The main aim of transport stakeholders has always been to transport freight efficiently, as this efficiency contributes to the growth and success of their business. A country like Namibia is no different as the efficiency of transport lies in the effective utilisation of carrier capacity in any direction. Due to the various types of freight, transport operators rarely have the capacity to cover all freight movement requests. This research put the empty runs experienced by most of the Namibian transporters at 33%. Empty runs could however be reduced through collaboration and sharing of capacity among transport stakeholders. Multi-agent systems (MAS) are various individual computer agents that are configured independently to interact with other agents to achieve one goal. These systems have been explored as an approach to achieve collaboration among transporter stakeholders. Taking into consideration the characteristics and requirements of MAS, this research was able to conduct a feasibility of its implementation within Namibia. Concluding with an evaluation of available Multi-agent based systems that could achieve collaboration and reduce empty runs in the Namibian transport environment. / Information Science / M. Tech. (Information Technology)

Simulation has been used to model combat for a long time. Recently, it has been accepted that combat is a complex adaptive system (CAS). Multi-agent systems (MAS) are also considered as a powerful modelling and development environment to simulate combat. Agent-based distillations (ABD) - proposed by the US Marine Corp - are a type of MAS used mainly by the military for exploring large scenario spaces. ABDs that facilitated the analysis and understanding of combat include: ISAAC, EINSTein, MANA, CROCADILE and BactoWars. With new concepts such as networked forces, previous ABDs can implicitly simulate a networked force. However, the architectures of these systems limit the potential advantages gained from the use of networks. In this thesis, a novel network centric multi-agent architecture (NCMAA) is pro-posed, based purely on network theory and CAS. In NCMAA, each relationship and interaction is modelled as a network, with the entities or agents as the nodes. NCMAA offers the following advantages: 1. An explicit model of interactions/relationships: it facilitates the analysis of the role of interactions/relationships in simulations; 2. A mechanism to capture the interaction or influence between networks; 3. A formal real-time reasoning framework at the network level in ABDs: it interprets the emergent behaviours online. For a long time, it has been believed that it is hard in CAS to reason about emerging phenomena. In this thesis, I show that despite being almost impossible to reason about the behaviour of the system by looking at the components alone because of high nonlinearity, it is possible to reason about emerging phenomena by looking at the network level. This is undertaken through analysing network dynamics, where I provide an English-like reasoning log to explain the simulation. Two implementations of a new land-combat system called the Warfare Intelligent System for Dynamic Optimization of Missions (WISDOM) are presented. WISDOM-I is built based on the same principles as those in existing ABDs while WISDOM-II is built based on NCMAA. The unique features of WISDOM-II include: 1. A real-time network analysis toolbox: it captures patterns while interaction is evolving during the simulation; 2. Flexible C3 (command, control and communication) models; I 3. Integration of tactics with strategies: the tactical decisions are guided by the strategic planning; 4. A model of recovery: it allows users to study the role of recovery capability and resources; 5. Real-time visualization of all possible information: it allows users to intervene during the simulation to steer it differently in human-in-the-loop simulations. A comparison between the fitness landscapes of WISDOM-I and II reveals similarities and differences, which emphasise the importance and role of the networked architecture and the addition of strategic planning. Lastly but not least, WISDOM-II is used in an experiment with two setups, with and without strategic planning in different urban terrains. When the strategic planning was removed, conclusions were similar to traditional ABDs but were very different when the system ran with strategic planning. As such, I show that results obtained from traditional ABDs - where rational group planning is not considered - can be misleading. Finally, the thesis tests and demonstrates the role of communication in urban ter-rains. As future warfighting concepts tend to focus on asymmetric warfare in urban environments, it was vital to test the role of networked forces in these environments. I demonstrate that there is a phase transition in a number of situations where highly dense urban terrains may lead to similar outcomes as open terrains, while medium to light dense urban terrains have different dynamics

