Environmental Management of Water Data in EU Using Agent Technology

摘要

A development of a data exchange application for inland water, based on intelligent agent technology is outlined. The development is performed in the framework of the Environmental Data Exchange Network for Inland Water (EDEN-IW) shared cost action, sponsored by DG Information Society. The similarities between human communication and agent communication are shown. The agent communication is based on the FIPA (Foundation of Physical Intelligent Agents) specifications, and the technology platform chosen is based on the JADE (Java Agent Development Framework) open source software. The definition of use cases based on user types as researchers, legislators, and policy-makers lead to application configurations with different agent types. For the use case relevant to policy makers, agents dealing with decision support are essential. The use of agents in this area is novel, and a significant part of the project is to transfer the concepts of decision support systems into the technology of independent agents. Such agents allows a richer communication between agents and between user and databases, which should make the decision process more realistic.