This note (motivated by the STSM at the Imperial College London), is devoted to combining ontologically demarcated information with the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP; [4]) for assessment of o ers during contract negotiations. The AHP is widely used [1], while an attempt at combining it with ontologies was reported in [3]. Here, the context for the AHP method is provided by the Agents in Grid project (AiG; [5]), aiming at development of an agent-based infrastructure for resource management in the Grid where agents negotiate (1) joining a team to earn money, or (2) nding a team to execute a job, and ontologically described contracts result from autonomous negotiations. Therefore, multicriterial (AHP-based) assessment of proposals may be used to reach an agreement. Here, we consider how the AHP method can be used to assess ontologically described contract proposals in the AiG use case.
3 5 1
delay leadTime Penalty leadTime delay Penalty 1 deadline
Penalty payment Conditions jobExecution Timeline 1 3 deadlinePenalty
leadTime delayPenalty jobExecutionTimeline is 0.75, delay penalty is 0.25, deadline penalty 0.2, payment conditions 0.68 and job execution timeline 0.12. Next, for every alternative, an evaluation matrix is created, estimating badness of an alternative for the user (expert) for a given criteria; found in the next two tables.
Results for alternatives 1-2 are 2.7 and 1.3 and alternative 1 is the winner. We have demonstrated, how to utilize the AHP method to compare ontologically described o ers. A full graph of the ontological contract, would result in Saaty's hierarchy with more levels, and more elements on each level. Moreover, the method should be able to deal with arbitrary large structures, and knowledge of multiple experts captured as comparison matrices.