La gestió de l'aigua residual és una tasca complexa. Hi ha moltes substàncies contaminants conegudes però encara moltes per conèixer, i el seu efecte individual o col·lgectiu és difícil de predir. La identificació i avaluació dels impactes ambientals resultants de la interacció entre els sistemes naturals i socials és un assumpte multicriteri. Els gestors ambientals necessiten eines de suport pels seus diagnòstics per tal de solucionar problemes ambientals.Les contribucions d'aquest treball de recerca són dobles: primer, proposar l'ús d'un enfoc basat en la modelització amb agents per tal de conceptualitzar i integrar tots els elements que estan directament o indirectament involucrats en la gestió de l'aigua residual. Segon, proposar un marc basat en l'argumentació amb l'objectiu de permetre als agents raonar efectivament. La tesi conté alguns exemples reals per tal de mostrar com un marc basat amb agents que argumenten pot suportar diferents interessos i diferents perspectives. Conseqüentment, pot ajudar a construir un diàleg més informat i efectiu i per tant descriure millor les interaccions entre els agents. En aquest document es descriu primer el context estudiat, escalant el problema global de la gestió de la conca fluvial a la gestiódel sistema urbà d'aigües residuals, concretament l'escenari dels abocaments industrials. A continuació, s'analitza el sistema mitjançant la descripció d'agents que interaccionen. Finalment, es descriuen alguns prototips capaços de raonar i deliberar, basats en la lògica no monòtona i en un llenguatge declaratiu (answer set programming).És important remarcar que aquesta tesi enllaça dues disciplines: l'enginyeria ambiental (concretament l'àrea de la gestió de les aigües residuals) i les ciències de la computació (concretament l'àrea de la intel·ligència artificial), contribuint així a la multidisciplinarietat requerida per fer front al problema estudiat. L'enginyeria ambiental ens proporciona el coneixement del domini mentre que les ciències de la computació ens permeten estructurar i especificar aquest coneixement. / Wastewater management is a very complex task. There is a high number of known and an increasing number of unknown pollutants whose individual and collective effects are very difficult to predict. Identifying and evaluating the impacts of environmental problems resulting from the interactions between our social system and its natural environment is a multifaceted critical issue. Environmental managers require tools to support their diagnoses for solving these problems. The contributions of this research work are twofold: first, to propose the use of an agent-based modelling approach in order to conceptualize and integrate all elements that are directly or indirectly involved in wastewater management. Second, to propose a framework based on argumentation that allows to reason effectively. The thesis provide some real examples to show that an agent-based argumentation framework can deal with multiple interests and different agents' perspectives and goals. This help to build a more effective and informed dialog in order to better describe the interaction between agents. In this document we first describe the context under study, scaling down the global river basins system to the urban wastewater systems and giving some more details for the specific scenario of industrial wastewater discharges. Then, we analyze the system in describing intelligent agents that interact. Finally, we propose some reasoning and deliberation prototypes by using an argumentation framework founded on non-monotonic logics (i.e. permitting to learn things that were previously not known) and the answer set programming specification language (i.e. a declarative programming language). It is important to remark that this thesis links two disciplines: environmental engineering (specifically the area of wastewater management) and computer science (specifically the area of artificial intelligence), contributing to the required multidsciplinarity needed to confront the complexity of the problem under study. From environmental engineering we obtain the domain knowledge whereas the computer science field permits us to structure and specify this knowledge.

