Organization-Centered Multi-Agent Systems for Dynamic Highway Maintenance Planning
Esther Obonyo, Dilly O. C. Anumba · 2012
Maintaining the infrastructure involves managing structural elements requiring different maintenance strategies. Some elements have to be maintained at regular intervals based on a pre-programmed routine. Other elements are inspected at regular intervals and the specific the requirements for maintenance remain unknown until after the inspection. The latter complicates job scheduling as it disrupts existing programs for routine maintenance. Conventional maintenance planning systems lack dynamism and/ or fail to acknowledge all relations between actors, activities and resources. This paper discusses the potential of addressing these challenges using an organization-centered agent-modeling approach where different scenarios are encapsulated in agent models which captures: 1) global organization strategy and goals, and 2) the objectives and requirements of different stakeholders. Specific challenges of maintenance planning that cannot be fully addressed using conventional tools have been identified. The paper describes implemented of proof-of-concept organization-centered agent models that capture the requirements of maintenance planning.