Safety and Security in Multiagent Systems: Report on the 2nd SASEMAS workshop (SASEMAS'05)

Abstract

As intelligent autonomous agents and multiagent systems' applications become more pervasive, it becomes increasingly more important to understand the risks associated with using these systems. Incorrect or inappropriate agent behaviour can have harmful effects including financial cost, loss of data, and injury to humans or systems. Thus, security and safety are two central issues when developing and deploying such systems. However, the process of developing safe and secure multiagent systems, and verifying and validating them, is much more difficult than for conventional software systems. This is due to many agent-related aspects, such as the complex and rich multiagent environments, the risks involved in such environments, and the characteristics that can be found in agent systems such as learning, dynamic reacting and adapting. Hence, new and different techniques and perspectives are required to assist with the development and deployment of such systems. The Safety and Security in Multiagent Systems (SASEMAS) workshop presents new developments, and lessons learned from real world cases, and it provides a forum for the exchange of ideas and discussion on areas related to security and safety in multiagent systems.