A multi‐agent approach for provisioning of e‐services in u‐commerce environments

Abstract

Purpose -Taking into account the importance of e-commerce and the current applications of AI techniques in this area, this research aims to adequate the design of a multi-agent system for the provisioning of e-services in u-commerce environments. This proposal is centred on the methods of evaluation in a u-e-commerce environment. Design/methodology/approach -The multi-agent systems (MAS) approach is based on an MAS model developed for AmI that has been redesigned to support u-commerce. The use of a recommendation system, previously developed by the research group, is suggested for this MAS. The methodological proposal centres on the evaluation of this type of system. Findings -The evaluation of this type of system is the principal problem of current research. Therefore, this is the main contribution of the paper. Research limitations/implications -The different evaluation methods that are proposed, whether qualitative or quantitative, offer the possibility of measuring the added value that the context can give to the use of e-services in different domains of application. Qualitative evaluation should consider the customer as a central piece in the system. In addition, quantitative methods should objectively evaluate the contribution of context to the application. Practical implications -At present, there is no single method for evaluating the benefits of different u-commerce systems, so a new method needs to be found based on these techniques. Originality/value -The research proposes an MAS designed for u-commerce domains, analyzes the capacity of trust management techniques in this environment, and proposes several evaluation methods to show the benefits of context information in the use of e-services. Several real developments are described to show the different applications of MAS in u-commerce and how evaluation is carried out.

Implementation of context-aware workflows with multi-agent systems

“…There are works approaching this integration from general and methodological perspectives focused on system development [27,29] and knowledge management [25]. Other works address specific aspects of the problem, such as sensor integration [2], the interpretation of gathered data [12], or the use of reputation techniques to evaluate the trustability of service providers and manage user' profiles and their related security issues [24].…”

An Evaluation Method for Context–Aware Systems in U-Health

“…First, as the awareness of the system has been adapted for the e-health environment, the evaluation will be done based not only on the patients' location (as we did in [8], but also on his vital signs: blood pressure (BP); pulse rate (PR); respiration rate (RR) and body temperature (BT). We based on the fact that the system is composed of a set of different sensors connected to a PDA that transmits, in a secure way, all the patient data (location and vital signs) to a central server in the hospital.…”

A knowledge-based system approach for a context-aware system

“…To cope with these problems, such systems should be able to acquire user's opinion and also self-adapt according to it. In order to achieve this objective, we develop a generic evaluation system (U2E system) already tested in several scenarios: u-commerce [32]; e-health [31]; in order to collect the user feedback for being used later in the adaptation process. See Fig.…”