Negotiation System Research Articles

The Traust Authorization Service

In recent years, trust negotiation has been proposed as a novel authorization solution for use in open-system environments, in which resources are shared across organizational boundaries. Researchers have shown that trust negotiation is indeed a viable solution for these environments by developing a number of policy languages and strategies for trust negotiation that have desirable theoretical properties. Further, existing protocols, such as TLS, have been altered to interact with prototype trust negotiation systems, thereby illustrating the utility of trust negotiation. Unfortunately, modifying existing protocols is often a time-consuming and bureaucratic process that can hinder the adoption of this promising technology. In this paper, we present Traust, a third-party authorization service that leverages the strengths of existing prototype trust negotiation systems. Traust acts as an authorization broker that issues access tokens for resources in an open system after entities use trust negotiation to satisfy the appropriate resource access policies. The Traust architecture was designed to allow Traust to be integrated either directly with newer trust-aware applications or indirectly with existing legacy applications; this flexibility paves the way for the incremental adoption of trust negotiation technologies without requiring widespread software or protocol upgrades. We discuss the design and implementation of Traust, the communication protocol used by the Traust system, and its performance. We also discuss our experiences using Traust to broker access to legacy resources, our proposal for a Traust-aware version of the GridFTP protocol, and Traust's resilience to attack.

Knowledge-empowered automated negotiation system for e-Commerce

This paper focuses on knowledge empowered automated negotiation systems for buyer-centric multi-bilateral multi-attribute e-Procurement. We propose two knowledge empowered models, namely KERM and KACM. KERM is used for the buyer to determine a list of suppliers which are the best qualified candidates to negotiate with. The use of knowledge features largely in the model, which incorporates both the buyer’s and supplier’s profiles in evaluating a quote. Historical trade records of a supplier contribute to the supplier’s profile credit and therefore the rank of the supplier’s quote. KERM also allows the flexibility to assign appropriate weights, based on buyer’s interests, to each knowledge factor affecting the overall evaluation result of a quote. The resulted list of quotes of high rank is believed to produce satisfactory negotiation result for the buyer. KACM enables an automated concession process, while at the same time facilitates a flexible negotiation via the use of concept switch and tagged rules. Different from other negotiation models, KACM emphasizes the utilization of knowledge originated from the historical negotiation data in estimating and fine-tuning the negotiation parameters, for improving the performance of automated negotiation. Graph results show that our software prototype system makes significant improvement in the satisfaction level of negotiation results.

A Conceptual Framework for Modeling Automated Negotiations in Multiagent Systems

In fully automated e‐negotiation all involved parties are software agents, so negotiation takes place in a multiagent system between software agents that have been developed as a computer system for automating tasks in a specific application domain. A multiagent system is a group of agents that interact and cooperate with each other to fulfill their objectives or to improve their performance. How do these agents negotiate with each other to manage their task interdependencies? What negotiation mechanisms are needed? These are important questions.In this article, we present a conceptual framework for modeling and developing automated negotiation systems. This framework represents and specifies all the necessary concepts and entities for developing a negotiation system as well as the relationships among these concepts. This framework can also be used to model human negotiations scenarios for analyzing these types of negotiations and simulating them with multiagent systems. The work reported in this article is the first unified framework that represents all the needed elements for modeling and developing automated negotiation systems and existing relationships between them.

The conditions and limits of the regulation on buildings under the Landscape Act : Planning negotiation system under landscape plan

The conditions and limits of the regulation on buildings under the Landscape Act : Planning negotiation system under landscape plan

An efficient multilateral negotiation system for pervasive computing environments

In this paper we propose an automated negotiation system that can efficiently carry out multilateral negotiations with multi-attributes in pervasive computing environments. For the multilateral negotiation system proposed in our study, an e-commerce framework for pervasive computing environments in which the components can dynamically join and disjoin a virtual market is also introduced. This framework overcomes the locality of pure ad hoc networks and supports efficiently multilateral negotiation models in pervasive computing environments. In order to achieve the applicability toward multilateral negotiations, the concept of a mediator agent and the bilateral negotiation scheme based on linear programming is utilized for the proposed system. The experimental results show that the proposed system produces higher joint profits in negotiations about 5% and is about 96 times faster in reaching agreements on the average under the condition of agreement for reciprocity than a negotiation system based on the trade-off mechanism.

