In systems based on organisational specifications a reoccur- ring problem remains to be solved in the disparity between the level of abstractness of the organisational concepts and the concepts used in the implementation. Organisational specifications (deliberately) abstract from general practice, which creates a need to relate the abstract con- cepts used in the specification to concrete ones used in the practice. The prevailing solution for this problem is the use of counts-as statements. However, current implementations of counts-as view the relations ex- pressed in this notion as static ontological classifications, which presents problems in dynamic environments where the meaning of abstract con- cepts can change over time. This limitation has already been solved in complex formal theoretical investigations, but the results of that study are far too complex to make a practical implementation. This paper in- vestigates the limitations of current implementations of counts-as, and proposes a more flexible implementation based on the use of inheritance relations.

1. 15/07/08 | 1
18/11/09 NorMAS’08
ESAW’09
Engineering Social Reality with
Inheritance Relations
Huib Aldewereld, Sergio Alvarez-Napagao, Frank Dignum, Javier Vázquez-Salceda
Universiteit Utrecht
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
huib@cs.uu.nl, salvarez@lsi.upc.edu, dignum@cs.uu.nl. jvazquez@lsi.upc.edu
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2. 18/11/09 | 2 ESAW’09
Overview
• Motivation
• The ALIVE Project
– Use case: Crisis Management
• Counts-as
– Aspects of counts-as
– Constitutive counts-as in Crisis Management
– Sub-contexts and overlapping
• Implementing counts-as
• Conclusions
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Motivation
• Complex systems organisational specification
– Abstraction from actual practice
• Gap between ontologies
– Organisation ontology
· means of transport, to pay
– Implementation ontology
· trucks, paypal payment
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Bridging the gap
• Traditional approach: refinement techniques
– Linking abstract models with concrete concepts
– Design time, too static
– Limited reasoning
• counts-as statements
– Constitution of social reality
– Defining institutional frames
army truck counts-as a means of public transport?
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5. 18/11/09 | 4 ESAW’09
Bridging the gap
• Traditional approach: refinement techniques
– Linking abstract models with concrete concepts
– Design time, too static
– Limited reasoning
• counts-as statements
– Constitution of social reality
– Defining institutional frames
army truck counts-as a means of public transport?
Depends on the context!
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Using counts-as
• High level specifications should stay stable
• Actual implementations should be flexible and
adaptive
• Objective: to implement all aspects of counts-as
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Use case: Crisis Management
• Example domain: Dutch Crisis Management
• GRIP Levels
– GRIP 0: routine accident
– GRIP 1: small incidents (typically limited to a city)
– GRIP 2: large scale incidents (typically crossing
city borders)
– GRIP 3: disasters/incidents concerning multiple
regions/provinces
– GRIP 4: a disaster with an impact or
consequences on a national scale
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Crisis Management Domain Norms
• The crisis management task:
– Prevent excessive casualties
– Prevent excessive damage to the infrastructure
• Adequate coordination is required for the correct
execution of the crisis management task
• Sufficient information should be shared between
parties involved in the execution of the crisis
management task
• Institutional norms do not change, the interpretation
of the institutional facts changes
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Aspects of counts-as
• counts-as provides an explicit representation for
relating abstract and concrete concepts
• Classificatory counts-as
– It is always the case that large scale fires count
as happenings with severe consequences
• Proper classificatory counts-as
– In a certain context, large scale fires count as
disasters
• Constitutive counts-as
– It is a rule of a certain context that happenings
with severe consequences count as disasters
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Constitutive counts-as in Crisis
Management
• From the agent perspective
– Reasoning about contexts
– Dynamically changing the social reality
• From the organisation perspective
– Specification remains fixed
– Application and interpretation of specification
changes
all agents are under the authority of the operational
commander
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Constitutive counts-as in Crisis
Management
• From the agent perspective
– Reasoning about contexts
– Dynamically changing the social reality
• From the organisation perspective
– Specification remains fixed
– Application and interpretation of specification
changes
all agents are under the authority of the operational
commander
whereas the operational commander could be the Mayor, the Chief of the Fire
Brigade, or others, depending on the context
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Reasoning about contexts
• Context can change because
– An agent entitled declares a different context in
effect
– The situation does not conform to the
constitutional definition of the current context
we can now use army trucks for evacuation
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Reasoning about contexts
• Context can change because
– An agent entitled declares a different context in
effect
– The situation does not conform to the
constitutional definition of the current context
we can now use army trucks for evacuation
thus possibly forcing a switch to a different context
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Sub-contexts and overlapping
• Constitutive counts-as rules define social contexts
• Comparison between different contexts can be
inefficient
• Solution: each context has its unique counts-as rules
– Context subsumption
– Context overlap
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Sub-context handling
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!$#
!$%#
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Context overlapping
!"%$#
!"# !$#
!"&# !$&#
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Implementing counts-as
