MANET: A Model for First-Class Electronic Institutions

In this paper we present a new approach to model electronic institutions (EIs) that are situated in agent environments where heterogeneous agents reside. An EI is seen here as an entity that is deployed within an environment infrastructure that directly mediates the agents' interaction. The environment allows the rules of the EIs, in terms of powers, permissions and obligations to be perceivable as first class entities by the agents belonging to the institution. We express EIs as first class abstractions that can be inspected, manipulated and modified, created and destroyed by the agents populating the agent environment where the institution resides. To represent the EIs we utilize the Object Event Calculus (OEC) formalism that deals with the evolution of complex structures in time and we extend it to deal with the mediation of the events and with the perception of complex structures and events within institutions. We use an e-Health marketplace scenario based on Dutch auctions to illustrate the properties of our model.

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