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International Workshop on Coordination, Organizations, Institutions, and Norms in Agent Systems

COIN 2014: Coordination, Organizations, Institutions, and Norms in Agent Systems X pp 72–88Cite as

Severity-Sensitive Robustness Analysis in Normative Systems

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 9372))

Abstract

Norms specify ideal behaviour. Agents, however, are autonomous, and may fail to comply with the ideal. Contrary to Duty obligations can be used to specify reparational behaviour that mitigates the effects of a violation. In addition to specifying reparational behaviours, it is important to understand how robust a system is against possible violations. Depending on what kind of system property we want to preserve, non-compliance with different norms may be of varying severity. We propose a method for analysing robustness of normative systems, with support for Contrary to Duty obligations. We introduce violation severity as a concept orthogonal to reparational behaviour and specify it by means of a partial order over norms. We use this severity partial order, together with normative specifications, to rank the possible worlds from the most to the least compliant. In this way, we are able to use model checking to analyse robustness to a certain severity, or whether it is possible to achieve a certain goal, without violating any norm of a given severity.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    còir is the Scottish Gaelic for obligation.

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Acknowledgments

This research was sponsored by Selex ES.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computing Science, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK

    Luca Gasparini, Timothy J. Norman, Martin J. Kollingbaum & Liang Chen

Authors
  1. Luca Gasparini
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  2. Timothy J. Norman
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  3. Martin J. Kollingbaum
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  4. Liang Chen
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Luca Gasparini .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer Science &, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia

    Aditya Ghose

  2. Department of Computing Science, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, United Kingdom

    Nir Oren

  3. Cisco Systems Inc., Durham, North Carolina, USA

    Pankaj Telang

  4. Comp. Science and Information Technol., RMIT University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    John Thangarajah

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© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Gasparini, L., Norman, T.J., Kollingbaum, M.J., Chen, L. (2015). Severity-Sensitive Robustness Analysis in Normative Systems. In: Ghose, A., Oren, N., Telang, P., Thangarajah, J. (eds) Coordination, Organizations, Institutions, and Norms in Agent Systems X. COIN 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9372. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25420-3_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25420-3_5

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-25419-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-25420-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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