Ubiquitous Multi-agent Environmental Hazard Management

Abstract

There is great concern today about what our society can do to protect itself from all kinds of environmental hazards ranging from man-made disasters, like chemical spills to natural disasters, like earthquakes or floods. Luckily, numerous experts specifically trained to handle such situations, can come in our aid. However, a potentially troublesome challenge still presents itself: coordinating the environmental experts and ensuring that the most appropriate one(s) answer the call. In this paper, a modern technological model is proposed which combines the robustness of the JADE multi-agent framework with the versatility of the ANDROID mobile operating system to provide its users with automated negotiation protocols for experts' selection, while maintaining a variable degree of the experts' autonomy according to their stated preferences. In order to compute the estimated travel times between the various locations, the system uses the Google Directions API which is perfectly fit for the small-scale experimental scenario we have conducted, but it could also suit larger-scale applications if necessary.