Pancho Tolchinsky

Increasing Human-Organ Transplant Availability: Argumentation-Based Agent Deliberation

Human-organ transplantation is the only effective therapy for many life-threatening diseases. However, despite an increase in transplant successes, the lack of a concomitant increase in donor organ availability has led to a growing disparity between supply and demand. Much research has thus focused on defining and implementing policies for increasing donor availability, identifying suitable organ recipients, and documenting transplant procedures. A novel organ-selection process uses a multiagent system called Carrel+ to let geographically dispersed transplant physicians deliberate over organ viability to increase the availability of organs for transplantation

Deliberation dialogues for reasoning about safety critical actions

In this paper we present the argument-based model proCLAIM, intended to provide a setting for heterogeneous agents to deliberate over safety critical actions. To achieve this purpose proCLAIM features a Mediator Agent with three main tasks: (1) guiding the participating agents in what their valid dialectical moves are at each stage of the dialogue; (2) deciding whether submitted arguments should be accepted on the basis of their relevance; and finally, (3) evaluating the accepted arguments in order to provide an assessment of whether the proposed action should or should not be undertaken. The main focus in this paper is the proposal of a set of reasoning patterns, represented in terms of argument schemes and critical questions, intended to automatise deliberations on whether a proposed action can safely be performed. We aim to motivate the importance of these schemes and critical questions for: (a) the Mediator Agent’s guiding task that allows for a highly focused deliberation; (b) the effective participation of heterogeneous agents; and (c) enabling the reuse of previous similar deliberations in order to evaluate arguments on an evidential basis.

Towards formalising agent argumentation over the viability of human organs for transplantation

In this paper we describe a human organ selection process in which agents argue over whether a given donors organ is viable for transplantation. This process is framed in the CARREL System; an agent-based organization designed to improve the overall transplant process. We formalize an argumentation based framework that enables CARREL agents to construct and assess arguments for and against the viability of a donors organ for a given potential recipient. We believe that the use of argumentation has the potential to increase the number of human organs that current selection processes make available for transplantation.

Argumentation-based framework for industrial wastewater discharges management

The daily operation of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) in unitary sewer systems of industrialized areas is of special concern. Severe problems can occur due to the characteristics of incoming flow. In order to avoid decision that leads to hazardous situations, guidelines and regulations exist. However, there are still no golden standards by which to a priori decide whether a WWTP can cope with critical discharges. Strict adherence to regulations may not always be convenient, since special circumstances may motivate operators to accept discharges that are above established thresholds or to reject discharges that comply with guidelines. Nonetheless, such decisions must be well justified. This paper proposes an argumentation-based model by which to formulate a flexible decision-making process. An example of the model application describes how experts deliberate the safety of a discharge and adapt each decision to the particular characteristics of the industrial discharge and the WWTP.

Argumentation-Based Agents to Increase Human Organ Availability for Transplant

In this chapter we describe the work done in the EU project ASPIC: Argumentation Service Platform with Integrated Components. The main goals of which were 1) to develop a solid theoretical ground for the Argumentation Theory in Artificial Intelligence; 2) based on the theoretical work, develop practical-software components that embody standards for the argumentationbased technology (inference, decision-making, dialogue and learning); and 3) In order to test these components develop two large scale demonstrators. One of these large scale demonstrator is motivated on a medical problem. In particular, how to increase human organ availability for transplantation. It is this medical large scale demonstrator that we focus on in this chapter.

Deliberation about the Safety of Industrial Wastewater Discharges into Wastewater Treatment Plants

The daily operation of Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTPs) in industrialized areas is of particular concern because of the severe problems that can occur in the WWTP caused by the incoming inflow, which in turn may cause an ecological imbalance in the fluvial ecosystem. In order to minimize the environmental impact caused by the industrial wastewater discharges, guidelines and regulations exists. However, due to the complexity of the domain, there are still no golden standards by which to decide whether a WWTP can cope with wastewater discharges, and so strict adherence to regulations may not always be convenient. Special circumstances may motivate to accept discharges that are above established thresholds or to reject discharges that comply with guidelines. Nonetheless, because of the criticality of the actions to be taken, such decisions require to be well justified. Hence, in this work it is proposed the use of the argumentation-based model Pro- CLAIM to provide a more flexible decision making process, in which expertise can deliberate whether an industrial wastewater can safely be discharged into a WWTP, and thus adapt each decision to the particular circumstance. To ensure a safe decision, agents’ given arguments for or against the industrial spill are evaluated accounting for the domain guidelines and regulations, for similar past cases and for confidence in the expertise’s assessments.

Using CARREL + to increase availability of human organs for transplantation

The shortage of human organs for transplantation is a serious problem, and is exacerbated by the fact that current organ selection and assignment processes discard a significant number of organs deemed non-viable (not suitable) for transplantation. However, these processes ignore the fact that medical specialists may disagree as to whether an organ is viable or not. Therefore, in this paper we propose a novel organ selection process in which transplant physicians, who may be geographically dispersed, deliberate over the viability of an organ. This argument-based deliberation is formalized in amulti-agent system - CARREL+ - that requires the deliberation to adhere to formal rigorous standards acknowledging the safety critical nature of the domain. We believe that this new selection process has the potential to increase the number of organs that current selection processes make available for transplantation, and thus reduce the increasing gap between the demand for and supply of human organs.