Multi Agent Systems as Open Societies - A Design Framework

We propose a Society Level view (SoL) of Multi Agent Systems. The purposes of a SoL approach are to give: Firstly, a basis for a principled design methodology of industry-scale multi agent systems based on, and extending, the CommonKADS methodology. Secondly, a structure-preserving mapping of the Society Level onto emergent technologies for distributed components and network-centric computations. This mapping will provide us with a semantic grounding of concepts at the Society Level. Thirdly, a framework for assessment of techniques and methodologies as well as of foundations of multi agent systems.