CAKES-NEGO: Causal knowledge-based expert system for B2B negotiation

As the advent of the Internet, B2B negotiation process on the Internet has been given attention from both researchers and practitioners. Therefore, B2B ecommerce decision making will be a challenge for organizations in the foreseeable future. Some literature shows that important issues to reduce uncertainty in the development of long-term relationships among B2B commerce partners. In this sense, this paper proposes a new negotiation support system to incorporate causal relationships of negotiation terms in the process of B2B negotiation, on the basis of a cognitive map. The proposed a CAKES-NEGO (CAusal Knowledge-driven Expert System) suggests that causal relationships of negotiation terms could be explicitly represented by using the cognitive map as knowledge representation vehicle as well as inference engine. Cognitive maps can illustrate causal relationships among the factors describing a given object and/or problem, and it can also describe experts' tacit knowledge about a certain object. A fuzzy cognitive map (FCM) is an extension of a cognitive map with the additional capability of representing feedback through weighted causal links. FCM, a fuzzy signed digraph with causal relationships between concept variables found in a specific application domain, is used for the causal knowledge acquisition. The objectives of this paper are to (1) suggest a fuzzy cognitive mapping based expert system that support decision process of decision makers and (2) apply it to the illustrative examples, which are B2B negotiation problems, to show the validity of our proposed system. In addition, statistical tests proved that the proposed negotiation mechanism could improve decision performance significantly in B2B negotiations.

PP-trust-X

Trust negotiation is a promising approach for establishing trust in open systems, in which sensitive interactions may often occur between entities with no prior knowledge of each other. Although, to date several trust negotiation systems have been proposed, none of them fully address the problem of privacy preservation. Today, privacy is one of the major concerns of users when exchanging information through the Web and thus we believe that trust negotiation systems must effectively address privacy issues in order to be widely applicable. For these reasons, in this paper, we investigate privacy in the context of trust negotiations. We propose a set of privacy-preserving features for inclusion in any trust negotiation system, such as the support for the P3P standard, as well as a number of innovative features, such as a novel format for encoding digital credentials specifically designed for preserving privacy. Further, we present a variety of interoperable strategies to carry on the negotiation with the aim of improving both privacy and efficiency.

Building a Multiple-Criteria Negotiation Support System

Electronic negotiation systems have been devised to create an electronic marketplace for bargaining, auctions, reverse auctions, and exchanges between multiple buyers and sellers. Most studies of negotiation systems concentrate on negotiation process modeling and data modeling?rather than on strategies and efficiency?for a multiple-criteria decision making (MCDM) problem in which many criteria are taken into account as attributes for decision making. This study proposes an active collaboration and negotiation framework (ACNF), which is a negotiation support system that uses active documents with embedded business logics or business rules that can adapt to different collaborative strategies in a business-to-business (B2B) environment. The risk preferences of negotiators are modeled and measured by utility functions that provide mathematical tools to compute the relative value of different courses of action. The system is demonstrated, and three experiments are conducted to validate its performance. The experiments show that the negotiation process is very efficient, and the results are both close to the efficient point?or the Pareto frontier?and are fair to both negotiating parties. The framework can be used to efficiently and effectively achieve a settlement in various multiple-criteria bargaining schemes in the electronic marketplace.

A study on conditions and planning negotiation system in the landscape ordinance

A study on conditions and planning negotiation system in the landscape ordinance

An agent architecture for multi-attribute negotiation using incomplete preference information

A component-based generic agent architecture for multi-attribute (integrative) negotiation is introduced and its application is described in a prototype system for negotiation about cars, developed in cooperation with, among others, Dutch Telecom KPN. The approach can be characterized as cooperative one-to-one multi-criteria negotiation in which the privacy of both parties is protected as much as desired. We model a mechanism in which agents are able to use any amount of incomplete preference information revealed by the negotiation partner in order to improve the efficiency of the reached agreements. Moreover, we show that the outcome of such a negotiation can be further improved by incorporating a “guessing” heuristic, by which an agent uses the history of the opponent’s bids to predict his preferences. Experimental evaluation shows that the combination of these two strategies leads to agreement points close to or on the Pareto-efficient frontier. The main original contribution of this paper is that it shows that it is possible for parties in a cooperative negotiation to reveal only a limited amount of preference information to each other, but still obtain significant joint gains in the outcome.