Over the past few years, mining data located in heterogeneous and geographically distributed sites have been designated as one of the key important issues. Loading distributed data into centralized location for mining interesting rules is not a good approach. This is because it violates common issues such as data privacy and it imposes network overheads. The situation becomes worse when the network has limited bandwidth which is the case in most of the real time systems. This has prompted the need for intelligent data analysis to discover the hidden information in these huge amounts of distributed databases. In this research, we present an incremental approach for building an efficient Multi-Agent based algorithm for mining real world databases in geographically distributed sites. First, we propose the Distributed Multi-Agent Association Rules algorithm (DMAAR) to minimize the all-to-all broadcasting between distributed sites. Analytical calculations show that DMAAR reduces the algorithm complexity and minimizes the message communication cost. The proposed Multi-Agent based algorithm complies with the Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA), which is considered as the global standards in communication between agents, thus, enabling the proposed algorithm agents to cooperate with other standard agents. Second, the BitTable Multi-Agent Association Rules algorithm (BMAAR) is proposed. BMAAR includes an efficient BitTable data structure which helps in compressing the database thus can easily fit into the memory of the local sites. It also includes two BitWise AND/OR operations for quick candidate itemsets generation and support counting. Moreover, the algorithm includes three transaction trimming techniques to reduce the size of the mined data. Third, we propose the Pruning Multi-Agent Association Rules algorithm (PMAAR) which includes three candidate itemsets pruning techniques for reducing the large number of generated candidate itemsets, consequently, reducing the total time for the mining process. The proposed PMAAR algorithm has been compared with existing Association Rules algorithms against different benchmark datasets and has proved to have better performance and execution time. Moreover, PMAAR has been implemented on real world distributed medical databases obtained from more than one hospital in Egypt to discover the hidden Association Rules in patients' records to demonstrate the merits and capabilities of the proposed model further. Medical data was anonymously obtained without the patients' personal details. The analysis helped to identify the existence or the absence of the disease based on minimum number of effective examinations and tests. Thus, the proposed algorithm can help in providing accurate medical decisions based on cost effective treatments, improving the medical service for the patients, reducing the real time response for the health system and improving the quality of clinical decision making.

Η πληροφοριακή υπερφόρτωση των χρηστών αποτελεί βασικό πρόβλημα ενός οργανισμού. Η συσσώρευση μεγάλου όγκου πληροφορίας στα πληροφοριακά συστήματα, προκαλεί στους χρήστες άγχος και υπερένταση, με αποτέλεσμα να δυσχεραίνει την ικανότητά τους για λήψη αποφάσεων. Λόγω αυτού, η επίδραση της πληροφοριακής υπερφόρτωσης στους οργανισμούς είναι καταστροφική και απαιτείται η αντιμετώπισή της. Υπάρχουν διάφοροι τρόποι αντιμετώπισης της πληροφοριακής υπερφόρτωσης όπως τα συστήματα υποστήριξης λήψης αποφάσεων, τα συστήματα φιλτραρίσματος πληροφορίας, οι αποθήκες δεδομένων και άλλες τεχνικές της εξόρυξης δεδομένων και της τεχνητής νοημοσύνης, όπως είναι οι ευφυείς πράκτορες. Οι ευφυείς πράκτορες αποτελούν εφαρμογές που εφάπτονται της τεχνικής νοημοσύνης, οι οποίες έχουν την ικανότητα να δρουν αυτόνομα, συλλέγοντας πληροφορίες, εκπαιδεύοντας τον εαυτό τους και επικοινωνώντας με τον χρήστη και μεταξύ τους. Συχνά, υλοποιούνται πολυπρακτορικά συστήματα προκει-μένου να επιλυθεί ένα πρόβλημα του οργανισμού. Στόχος τους είναι να διευκολύνουν τη λήψη αποφάσεων των χρηστών, προτείνοντας πληροφορίες βάσει των προτιμήσεών τους. Ο σκοπός της παρούσας διπλωματικής εργασίας είναι να αναλύσει σε βάθος τους ευφυείς πράκτορες, σαν μία αποτελεσματική μέθοδο αντιμετώπισης της πληροφοριακής υπερφόρτωσης, να προτείνει πειραματικούς πράκτορες προτά-σεων και να εξετάσει επιτυχημένες υλοποιήσεις. Συγκεκριμένα, παρουσιάζεται ένα ευφυές σύστημα διδασκαλίας για την ενίσχυση του e-Learning/e-Teaching, προτείνεται ένα σύστημα πρακτόρων για τον οργανισμό Flickr, ενώ εξετάζεται το σύστημα προτάσεων του Last.fm και ο αλγόριθμος προτάσεων του Amazon. Τέλος, αναλύεται μια πειραματική έρευνα ενός ευφυούς πράκτορα προτάσεων, ο οποίος αντιμετώπισε με επιτυχία την αντιληπτή πληροφοριακή υπερφόρτωση των χρηστών ενός θεωρητικού ηλεκτρονικού καταστήματος. Τα αποτελέσματα του πειράματος παρουσίασαν την επίδραση της αντιληπτής πληροφοριακής υπερφόρτωσης και του φορτίου πληροφορίας στην ποιότητα επιλογής, στην εμπιστοσύνη επιλογής και στην αντιληπτή αλληλεπίδραση μεταξύ ηλεκτρονικού καταστήματος και χρήστη, ενώ παρατηρήθηκε η καθοριστική συμβολή της χρήσης των ευφυών πρακτόρων στην αντιμετώπιση της πληροφοριακής υπερφόρτωσης. / -

