International Handbooks on Information Systems

This book gives detailed descriptions of the development of two large scale multiagent systems: Agent.Hospital and Agent.Enterprise. These two systems have been developed in close cooperation with more than 20 enterprises and hospitals.

Advances in automation for electronic commerce require improved understanding and formalization of the objects, processes, and policies of commerce itself. These include business objects such as bills of lading and contracts; processes such as workflows and trade procedures; and policies covering such problems as contract or procedure validation and strategic behaviour. This book is about theory, formalization, and proof-of-concept implementation of these and related matters. In addition to presenting state-of-the-art results, the book places this work in the context of nearly twenty years of developments in formal modelling for electronic commerce. A comprehensive bibliography and index are provided.