Cooperative Self-Organizing Coalitions: Technological Framework

Abstract

The paper proposes an approach aimed at solving a problem of organizing ad-hoc self-configuring networks for such tasks as disaster relief and evacuation. Usually the tasks of this type involve a number of different heterogeneous teams, which have to collaborate in order to succeed. Centralized control is not always possible due to damages in local infrastructure, different subordination of participating teams, etc. The approach assumes decentralized communication and ad-hoc decision making based on the current situation state and its possible future development in order to avoid the above obstacles. There are a number of problems to be resolved within the approach. They include interoperability at both technological and semantic level, situation understanding by the members via information exchange, protocols of ad-hoc decision making for self-organization and other. It is planned to use such technologies as situation management, knowledge and ontology management, profiling, intelligent agents, Web-services, decision making support, negotiation protocols, etc