Ebook: Engineering Societies in the Agents World IV: 4th International Workshops, ESAW 2003, London, UK, October 29-31, 2003. Revised Selected and Invited Papers

The fourth internationalworkshop,“EngineeringSocietiesin the Agents World” (ESAW 2003) was a three-dayevent that took place at the end of October 2003. After previous events in Germany, the Czech Republic, and Spain, the workshop crossed the Channel, to be held at the premises of Imperial College, London. The steady increase in the variety of backgrounds of contributing sci- tists, fascinating new perspectives on the topics, and number of participants, bespeaks the success of the ESAW workshop series. Its idea was born in 1999 among members of the working group on “Communication, Coordination, and Collaboration” of the ?rst lease of life of the European Network of Excellence on Agent-Based Computing, AgentLink, out of a critical discussion about the general mindset of the agent community. At that time, we felt that proper c- siderationsofsystemicaspectsofagenttechnologydeployment,suchasackno- edgement of the importance of the social and environmental perspectives, were sorely missing: a de?ciency that we resolved should be addressed directly by a new forum.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Engineering Societies in the Agents World, ESAW 2004, held in London, UK in October 2004.

The 23 revised full papers presented were carefully selected during two rounds of reviewing and improvement for inclusion in the book; also included are 2 invited papers by leading researchers in order to round of the coverage of the relevant topics.

The papers are organized in the following topical sections:

- multidisciplinary for agent societies

- coordination, organization, and security of agent societies

- abstractions, methodologies, and tools for engineering agent societies

- applications of agent societies