Wage Structure and Labor Mobility in the Netherlands 1999-2003

In this paper we document the wage structure and labor mobility in the Netherlands in the period 1999-2003. We explain the importance of wage-setting institutions in the Netherlands and the main actors. The analyses are based on administrative sources allowing for comparisons between and within firms, and in which workers can be followed over time. In the period investigated the Netherlands experienced an increase in wage inequality. Despite the centralized system of wage negotiations in the Netherlands, our findings suggest that market forces were the main determinant of wage growth. Workers with similar wages experienced similar wage increases in firms of different sizes. Wages increases were larger for low-skilled workers in industries with large increases in demand than in other industries. Variation in wage growth was mainly at the individual level. Firm-level wage increases accounted for only 12 % of the total variation.

Standardization and Technological Innovation: Some Reflections on Ex-ante Licensing, FRAND, and the Proper Means to Reward Innovators

In today’s technology-driven world, industry standardization, device interoperability, and product-compatibility have become critical to promoting innovation and competition. Under the current system applied in most standard-setting organizations (SSOs), firms holding patents that they deem essential to a standard considered by an SSO commit to license these patents on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. This system, which has allowed standardization to proceed in a wide range of sectors, is currently under attack by firms suggesting that it may lead to opportunistic behaviour on the part of essential patent holders. Proposals have thus been made in a variety of fora to replace the current FRAND regime. They include the development of a regime of ex ante auctions run by SSOs, which would allow SSO members to choose among the various bids made by essential patent holders (the Swanson-Baumol model) or a system of joint negotiations by essential patent holders and standard implementers of licensing terms. Proposals have also been made by some members of ETSI that its current IPR policy be revised in order to introduce the principles of “aggregated reasonable terms” and “proportionality” into the definition of FRAND. This paper argues that these proposals are flawed because they are based on a series of misconceptions. Their implementation would also be highly impractical, raise antitrust concerns, and harm innovation.

The Actual Condition of the Townscape Negotiation System in the City Area along the River

The Actual Condition of the Townscape Negotiation System in the City Area along the River

Learning-based automated negotiation between shipper and forwarder

This paper studies an automated negotiation system by means of a learning-based approach. Negotiation between shipper and forwarder is used as an example in which the issues of negotiation are unit shipping price, delay penalty, due date, and shipping quantity. A data ratios method is proposed as the input of the neural network technique to explore the learning in automated negotiation with the negotiation decision functions (NDFs) developed by [Faratin, P., Sierra, C., & Jennings, N.R. (1998). Negotiation Decision Functions for Autonomous Agents. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 24 (3), 159-182]. The concession tactic and weight of every issue offered by the opponent can be learned from this process exactly. After learning, a trade-off mechanism can be applied to achieve better negotiation result on the distance to Pareto optimal solution. Based on the results of this study, we believe that our findings can provide more insight into agent-based negotiation and can be applied to improve negotiation processes.

Modeling e-Negotiation Processes for a Service Oriented Architecture

Most of today's e-marketplaces support a single negotiation protocol. The protocol is usually built into the e-marketplace infrastructure, therefore if a new one is introduced then a time consuming and complex process of implementing it takes place. Moreover, participants in the e-marketplace need to adapt their interfaces to the new protocol, especially if they use automated tools to interact with the e-marketplace. This paper reports on a model-driven approach and a framework for rapid and user-friendly development of configurable service oriented e-negotiation systems. We believe that a formal specification of negotiation protocols and their separation from the market infrastructure that implements them is a step towards configurable e-negotiation systems. The protocols are graphically designed for the e-marketplace then mapped into web service orchestrations. Participants use automated negotiation systems to interact with the e-marketplace. These systems are generated based on the negotiation protocol implemented on the e-marketplace. A declarative language is used to specify negotiation strategies and tactics. We propose an algorithm to map Statechart models of negotiation protocols into web service orchestrations and we report on the current implementation of our framework.

