No abstract

Within many domains, among which biological, cognitive, and social areas, multiple interacting processes occur among agents with dynamics that are hard to handle. This paper presents the predicate logical Temporal Trace Language (TTL) for the formal specification and analysis of dynamic properties of agents and multi-agent systems. This language supports the specification of both qualitative and quantitative aspects, and therefore subsumes specification languages based on differential equations and qualitative, logical approaches. A software environment has been developed for TTL, which supports editing TTL properties and enables the formal verification of properties against a set of traces. The TTL environment proved its value in a number of projects within different biological, cognitive and social domains.

Abstract

Modern airports operate under high demands and pressures, and strive to satisfy many diverse, interrelated, sometimes conflicting performance goals. Airport performance areas, such as security, safety, and efficiency are usually studied separately from each other. However, operational decisions made by airport managers often impact several areas simultaneously. Current knowledge on how different performance areas are related to each other is limited. This paper contributes to filling this gap by identifying and quantifying relations and trade-offs between the detection performance of illegal items and the average queuing time at airport security checkpoints. These relations and trade-offs were analyzed by simulations with a cognitive agent model of airport security checkpoint operations. By simulation analysis a security checkpoint performance curve with three different regions was identified. Furthermore, the importance of focus on accuracy for a security operator is shown. The results of the simulation studies were related to empirical research at an existing regional airport.

This chapter presents the hybrid Temporal Trace Language (TTL) for formal specification and analysis of dynamic properties of multi-agent systems. This language supports specification of both qualitative and quantitative aspects, and subsumes languages based on differential equations and temporal logics. TTL has a high expressivity and normal forms that enable automated analysis. Software environments for performing verification of TTL specifications have been developed. TTL proved its value in a number of domains.