The Role of Norms and Electronic Institutions in Multi-Agent Systems : The HarmonIA Framework

The design of multi-agent systems in complex, open environments can benefit from social abstractions in order to cope with problems in coordination, cooperation and trust among agents, problems which are also present in human societies. This book presents HARMONIA, a new framework for electronic organizations that defines a multi-level structure, from the most abstract level of the normative system to the final multi-agent implementation. Applications include scenarios such as electronic health care and e-government.