La gestió de xarxes és un camp molt ampli i inclou molts aspectes diferents. Aquesta tesi doctoral està centrada en la gestió dels recursos en les xarxes de banda ampla que disposin de mecanismes per fer reserves de recursos, com per exemple Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) o Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS). Es poden establir xarxes lògiques utilitzant els Virtual Paths (VP) d'ATM o els Label Switched Paths (LSP) de MPLS, als que anomenem genèricament camins lògics. Els usuaris de la xarxa utilitzen doncs aquests camins lògics, que poden tenir recursos assignats, per establir les seves comunicacions. A més, els camins lògics són molt flexibles i les seves característiques es poden canviar dinàmicament. Aquest treball, se centra, en particular, en la gestió dinàmica d'aquesta xarxa lògica per tal de maximitzar-ne el rendiment i adaptar-la a les connexions ofertes.En aquest escenari, hi ha diversos mecanismes que poden afectar i modificar les característiques dels camins lògics (ample de banda, ruta, etc.). Aquests mecanismes inclouen els de balanceig de la càrrega (reassignació d'ample de banda i reencaminament) i els de restauració de fallades (ús de camins lògics de backup). Aquests dos mecanismes poden modificar la xarxa lògica i gestionar els recursos (ample de banda) dels enllaços físics. Per tant, existeix la necessitat de coordinar aquests mecanismes per evitar possibles interferències. La gestió de recursos convencional que fa ús de la xarxa lògica, recalcula periòdicament (per exemple cada hora o cada dia) tota la xarxa lògica d'una forma centralitzada. Això introdueix el problema que els reajustaments de la xarxa lògica no es realitzen en el moment en què realment hi ha problemes. D'altra banda també introdueix la necessitat de mantenir una visió centralitzada de tota la xarxa. En aquesta tesi, es proposa una arquitectura distribuïda basada en un sistema multi agent. L'objectiu principal d'aquesta arquitectura és realitzar de forma conjunta i coordinada la gestió de recursos a nivell de xarxa lògica, integrant els mecanismes de reajustament d'ample de banda amb els mecanismes de restauració preplanejada, inclosa la gestió de l'ample de banda reservada per a la restauració. Es proposa que aquesta gestió es porti a terme d'una forma contínua, no periòdica, actuant quan es detecta el problema (quan un camí lògic està congestionat, o sigui, quan està rebutjant peticions de connexió dels usuaris perquè està saturat) i d'una forma completament distribuïda, o sigui, sense mantenir una visió global de la xarxa. Així doncs, l'arquitectura proposada realitza petits rearranjaments a la xarxa lògica adaptant-la d'una forma contínua a la demanda dels usuaris. L'arquitectura proposada també té en consideració altres objectius com l'escalabilitat, la modularitat, la robustesa, la flexibilitat i la simplicitat.El sistema multi agent proposat està estructurat en dues capes d'agents: els agents de monitorització (M) i els de rendiment (P). Aquests agents estan situats en els diferents nodes de la xarxa: hi ha un agent P i diversos agents M a cada node; aquests últims subordinats als P. Per tant l'arquitectura proposada es pot veure com una jerarquia d'agents. Cada agent és responsable de monitoritzar i controlar els recursos als que està assignat. S'han realitzat diferents experiments utilitzant un simulador distribuït a nivell de connexió proposat per nosaltres mateixos. Els resultats mostren que l'arquitectura proposada és capaç de realitzar les tasques assignades de detecció de la congestió, reassignació dinàmica d'ample de banda i reencaminament d'una forma coordinada amb els mecanismes de restauració preplanejada i gestió de l'ample de banda reservat per la restauració. L'arquitectura distribuïda ofereix una escalabilitat i robustesa acceptables gràcies a la seva flexibilitat i modularitat. / Network management is a wide field including many different topics. This thesis focuses on resource management of broadband networks that have the mechanisms for performing resource reservation, such as Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) or Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS). Logical networks can be established by using Virtual Paths (VP) in ATM or Label Switched Paths (LSP) in MPLS, which we call generically Logical Paths (LP). The network users then use these LPs, which can have pre-reserved resources, to establish their communications. Moreover, LPs are very flexible and their characteristics can be dynamically changed. This work focuses, in particular, on the dynamic management of these logical paths in order to maximise the network performance by adapting the logical network to the offered connections.In this scenario, there are several mechanisms that can affect and modify certain features of the LPs (bandwidth, route, etc.). They include load balancing mechanisms (bandwidth reallocation and re-routing) and fault restoration (utilisation of backup LPs). These two mechanisms can modify the logical network and manage the resources (bandwidth) of the physical links. Therefore, due to possible interferences, there is a need to co-ordinate these mechanisms. Conventional resource management, using a logical network, performs a centralised recalculation of the whole logical network periodically (e.g. every hour / day). This brings the problem that the logical network readjustments do not happen when a problem occurs. Moreover, there is a need of maintaining a centralised network overview. In this thesis, a distributed architecture, based on a Multi-Agent System (MAS), is proposed. The main objective of this architecture is to perform joint resource management at a logical network level, integrating the bandwidth reallocation and LP re-routing with pre-planned restoration and spare bandwidth management. This is performed continuously, not periodically, when a problem is detected (an LP is congested, i.e. it is rejecting new user connections because it is already saturated with user connections) in a completely distributed way, i.e. without any central network overview. Therefore, the proposed architecture performs small rearrangements in the logical network and thus it is continuously being adapted to the user demands. The proposed architecture also considers other objectives, such as scalability, modularity, robustness, simplicity and flexibility. The proposed MAS is structured in two layers of agents: The network Monitoring (M) agents and the Performance (P) agents. All these agents are situated at different network nodes, where the computing facilities are. There is one P agent and several M agents on every node. The M agents are subordinated to the P agents, therefore the proposed architecture can be seen as a hierarchy of agents. Each agent is responsible for monitoring and controlling the resources they are assigned to. We have performed several experiments, using a connection level distributed simulator of our own design. The results show that our architecture is capable of performing the assigned tasks of detecting congestion, dynamic bandwidth reallocation and re-routing in a co-ordinated way with the pre-planned restoration and the spare capacity management. The distributed architecture offers a suitable scalability and robustness due to its flexibility and modularity.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T15:48:05Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 MarjoryCCA.pdf: 917121 bytes, checksum: 918ccb19adcf29ebd6cdbf1f3ac97310 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006-10-26 / Coordena??o de Aperfei?oamento de Pessoal de N?vel Superior / The use of multi-agent systems for classification tasks has been proposed in order to overcome some drawbacks of multi-classifier systems and, as a consequence, to improve performance of such systems. As a result, the NeurAge system was proposed. This system is composed by several neural agents which communicate and negotiate a common result for the testing patterns. In the NeurAge system, a negotiation method is very important to the overall performance of the system since the agents need to reach and agreement about a problem when there is a conflict among the agents. This thesis presents an extensive analysis of the NeurAge System where it is used all kind of classifiers. This systems is now named ClassAge System. It is aimed to analyze the reaction of this system to some modifications in its topology and configuration / A utiliza??o de sistemas baseados no paradigma dos agentes para resolu??o de problemas de reconhecimento de padr?es vem sendo propostos com o intuito de resolver, ou atenuar, o problema de tomada de decis?o centralizada dos sistemas multi-classificadores e, como consequ?ncia, melhorar