Page - 379 - in Intelligent Environments 2019 - Workshop Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Intelligent Environments

Table 1. Overview of the three AOC policies P1-P3 in relation to various disruption management aspects. Aspect AOC Policy P1 AOC Policy P2 AOC Policy P3 Maintenance Information Accept information source and content and act on information given about a maintenance situation Challenge/ query information about a maintenance situation Seek alternative information and recheck source and reliability. Crewing Await crew from inbound aircraft Challenge crew limits/ Seek extensions to crew duty time Seek alternative crew (e.g. from nearby base or other aircraft) Curfews Curfews are not taken into account Identify curfews and work within them Seek curfew dispension Aircraft Seek first available aircraft Request high speed cruise Combine flights to free up aircraft 2.2. Multi-agent Negotiation Policy P4 We developed a new negotiation approach based on the Single Text Mediated Protocol. In this context, the AOC supervisor has the power of making the final decision based on the feedback given by other agents and it also needs other agents’ expertise to generate potential solutions for the underlying problem. For example, if the problem is related to aircraft, it is required that the aircraft controllers inform the AOC supervisor about all possible aircraft solutions. Since the given solutions may have an influence on other agents’ processes, it is required to find a consensus among all agents. Accordingly, the proposed negotiation approach works as follows: Pre-negotiation phase: Upon identification of a problem, the AOC supervisor asks the specialist agents to provide all possible solutions corresponding to their problem dimension within a certain deadline. All specialist agents provide their solution to the AOC supervisor. The specialist agents include the aircraft controller agent ACo, the crew controller agent CCo, and Passengers Services agent PS. If the AOC supervisor does not receive solutions from all three specialist agents, the disruption cannot be managed. Negotiation phase: The AOC supervisor evaluates all proposals received from the specialist agents and selects one of the solutions according to his bidding strategy. The AOC supervisor announces his chosen solution to the specialist agents. The specialist agents vote for or against the announced solution by the AOC supervisor. Note that the specialist agents may use different criteria to evaluate the offer (e.g., cost, safety, crew satisfaction, etc.) If all three agents agree about the solution, the negotiation ends with the current solution successfully. If no consensus is received, the AOC supervisor makes a new offer for the three agents to vote on. In the meantime, it keeps the offer which was accepted by the majority and updates this offer over time. Note that this process is repeated until reaching an agreement or the deadline. S.Bouarfaetal. /AMulti-AgentNegotiationApproach forAirlineOperationControl 379