• Implementation currently being developed in Drools
– Open-source Java-based rule engine
– Declarative reasoning, forward chaining inference
– Enhanced implementation of the RETE algorithm
– Templates are available to work with OWL-DL
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From ontology to Drools
• Asserting predicates
• Asserting contexts
• Asserting proper classificatory counts-as
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From ontology to Drools
• Asserting predicates
Mayor(x)
• Asserting contexts
• Asserting proper classificatory counts-as
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From ontology to Drools
• Asserting predicates
Mayor(x)
• Asserting contexts
Context(GRIP2), Context(GRIP3)
• Asserting proper classificatory counts-as
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From ontology to Drools
• Asserting predicates
Mayor(x)
• Asserting contexts
Context(GRIP2), Context(GRIP3)
• Asserting proper classificatory counts-as
ChiefFire(α) counts-asGRIP2 OperationalCommander(α)
Mayor(α) counts-asGRIP3 OperationalCommander(α)
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Context identification
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Context identification
for each set of counts-as statements with the same concepts,
we add them to one internal context
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Context identification
for each set of counts-as statements with the same concepts,
we add them to one internal context
each internal context is identified by the contexts of its counts-as,
and linked with the contexts defined by the user
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Example of context identification
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Example of context identification
There are 3 internal contexts with constitutive counts-as:
GRIP2 : { ChiefFire(α) counts-as OperationalCommander(α) }
GRIP2GRIP3 : { Ambulance(α) counts-as MeansOfEvacuation(α) }
GRIP3 : { Mayor(α) counts-as OperationalCommander(α),
ArmyTruck(α) counts-as MeansOfEvacuation(α) }
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Context activation
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Context activation
if a context is declared as active, all the internal contexts linked to it are
activated
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Context activation
if a context is declared as active, all the internal contexts linked to it are
activated
if an internal context C is active and A(α) counts-asC B(α),
then A(α) counts-as B(α)
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Context activation
if a context is declared as active, all the internal contexts linked to it are
activated
if an internal context C is active and A(α) counts-asC B(α),
then A(α) counts-as B(α)
if A(α) counts-as B(α) and A(x), then B(x)
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From counts-as to contexts
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From counts-as to contexts
iff for all A(α) counts-asC B(α) from an internal context C
A(α) counts-as B(α),
then the internal context C is activated
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From counts-as to contexts
iff for all A(α) counts-asC B(α) from an internal context C
A(α) counts-as B(α),
then the internal context C is activated
iff all internal contexts linked to a context C defined by the user are active, then
activate the context C
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Features of the implementation
• Context subsumption and overlapping
• Internally, each context has unique counts-as
• Closure
– Context defines counts-as
– counts-as define a context
• Contexts are available for reasoning
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35. 18/11/09 | 20 ESAW’09
Features of the implementation
• Context subsumption and overlapping
• Internally, each context has unique counts-as
• Closure
– Context defines counts-as
– counts-as define a context
• Contexts are available for reasoning
ambulances are
insufficient for
evacuation
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36. 18/11/09 | 20 ESAW’09
Features of the implementation
• Context subsumption and overlapping
• Internally, each context has unique counts-as
• Closure
– Context defines counts-as
– counts-as define a context
• Contexts are available for reasoning
ambulances are
need for army
insufficient for
trucks
evacuation
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37. 18/11/09 | 20 ESAW’09
Features of the implementation
• Context subsumption and overlapping
• Internally, each context has unique counts-as
• Closure
– Context defines counts-as
– counts-as define a context
• Contexts are available for reasoning
ambulances are army trucks count
need for army
insufficient for as means of
trucks
evacuation evacuation in GRIP3
ALIVE EU FUNDED PROJECT

38. 18/11/09 | 20 ESAW’09
Features of the implementation
• Context subsumption and overlapping
• Internally, each context has unique counts-as
• Closure
– Context defines counts-as
– counts-as define a context
• Contexts are available for reasoning
ambulances are army trucks count
need for army
insufficient for as means of
trucks
evacuation evacuation in GRIP3
in GRIP3, the
commander is
the mayor
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39. 18/11/09 | 20 ESAW’09
Features of the implementation
• Context subsumption and overlapping
• Internally, each context has unique counts-as
• Closure
– Context defines counts-as
– counts-as define a context
• Contexts are available for reasoning
ambulances are army trucks count
need for army
insufficient for as means of
trucks
evacuation evacuation in GRIP3
the command in GRIP3, the
has to be commander is
transferred the mayor
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Conclusions
• Counts-as plays a crucial role in complex and
dynamic applications
– Context-dependent linking between abstract
specification and concrete practice
• Several aspects of counts-as
– Constitutive aspect is tackled
• Implementation in Drools
– Expressive
– Agents can reason about contexts and counts-as
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Further work
• Improve the implementation of the context concept
• Currently building support to first-order logic formulas
of counts-as statements
• Integration with rule-based norm operation
• Use in ALIVE monitor component
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42. 18/11/09 | 23 ESAW’09
Thank you!
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