A set of performance scenarios as a function of periodic communication is hypothesized and leads to an analysis of optimal communication rates. In general, we expect that performance over time follows certain patterns with respect to the reception of messages regarding global state. To explore the hypothesis, we present a model of distributed game automata which make decisions probabilistically...

The organization structure of Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) constrains the mechanisms that may be used for coordinating the agents’ decision-making process. As researchers develop MAS that allow agents to dynamically re-organize how to interact with each other, the design of the agents must provide the ability to operate under different organizations. This paper investigates the issues involved in ...

The decision-making process in strategic planning is often too complex to be handled by conventional methods. Strategic planning problems (building new plans, new product planning, etc.) belong to the class of problems called ill-structured by H. Simon. They involve a decomposition of the main problem into a set of subproblems, a reasoning process at the subproblem level, and then a coordinated...

Effective use of Web applications by distributed heterogeneous work teams depends on team ability to effectively discover, retrieve, and coordinate technological and human resources. Successful process and product delivery also depend on both push and pull delivery of information to meet both ad hoc and ongoing information resource needs. The described research extends current theory by analyzi...

In this paper, we study the problem of collective decisionmaking over combinatorial domains, where the set of possible alternatives is a Cartesian product of (finite) domain values for each of a given set of variables, and these variables are not preferentially independent. Due to the large alternative space, most common rules for preference aggregation cannot be directly applied to compute a w...

Distributed Energy Resources (DER), when integrated properly with the electric grid can provide both economic and societal benefits. Economic benefits in the form of reduced energy costs for end users that employ DER are well documented. Societal benefits in the form of achieving a more robust electric grid, less vulnerable to terrorist attack, are still more difficult to quantify. But it is sa...

The traditional way of controlling urban traffic is using centralised control approaches: There is a single control centre where decisions are made about the traffic control in the whole urban area. Currently, this paradigm is shifting towards more decentralised hierarchical approaches with smaller control centres serving sub-regions of the intersection network in a city. The paper reviews poss...

We explore issues in providing support for information sharing, negotiations and decision-making to distributed autonomous organizations, grouped in alliances to improve their own ability to accomplish customers' requests. In particular, we consider the case of an alliance of printshops ooering similar and/or complementary print competencies and capabilities, competing but also collaborating wi...

In this paper, we give a tutorial overview of how the convergence of business decision making (BDM), information technology and computer aided process decision making can make organizations adaptive. One framework for advancing the conflux of these ideas is provided by distributed network theory and non-equilibrium thermodynamics. In this theory, the integrated system of decision makers, softwa...

As the Internet has evolved into a valuable and critical service platform for business and daily life, the research community has enthusiastically applied data mining methods to improve application performance by analyzing and optimizing the behaviors of the underlying systems (e.g., datacenter design, network resource provisioning, network security, etc.) These data mining procedures often use...