Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC). He also serves as a member of the editorial board for several international journals, and acts as programme committee member for numerous international conferences and workshops.