Architecture of the integrated ontology and multi-agent system

Abstract

In this chapter, we explore the architecture of the integrated ontology and multi-agent system. The ontology provides an important mechanism to facilitate producing semantic information. Since the ontology has been used to express formally a shared understanding of information, it enables the sharing of an agreement among users by making assumptions explicit. The key idea is to have agreement explicitly interpreted by software tools rather than just being implicitly interpreted by a human. The representation of knowledge including ideas, tasks, models, processes as well as documentation using an ontology and sub-ontology, will provide intuitive, clear, precise concepts and ideas, knowledge and classified issues. Knowledge is organised into the ontology and used as the basis for classifying knowledge enabling questions and problem solving. Additionally, knowledge can be shared among users in community. A framework showing the use of ontologies in conjunction with multi-agent system is given in Figure 10.1. © 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.