sua capacidade de classifica??o. Com a inten??o de solucionar este problema, o Sistema NeurAge foi proposto. Este sistema ? composto por agentes neurais que podem se comunicar e negociar um resultado comum para padr?es de teste. No Sistema NeurAge, os m?todos de negocia??o s?o muito importantes para prover uma melhor precis?o ao sistema, pois os agentes necessitam alcan?ar a melhor solu??o e resolver conflitos, quando estes existem, em rela??o a um problema. Esta disserta??o apresenta uma extens?o do Sistema NeurAge que pode utilizar qualquer tipo de classificador e agora ser? chamado de Sistema ClassAge. Aqui ? feita uma an?lise do comportamento do Sistema ClassAge diante de v?rias modifica??es na topologia e nas configura??es dos componentes deste sistema

Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-17T14:52:45Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Yonara Magalhaes.pdf: 3488130 bytes, checksum: e183eccb37268ce608c84048d98d467a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2003-01-31 / Cooperative process of teach-learning at a distance of the society of intelligent agents of environment MATHNET. It is presented architecture of the society of agents of the MATHNET that to provide the process with teach-learning. It is in exchange for distinguished the Tutor Agent and the model of communication, based messages and that it uses the FIPA-ACL Agent Communication Language, between the Tutor Agent and excessively the participant agents of this society. The main characteristics and the paper (responsibilities) of the Tutor Agent describe. Its conceptual model is constructed. Its main Cases Use, interactions with several agents of this architecture and the protocols of communication of the Tutor Agent with the other agents are shaped. The Tutor Agent creates itself using a tool of construction of agents. One implements the Tutor Agent and its Cases Use to inside demonstrate to its relevance and importance of the system and the model of communication. / Processo de ensino-aprendizagem cooperativo à distância da sociedade de agentes inteligentes do ambiente MATHNET. Apresenta-se a arquitetura da sociedade de agentes do MATHNET que provê o processo de ensino-aprendizagem. Destaca-se o Agente Tutor e o modelo de comunicação, baseado em troca de mensagens e que utiliza a Linguagem de Comunicação FIPA-ACL, entre o Agente Tutor e os demais agentes participantes dessa sociedade. Descrevem-se as principais características e o papel (responsabilidades) do Agente Tutor. Constrói-se o seu modelo conceitual. Modelam-se os seus principais Casos de Uso, as interações com os demais agentes dessa arquitetura e os protocolos de comunicação do Agente Tutor com os outros agentes. Cria-se o Agente Tutor utilizando para isto uma ferramenta de construção de agentes. Implementa-se o Agente Tutor e seus Casos de Uso para demonstrar sua relevância e importância dentro do sistema e o modelo de comunicação aqui proposto.

Durant les dernières années, la taille des systèmes ainsi que leur complexité ont pas mal évolué, entrainant le besoin d'approches distribuées pour la commande et l'aide à la décision. Cette thèse porte sur la résolution d'un problème incluant une commande distribuée et une aide à la décision, l'allocation dynamique de ressource dans un réseau.Pour résoudre ce problème, nous avons étudié un algorithme basé sur un consensus qui ne nécessite pas de calcul centralisé, et qui soit capable de traiter des applications modélisées par des systèmes dynamiques ou par des fonctions sans mémoires. La principale contribution de ce travail de thèse est d'avoir prouvé, en utilisant des outils issus de la théorie des graphes etl'analyse de la passivité, que le contrôleur atteint la solution optimale de façon asymptotique, sans obligation d'avoir une information complète.Afin d'illustrer la pertinence de notre résultat principal, plusieurs applications en ingénierie ont été étudiées, incluant la commande distribuée pour l'économie d'énergie dans des bâtiments intelligents, la gestion des clients dans un environnement de "smart grids", et le développement d'une méthode exacte d'optimisation distribuée pour un problème d'allocation de ressources soumis à des contraintes sur les bornes inférieures.Enfin, nous étudions les techniques d'allocation de ressources basées sur les modèlesde dynamique de populations. Pour les rendre distribuées, nous introduisons le concept dedynamique de populations "pas bien mélangées". Nous montrons que ces dynamiques peuventêtre utilisées pour des structures d'informations contraintes. Même si les dynamiquesde populations "pas bien mélangées" utilisent