Multi-agent systems (MASs) provide powerful models for representing both real-world systems and applications with an appropriate degree of complexity and dynamics. Several research and industrial experiences have already shown that the use of MASs offers advantages in a wide range of application domains (e.g. financial, economic, social, logistic, chemical, engineering). When MASs represent software applications to be effectively delivered, they need to be validated and evaluated before their deployment and execution, thus methodologies that support validation and evaluation through simulation of the MAS under development are highly required. In other emerging areas (e.g. ACE, ACF), MASs are designed for representing systems at different levels of complexity through the use of autonomous, goal-driven and interacting entities organized into societies which exhibit emergent properties The agent-based model of a system can then be executed to simulate the behavior of the complete system so that knowledge of the behaviors of the entities (micro-level) produce an understanding of the overall outcome at the system-level (macro-level). In both cases (MASs as software applications and MASs as models for the analysis of complex systems), simulation plays a crucial role which needs to be further investigated.
This is the fourth edition of MAS&S. The first edition was jointly held with EUROSIS ISC 2006
(Industrial Simulation Conference), June 5-7, 2006, Palermo, Italy [
MAS&S was conceived for stimulating discussion among researchers and practitioners working on ABS and AOSE, to enable the identification and the definition of methodologies and techniques for integrating them.
Juan Antonio Bot´ıa Blaya Paul Davidson Paolo Giorgini Samer Hassan Vincent Hilaire Franziska Kl u¨gl Adolfo L o´pez-Paredes Muaz Niazi Michael J. North Andrea Omicini Paolo Petta Gauthier Picard Se´bastien Picault Luca Sabatucci Valeria Seidita Pietro Terna Erwan Tranvouez Giuseppe Vizzari
Giancarlo Fortino Juan Pavo´ n Marie-Pierre Gleizes Wilma Russo
Universidad de Murcia, Spain Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden Universita` di Trento, Italy Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain Universite´ de Belfort-Montbe´liard, France O¨rebro Universitet, Sweden University of Valladolid, Spain Foundation University, Pakistan Argonne National Laboratory, USA Universita` di Bologna, Italy OFAI, Austria ENSM, Saint-Etienne, France LIFL, Lille, France ITC-irst, FBK, Italy Universita` degli Studi di Palermo, Italy Universita` di Torino, Italy LSIS, France Universita` di Milano Bicocca, Italy
University of Calabria, Italy Universidad Complutense Madrid, Spain IRIT - Universite´ Paul Sabatier, France University of Calabria, Italy
III. LIST OF PAPERS • The Impact of Market Preferences on the Evolution of Market Price and Product Quality by Hongliang Liu, Enda Howley, and Jim Duggan • Learning Virtual Agents for Decision-Making in Business Simulators
by Javier Garcia, Fernando Borrajo, and Fernando Fernandez • Looking for the Self-fulfilling Prophecy Effect in a Double Auction Artificial Stock Market by Albert Meco, Javier Arroyo, Juan Pav o´n, and Javier Pajares • BDI Agents with Fuzzy Perception for Simulating Decision Making in Environments with Imperfect Information by Giovani Farias, Grac¸aliz Dimuro, and Antonio Carlos Costa • When Will I See you Again: Modelling the Influence of Social Networks on Social Activities by Nicole Ronald, Virginia Dignum, and Catholijn Jonker • Human Behaviours Simulation in Ubiquitous Computing Environments
by Teresa Garc´ıa-Valverde, Francisco Campuzano, Emilio Serrano, and Juan A. Bot´ıa • A Survey on Coordination Methodologies for Simulated Robotic Soccer Teams by Fernando Almeida, Nuno Lau, and Luis Paulo Reis • ELDAMeth: A Methodology for Simulation-based Prototyping of Distributed Agent Systems by Giancarlo Fortino and Wilma Russo • Design and Simulation of a Wave-like Self-Organization Strategy for Resource-Flow Systems by Jan Sudeikat, Jan-Philipp Stegh o¨fer, Hella Seebach, Wolfgang Reif, Wolfgang Renz, Thomas
• Generating Inspiration for Multi-Agent Simulation Design by Q-Learning by Robert Junges and Franziska Kl u¨gl
Alfredo Garro has partially been funded by the Department of Electronics, Informatics and Systems (DEIS), University of Calabria, Italy.
Jorge J. Gomez-Sanz has partially been funded by the the project Agent-based Modelling and Simulation of Complex Social Systems (SiCoSSys), supported by Spanish Council for Science and Innovation, with grant TIN2008-06464-C03-01, and by the Programa de Creaci o`n y Consolidaci o`n de Grupos de Investigacio` n UCM-Banco Santander for the group number 921354 (GRASIA group).
The workshop organizers would like to thank the MALLOW organizers (Olivier Boissier, Amal El Fallah Seghrouchni, Salima Hassas, and Nicolas Maudet, ) for their endless support in making possible the organization of the 4rd edition of MAS&S in MALLOW and the chair sponsorships for financial funding.