ESAS 2012 - The 7th IEEE International Workshop on Engineering Semantic Agent Systems

Applying Semantic Technologies in Research and Development of Ontology-Enabled Multi-Agent Systems. Semantic Web technology topics are welcome.
Semantic web technologies render dynamic, heterogeneous, distributed, shared content equally accessible to human reader and software agents. Distributed agents functioning autonomously can utilize semantic Web content to gather and aggregate knowledge, reason and infer new results towards achieving their goals and generating new knowledge. Such knowledge in turn may be disseminated and used to achieve the shared goal of the agents system. Here the vision is to achieve a synergy with multi-agent systems (MAS) technologies whereby both semantics and agents will be equally in the center stage.
ESAS workshop series aims at garnering the synergy of both technologies by taking up both the semantic web and the agent aspects of the common research issue. Topics of interest span a wide spectrum in both theory and practice of autonomous semantic agents, context-aware intelligent agents, agents as semantic web services, software agents, mobile agents, agent architectures, multi-agent systems, agent communities, cooperation and goal seeking through sharing policy and ontology, safety & security in systems, other QoS issues, and so on.
Mobile agent and MAS technologies are crucial in realizing multi-party dynamic application systems. Semantic Web technologies augment MAS by enabling agents with functioning based on the semantics of their mission and of the world around them. Agents, implemented as Web services in developing distributed control and processing applications, entail interesting consequences such as situation awareness, semantic composition of services, context sensitive long-lasting transactions, effecting service policies and quality levels, etc. Complex applications could become realizable with novel features such as factory floor automation for flexible production, collaborative discovery of uncharted geography (for example, cooperative labyrinth discovery), traffic management and info dissemination with facilitation of emergency services, financial markets forecasting with optimization of portfolio gain, etc.
We envisage a strong undercurrent of intelligent software agents, mobile agents, and MAS running through this workshop; side by side with the use of semantic technologies, there are several foci of interest:
? Software Agents, Mobile Agents, and MAS: issues relating to architecture, implementation, coordination, service levels, security of pervasive semantic or otherwise agents.
? Agent, MAS and Semantic Web Technologies: concomitant utilization of specific technologies in agent, MAS, and semantic Web implementations; semantic agent communities & applications; case studies of best-practice MAS applications; projects in the making;
? Ontologies for Agents and MAS: agent cooperation and coordination ontology; ontology of workflow in MAS; ontologies for distributed applications and integration; sharing and semantic interoperability; discovery and operations on ontologies; trust & security issues;
? Platforms for semantic agent and MAS implementation: languages, frameworks, tools, integrated development environments and software engineering practices supporting semantic or otherwise software agent & MAS architectures, coordination, trust & security mechanisms, description, discovery and composition of agent-based services.
? Other subjects of relevance in semantic technologies, semantic software agents, mobile agents, agent-based and multi-agent systems.
In unison with the main conference, the main theme of ESAS 2012 will be 'Applying semantic Web technologies in developing software agents, mobile agents and multi-agent systems towards achieving trustworthy software systems'.
In relation to trustworthiness, topics of interest include the following among others:
? software development,
? software systems,
? systems and agent technology,
? systems and reasoning,
? systems and semantic technology,
? database systems,
? embedded systems,
? game and entertainment systems,
? healthcare information systems,
? Internet access and use for children,
? education,
? entertainment, and so on.