des informations partielles, ellesconservent des propriétés similaires aux dynamiques classiques qui utilisent desinformations complètes. Plus spécifiquement, la conservation de masse et la convergencevers l'équilibre de Nash sont prouvées. / Since the complexity and scale of systems have been growing in the last years, distributed approaches for control and decision making are becoming more prevalent. This dissertation focuses on an important problem involving distributed control and decision making, the dynamic resource allocation in a network. To address this problem, we explore a consensus--based algorithm that does not require any centralized computation, and that is capable to deal with applications modeled either by dynamical systems or by memoryless functions. The main contribution of our research is to prove, by means of graph theoretical tools and passivity analysis, that the proposed controller asymptotically reaches an optimal solution without the need of full information. In order to illustrate the relevance of our main result, we address several engineering applications including: distributed control for energy saving in smart buildings, management of the customers of an aggregating entity in a smart grid environment, and development of an exact distributed optimization method that deals with resource allocation problems subject to lower--bound constraints. Finally, we explore resource allocation techniques based on classic population dynamics models. In order to make them distributed, we introduce the concept of non--well--mixed population dynamics. We show that these dynamics are capable to deal with constrained information structures that are characterized by non--complete graphs. Although the proposed non--well--mixed population dynamics use partial information, they preserve similar properties of their classic counterpart, which uses full information. Specifically, we prove mass conservation and convergence to Nash equilibrium. / Dado que la complejidad y la escala de los sistemas sehan ido incrementando en los últimos años, las técnicas centralizadas de control y toma de decisiones están siendo reemplazadas por métodos distribuidos. Esta tesis se centra en un importante problema que involucra control y toma de decisiones distribuidas: la asignación dinámica de recursos en redes. Para abordar este problema, exploramos un algoritmo basado en consenso que no requiere computación centralizada, y que puede ser usado en aplicaciones modeladas ya sea por sistemas dinámicos o funciones sin memoria. La principal contribución de esta tesis es probar, por medio de teoría de grafos y pasividad, que el algoritmo propuesto alcanza asintóticamente una solución óptima sin la necesidad de usar información completa. Para ilustrar la relevancia del resultado principal de esta disertación, abordamos varias aplicaciones en ingeniería,incluyendo: el control distribuido en edificios inteligentes orientado a la eficiencia energética, la gestión de los clientes de un agregador en una red inteligente en la que se aplican estrategias de respuesta de la demanda, y el desarrollo de un método de optimización exacto que permite incluir restricciones de límite inferior. Finalmente, se exploran otras técnicas de asignación derecursos inspiradas en modelos de dinámicas poblacionales. Se introduce el concepto de poblaciones no—bien—mezcladas, y se muestra que las dinámicas asociadas a este tipo de poblaciones cuentan con una estructura de información local, caracterizada por grafos que no son completos. A pesar de que las dinámicas propuestas usan información parcial, ellas preservan características similares a las dinámicas poblacionales clásicas que usan información completa.

Zum Verständnis menschlichen sozialen, administrativen und wirtschaftlichen Verhaltens, das als Spiel bzw. strategische Interaktion aufgefasst werden kann, reichen die rein analytischen Methoden nicht aus. Es ist nötig, Daten menschlichen strategischen Verhaltens zu sammeln. Basierend auf Daten lässt sich solches Verhalten modellieren, simulieren bzw. vorhersagen. Der theoretische Teil der Zielsetzung wird über praxisorientierte Konzeptualisierung strategischer Interaktion realer Agenten - Menschen und Maschinen - und gegenseitige Integration der Konzepte aus Spieltheorie und Multiagentensysteme erreicht, die über die bisherigen Ansätze hinausgehen. Der praktische Teil besteht darin, ein allgemein verwendbares System zu entwerfen, das strategische Interaktionen zwischen realen Agenten mit maximalen wissenschaftlichen Nutzen durchführen kann. Die tatsächliche Implementation ist eines der Ergebnisse der Arbeit. Ähnliche