AN AGENT-BASED APPROACH TO DAM MONITORING

Software agents - autonomous, mobile and intelligent software programs - provide all the necessary characteristics to innovate and accelerate the development of distributed applications. They represent powerful and robust software technology for implementing distributed collaborative work flows and complex interaction. Applying software agents, the Institute of Computational Engineering, in cooperation with the Ruhrverband (Ruhr River Association) is taking an innovative approach to develop a modern dam monitoring system, which is capable of supporting the collaborative work of experts involved in monitoring. While the conventional computer-based monitoring systems consider the remote monitoring, the presentation and the electronic transfer of measured data, the present agent-based approach is focusing the distributed work flow of data analysis and safety assessment. Consequently, the complete work flow of dam monitoring is mapped onto a multi-agent system: regularly performed tasks (e.g. measuring at the dam) are carried out by task-oriented agents. In addition, the involved human experts are assisted by personal agents, which allow a direct communication with the multiagent system and provide access to specific tasks. Associated with the known advantages of the agent technology, such as robustness and mobility, the introduced concept is a significant enhancement compared to conventional monitoring applications. The present paper gives a short introduction to dam monitoring, outlines the selected design of the agent-based dam monitoring system and provides an insight into the current implementation. It is to be pointed out that the realization is still incomplete and a matter of research.