Towards a web services and intelligent agents-based negotiation system for B2B eCommerce

With the explosive growth of the number of transactions conducted via electronic channels, there is a pressing need for the development of intelligent support tools to improve the degree and sophistication of automation for eCommerce. With reference to the BBT business model, negotiation is one of key steps for B2B eCommerce. Nevertheless, classical negotiation models are ineffective for supporting multi-agent multi-issue negotiations often encountered in eBusiness environment. The first contribution of this paper is the exploitation of Web services and intelligent agent techniques for the design and development of a distributed service discovery and negotiation system to streamline B2B eCommerce. In addition, an effective and efficient integrative negotiation mechanism is developed to conduct multi-party multi-issue negotiations for B2B eCommerce. Finally, an empirical study is conducted to evaluate our intelligent agents-based negotiation mechanism and to compare the negotiation performance of our software agents with that of their human counterparts. Our research work opens the door to the development of the next generation of intelligent system solutions to support B2B eCommerce.

Development of a DRAM spots negotiation system using core hierarchy negotiation mechanism

The major factors of the DRAM negotiable transactions system in this research are the concession strategy and the negotiation mechanism of the sellers and buyers. In terms of negotiation mechanism, the core hierarchy model negotiation mechanism makes use of multistage sub-negotiates procedure to do multi-attribute negotiation for the sellers and buyers. The negotiable mechanism can further increase the successful rate of negotiation and the acceptable degree. In terms of concession strategy, research in the Liang and Doong, the concession strategy is constituted by times of negotiation, method of concession and times of persistence. There are less interactive concession for the sellers and buyers in the concession method of the negotiation in the related research. This research is to study the negotiable results that using various combinations of interactive concession strategy and the core hierarchy model negotiation mechanism. Be used as the reference of negotiation for the DRAM to trade on network.

The clinical perspective of large scale projects: A case study of multiparametric MR imaging of pediatric brain tumors

Current developments in medical information technologies provide the clinical researcher with overwhelming amounts of data that need to be retrieved, organized, analyzed, and shared using secure, efficient, and robust protocols. The development of a local research database can provide an infrastructure for improved data management and detailed data analysis. For example, a pediatric brain tumor database of magnetic resonance imaging data, including conventional MRI imaging, hemodynamic MRI, diffusion weighted MRI and MR spectroscopic imaging, combined with neuropathological and neurological evaluation data, will significantly enhance the assessment and treatment of pediatric brain tumor patients. Furthermore, a negotiation system by which different clinical research facilities can share and combine data will permit re-analyses and meta-analyses of large data arrays that are beyond the focus or time constraints of the original researchers. Such a system will greatly enhance the utility of different data sets to a wide array of scientists. At present, efforts to organize medical data locally and between different sites is limited by diversity, interoperability, security, and accountability difficulties.

A Framework for Developing Experience Based e-Negotiation System

In this study we propose multi-agent distributed electronic negotiation system, where the learning process is facilitated by using the CBR approach in combination with case database and addition of ability to roam through a network allows considering outside options using mobile agent technology. CBR is an AI methodology which combines re-use of the past experiences with case base. Cases similar to the current case at hand are retrieved from case base, revised and used to develop new offers and counter-offers.

SOLACE: A Framework for Electronic Negotiations

Most existing frameworks for electronic negotiations today are tied to specific negotiation systems for which they were developed, preventing them from being applied to other negotiation scenarios. Thus, the evaluation of electronic negotiation systems is difficult as each one is based on a different framework. Additionally, each developer has to design a new framework for any system to be developed, leading to a ‘reinvention of the wheel’. This paper presents SOLACE—a generic framework for multi-issue negotiations, which can be applied to a variety of negotiation scenarios. In contrast with other frameworks for electronic negotiations, SOLACE supports hybrid systems in which the negotiation participants can be humans, agents or a combination of the two. By recognizing the importance of strategies in negotiations and incorporating a time attribute in negotiation proposals, SOLACE enhances existing approaches and provides a foundation for the flexible electronic negotiation systems of the future.