vorhandene Systeme sind GDL-Server (für Maschinen) [Genesereth u.a., 2005] und z-Tree (für Menschen) [Fischbacher, 2007]. Die Arbeit ist in drei Bereiche unterteilt - (1) Entwicklung von Sprachen für die Beschreibung eines Spiels, (2) ein auf diesen Sprachen basierendes Softwaresystem und (3) eine Offline-Analyse der u.a. mit dem System bereits gesammelten Daten als Beitrag zur Möglichkeiten der Verhaltensbeschreibung. Die Innovation dieser Arbeit besteht nicht nur darin ,einzelne Bereiche mit einander zu kombinieren, sondern auch Fortschritte auf jedem Bereich für sich allein zu erreichen. Im Bereich der Spielbeschreibungssprachen, werden zwei Sprachen - PNSI und SIDL - vorgeschlagen, die beide Spiele bei imperfekter Information in diskreter Zeit definieren können. Dies ist ein Fortschritt gegenüber der bisherigen Sprachen wie Gala und GDL. Speziell die auf Petrinetzen basierende Sprache PNSI kann gleichermaßen für Gameserver und für spieltheoretische Algorithmen von z.B. GAMBIT verwendet werden. Das entwickelte System FRAMASI basiert auf JADE [Bellifemine u.a., 2001] und ist den bisherigen Client-Server-Lösungen durch Vorteile der Multiagentensysteme voraus. Mit dem entstandenen System wurde bereits ein Experiment entsprechend den Standards der experimentellen Spieltheorie durchgeführt und somit die Praxistauglichkeit nachgewiesen. Das Experiment hatte als Ziel, Daten zur menschlichen Unvorhersagbarkeit und zur Vorhersagefähigkeit anderer zu liefen. Dafür wurden Varianten von \"Knobeln\" verwendet. Die Daten dieses Experiments sowie eines Experiments einer externen Arbeitsgruppe mit ähnlicher Motivation wurden mit Hilfe von Datamining analysiert. Dabei wurden die in der Literatur berichteten Gesetzmäßigkeiten des Verhaltens nachgewiesen und weitere Gesetzmäßigkeiten entdeckt.:Einführung Grundlagen Verwandte Arbeiten Sprachen für Spielbeschreibung Implementation der Spielinfrastruktur Beschreibung Strategischen Verhaltens Resümee Ergebnisse Ausblick / To understand human social, administrative and economic behavior, which can be considered as a game or strategic interaction, the purely analytical methods do not suffice. It is necessary to gather data of human strategic behavior. Based on data, one can model, simulate and predict such behavior. The theoretical part of the objective is achieved using a practice oriented conceptualization of the real agents\' - humans and machines - strategic interaction and mutual integration of the concepts from game theory and multi-agent systems, which go beyond the related work. The practical part is the design of an universally usable system that can perform the strategic interactions between real agents with maximum scientific benefit. The current implementation is one of the results of the work. Similar existing systems are GDL-server (for machines) [Genesereth et al., 2005] and z-Tree (for humans) [Fischbacher, 2007]. The work is divided in three fields - (1) development of languages for the description of a game, (2) a software system based on these languages and (3) an offline analysis of the data already gathered among other things using the system as a contribution to behavior definition facilities. The innovation of this work does not consist only in combining of the several fields to each other, but also in achieving of improvements in every field on its own. In the field of game definition languages, two languages are proposed - PNSI and SIDL, which both can define games of imperfect information in discrete time. It is an improvement comparing with hitherto languages as Gala and GDL. Especially, the Petri net based language PNSI can likewise be used for game servers and game theoretic algorithms like GAMBIT. The developed system FRAMASI is based on JADE [Bellifemine et al., 2001] and is ahead of the hitherto client-server solutions through the advantages of the multi-agent systems. Using the originated system, an experiment has been conducted according to the standards from the experimental game theory, and thus demonstrated the practicability. The experiment had the objective to provide data on the human unpredictability and the ability to predict others. Therefore, variants of Roshambo were used. The data from this experiment and from an experiment of an external workgroup with a similar motivation were analyzed using data mining. As results, the regularities of the behavior reported in literature have been demonstrated and further regularities have been discovered.:Einführung Grundlagen Verwandte Arbeiten Sprachen für Spielbeschreibung Implementation der Spielinfrastruktur Beschreibung Strategischen Verhaltens Resümee Ergebnisse Ausblick