Rune Gustavsson

The Rise and Fall of Napster - An Evolutionary Approach

The paper addresses dynamics in information ecosystems due to competition between selfish agents to get control of protectable resources. In our case study we investigate the first arms race on Internet triggered by the Napster introduction of an easy to use service for sharing files with music content among users. We set up a model for investigation of possible scenarios emerging from the Napster and Gnutella peer-to-peer tools for information sharing. We also introduce a formal model for analyzing the Napster scenario in the cases of selfish or altruistic users. The prediction provided by our model is in line with what really happened in the Napster case. The model also shows that the outcome was indeed unavoidable if we have selfish users.

Coordination and control in computational ecosystems: a vision of the future

In computational ecosystems the focus is on creating and maintaining value-adding chains of e-services. The e-services are created, maintained and used by actors with a common interest in an ecosystem. Ecosystems can be seen as hubs supporting, for instance, financial services, distributed health-care or smart homes. We argue that coordination and control in an ecosystem have to support trust among participating parties. This means, among other things, that the architecture and infrastructure of the ecosystem have to incorporate societal support to meet requirements such as trust creation and maintenance. More precisely, we advocate that basic societal concepts to support are Ownership, Responsibility, and Accessibility (ORA). The paper gives an introduction to the concept of ecosystems. We also provide an example of a potential e-service in the form of a comfort management system (COMFY) in a smart home. The paper also includes an layered ORA architecture built on top of SUNs Jini platform.

Why trust is hard – challenges in e-mediated services

Design and maintenance of trustworthy electronically mediated services is a major challenge in supporting trust of future information systems supporting e-commerce as well as safety critical systems in our society. We propose a framework supporting a principled life cycle of e-services. Our application domain is distributed health care systems. We also include comparisons with other relevant approaches from trust in e-commerce and trust in agents.

Sustainable information ecosystems

Fundamental challenges in engineering of large-scale multi-agent systems involve qualitative requirements from, e.g., ambient intelligence and network-centric operations. We claim that we can meet these challenges if we model our multi-agent systems using models of evolutionary aspects of living systems. In current methodologies of multi-agent systems the notion of system evolution is only implicitly addressed, i.e., only closed patterns of interaction are considered as origin of dynamic system behaviour. In this paper we argue that service discovery and conjunction, by means of open patterns of interaction, are the basic tools for sustainable system behaviour. In effect, we introduce a framework for sustainable information ecosystems. Consequently, we describe basic principles of our methodology as well as a couple of applications illustrating our basic ideas. The applications coexist on our supporting agent society platform SOLACE and their respective behaviour is visualized using our system analysis tool DISCERN. The paper is concluded with a summary and a number of open research issues in the area.

A Methodological Perspective on Engineering of Agent Societies

We propose a new methodological approach for engineering of agent societies. This is needed due to the emergence of the Embedded Internet. We argue that such communication platforms call for a methodology that focuses on the concept of open computational systems, grounded in general system theory, and natural systems from an engineering perspective. In doing so, it stands clear that forthcoming research in this problem domain initially have to focus on cognitive primitives, rather than domain specific interaction protocols, in construction of agent societies.

Coordinating Energy Based Business Models and Customer Empowerment in Future Smart Grids

Future sustainable energy systems are in focus of several national and international R&D programs. The transition from today’s tariff-based energy systems towards future sustainable energy markets has to be supported by addressing and solving a range of challenges. Among the identified barriers are doubts of user acceptance of future Smart Grids due to lack of experiences, opportunities and possibilities: hence lack of experimental validations. Our suggestion of SLA-Agents experimental facility is aiming at filling some of those shortcomings, not the least issues related to trust by stakeholders.

Smart Home Services Enabled by Service Level Agreements

The challenge for the future Smart Grids is to improve the energy efficiency and enable groups of stakeholders to offer services to customers. An intelligent agent-based ICT infrastructure supplementing SCADA systems is required to support such perspectives of power grids. This paper focus on describing a novel approach, using Service Level Agreements (SLAs) as a tool, for improving coordination between high-level Smart Grid business requirements and low level infrastructure affordances. Monitoring of SLAs and trustworthy data management requires setting up and monitoring clusters of SLAs coordinating sets of relevant stakeholders. We argue that coordinating services with infrastructures using SLA, as a coordination mechanism is a promising approach towards sustainable Smart Grid solutions. A case study of agent-based comfort monitoring and control in Smart homes illustrates our approach and related tools.

Challenges and opportunities of sensor based user empowerment

Sensor and sensor networks technology are becoming an increasingly important part of information management infrastructures. Challenges related to collection, processing, analysis and user-centric presentation depending of context are of particular interest. Furthermore, design and implementation of proper respond actions to sensor based information is gaining interest in many applications. In this paper we focus on robust application of sensor based systems. With robust we mean in this context supporting user empowerment and allowing adaptations. Two case studies of critical operations for individuals with cognitive impairments are presented. A comprehensive methodology supporting empowerment of users is outlined. The methodology includes ethnography-based analysis of workflows to identify user dependant barriers as a basis for design and implementation of mechanisms supporting empowerment. Identified challenges and opportunities of sensor based user empowerment is a contribution. Requirements engineering, from a user empowerments perspective including user specific barriers and sensor based information mechanisms, as a part of the systems developments process is another important contribution. User-centric training, as an important validation of implemented solutions in given context, is part of lessons learned. Sections on challenges and opportunities as well as of future work conclude the paper.

Engineering of trustworthy smart grids implementing service level agreements

Future Smart Grids have to meet high expectations from our societies on improved energy efficiency and sustainability. However, system uptake and acceptance will to a large extent depend on the perceived trust by different stakeholders. In the paper we address issues related to engineering of trustworthy systems. This type of Engineering will be grounded in reliable models of interoperability. A key issue is here interoperability of information exchange and sharing. Based on analysis of trust concerns, we propose a model of coordinating and monitoring by Service Level Agreements (SLAs) between stakeholders to ensure trustworthiness of system performance and behavior. We illustrate our methods on case related to trustworthy inclusion of DERs in Smart Grids.

INTEGRAL: ICT-Platform Based Distributed Control in Electricity Grids with a Large Share of Distributed Energy Resources and Renewable Energy Sources

The European project INTEGRAL aims to build and demonstrate an industry-quality reference solution for DER aggregation-level control and coordination, based on commonly available ICT components, standards, and platforms. To achieve this, the Integrated ICT-platform based Distributed Control (IIDC) is introduced. The project includes also three field test site installations in the Netherlands, Spain and France, covering normal, critical and emergency grid conditions.