Research activity in 1999
In the course of 1999 the research activity was organized along three themes: in all of them agent based modeling and implementation techniques were adopted to obtain adaptivity and configurability. This specific research effort was funded by the national (MURST) project: Intelligent Agents: Interaction and Knowledge Acquisition.
First, the research activity concerned the conceptual framework supporting the design of coordination mechanisms and the improvement of the related prototypes.
In this framework, the main focus was on mechanisms supporting “awareness”, that is, the part of communication devoted to the sharing of information about the current work situation among the cooperative actors. More specifically, the problem of reconciling the different conceptual schemes people use in their work was considered. In fact, a serious difficulty arises in communication when cooperative actors refers to those schemes in their communication.
Unlike more widespread approaches, the problem was attacked by avoiding to construct a single integrated scheme. Instead, the solution was sought for by letting actors to define correspondences among the involved entities and their relations. From this basic information, the mechanism reformulates the communication content by means of rules that take into account the structure of the original schemes.. This approach is coherent with the principles on which the notion of awareness is rooted. In fact, through the use of the mechanism actors can improve their mutual awareness for what concerns the mentioned type of information, in an incremental learning process.
As for all coordination mechanisms, awareness mechanisms have to be versatile and incrementally specified by the actors themselves. To this aim a prototype, called RECONCILER, was implemented: it provides them with a suitable framework where reconciliation can happen in an interactive way.
A second research activity was devoted to the application of a model of distributed control previously defined to the simulation of phenomena connected with percolation in physical systems.
The model, based on the reaction-diffusion metaphor, was applied to the case of the pesticide percolation to evaluate the related impacts on the pollution of the soil.
This activity was conducted in cooperation with the University of Milano-Bicocca. Where the realated prototype was developed.
The third research activity was in the framework of adaptable WEB based systems. Here, the focus was on techniques devoted to the personalization of product selection and presentation in virtual stores. Two application domains were considered: telecommunication products in a project funded by Telecom-Italia leading to a prototype called SETA, and financial products in a project funded by SEP-San Paolo-IMI: the related prototype is under development.
1999 Publications
Simone, C., G. Mark, and D. Giubbilei: Interoperability as a means of articulation work. In Joint ACM Conference on Work Activities and Collaboration - WACC'99, San Francisco, USA. ACM Press, 1999, pp. 39-48.
Bandini, S., G.Mauri, G.Pavesi, C.Simone, A Parallel Model Based on Cellular Automata for the Simulation of Pesticide Percolation in the Soil, In V. Malyshkin (Ed.), Parallel Computing Technologies, Lecture Notes in Computer Science Vol. 1662, Springer Verlag, Belin, 1999, pp.383-394
L. Ardissono, A. Goy, R. Meo, G. Petrone, L. Console, L. Lesmo, C. Simone, P. Torasso, A configurable system for the construction of adaptive virtual stores, World Wide Web , 2-3, pp.143-159, 1999
Bandini, S., G.Mauri, G.Pavesi, C.Simone, A Parallel Model Based on Cellular Automata for the Simulation of Pesticide Percolation in the Soil, (extended version), in Annual Deliverable of the Project: Intelligent Agents: Interaction and Knowledge Acquisition, pp. 85-95 (in press: Future GenerationComputing Systems Journal - Special Issue on "Parallel Computing Technologies
M. Divitini, C.Simone, Supporting different dimensions of adaptability in workflow modeling, in Annual Deliverable of the Project: Intelligent Agents: Interaction and Knowledge Acquisition, pp. 51-84 (in press, CSCW: an International Journal - Special Issue on 'Adaptive Workflow Systems')
