Affiliations: Department of Computer Science, University of Oran, Oran, Algeria | [x] Business Information Systems, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland | [y] Information Systems and Operations Management, The Sellinger School of Business and Management, Loyola University Maryland, Baltimore, MD, USA
Correspondence:
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Corresponding author: Bakhta Nachet, Department of Computer Science, University of Oran, Oran, Algeria. E-mail: nachet.bakhta@univ-oran.dz
Abstract: The agent-based technology has emerged as a new paradigm for conceptualizing, designing, and implementing software systems. It has been considered as an important approach for developing industrial distributed systems. In this paper, we propose a Multi-agent view of a distributed collaborative decision support systems. These systems refer to a group of logically decentralized participants (facilitator and decision-makers) that cooperate to achieve objectives that are typically beyond the capabilities of any individual participant, and where the facilitator acts as a manager of the overall collaborative decision making activities that requires among those participant collaborating on decision making The main aims of the proposed multi-agent distributed collaborative decision support system are a distributed work support by enabling the flow of information and interoperation among distributed decision makers, and an efficient management of the information circulated in a distributed environment by providing content related aid. Specifically, agents were used to support a geographically dispersed collaborative decision making to solve jointly a problem and make a decision. In such systems, intelligent agents offer tremendous potential in supporting all stages of collaborative decision process such as idea generation, alternatives organizing and evaluation that would allow the group members focus on solutions that were found to be significant. They enhance overall system performance, in particular along such dimensions as computational efficiency, reliability, extensibility, responsiveness, maintainability reuse, and flexibility. In this way, we take advantage of the capacities of both the decision-maker and the machine. We apply the multi-agent system paradigm to decision support in a global contingency management.
Keywords: Collaborative decision making, distributed decision support systems, multi-agent systems, group decision process facilitation
