Agent mediated electronic market enhanced with ontology matching services and emergent social networks

Abstract

Agent technology has been applied in e-commerce to help coping with problems that arise due to its rapid growth. However, despite the amount of research in this area, the level of automation achieved is still limited. This is mainly due to the natural diversity existent in e-commerce environments, where agents may possess different conceptualizations about their needs and capabilities, giving rise to interoperability issues. In this paper we approach this problem and present the AEMOS system as a possible solution. AEMOS is an agent-based e-commerce platform that includes ontology matching services facilitating the interoperability between agents that have different conceptualizations about the same domain of knowledge. The system also explores emergent social networks in order to improve its efficiency by enhancing its ontology matching services and supporting agents in their decisions. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2013.