facilitating e-negotiation processes with semantic web technologies

Facilitating e-Negotiation Processes with Semantic Web

Technologies

Patrick C. K. HUNGFaculty of Business and Information Technology,

University of Ontario Institute of Technology [email protected]

Ho-fung LEUNGSenior Member, IEEE

Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering

Chinese University of Hong Kong

[email protected]

Dickson K. W. CHIUSenior Member, IEEE

Dickson Computer SystemsHong Kong

[email protected], [email protected]

Shing-Chi CHEUNGSenior Member, IEEE

Dept. of Computer Science Hong Kong University of

Science & [email protected]

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Negotiation HICSS38 - 2

Introduction Negotiation

a decision process in which two or more parties make individual decisions and interact with each other for mutual gain

negozio = shop in Italian … e-Negotiation

perform negotiation activities over the Internet

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Background of Research D.K.W. Chiu, S.C. Cheung, P.C.K. Hung, S.Y.Y. Chiu* and K.K.

Chung*. Developing e-Negotiation Process Support with a Meta-modeling Approach in a Web Services Environment, Decision Support Systems, accepted. (*FYP students)

Peliminary Version at ICWS'03, June 2003 6th Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems, Sept 2002

D.K.W. Chiu, S.C. Cheung, P.C.K. Hung, and H.F. Leung. Constraint-based Negotiation in a Multi-Agent Information System with Multiple Platform Support, HICSS37, Jan 2004.

S.C. Cheung, P.C.K. Hung and D.K.W. Chiu. On e-Negotiation of Unmatched Logrolling Views, HICSS36, Jan 2003.

S.C. Cheung, P.C.K. Hung and D.K.W. Chiu. A Meta-model for e-Contract Template Variable Dependencies Facilitating e-Negotiation, ER2002, Oct 2002

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Motivation

Are there currently significant practical use of the Semantic Web?

Match-making and beyond Software requirement engineering / negotiation Model and solve practical problems with CS and

technologies Cross-over multi-disciplinary research

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Objectives How to elicit negotiation requirements? Semantic Web

=> Ontologies => help negotiators’ mutual understanding of issues, alternatives, and tradeoffs

Address semantic requirements of negotiation Reduce cost and improve effectiveness of negotiation

(avoid combinatorial explosion of issues) Development of an effective and efficient negotiation

plan Applications: e-Marketplace, Web-service

negotiation, agent negotiation, requirement negotiation…

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e-Negotiation Portal at e-Marketplaces

Buyers

Supplierse-Marketplace

Aggregate requests from Buyers, contactpotential Suppliers,

match Suppliersand Buyers, exchange

bids and offers,generate e-Contract

Repository

Ontologies and Concepts

e-Negotiation dataAgreements- …

bids

bids

offers

offers

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An Example Ontology for Sale Negotiation of Rubber Gloves in UML Class Diagram

ShippingCost

Sale Order

OrderLine

Premium

Insurance

Size Color

Unit Cost

Delivery Delivery Date

Quantity

Payment Terms

Payee

TotalAmount

Insured Amount

Discount

Red Purple

Appearance

Refunding Policy

{unordered} attributes: deposit, installment, pay-upon-delivery, …

{ordered} attributes: small, medium, large, extra-large

{unordered} attributes: brick red, crimson, …

{unordered} attributes: light purple, magenta, …

*

Insurer

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Semantic basede-Negotiation Conceptual Model

BaseConcept

Party Negotiation

Accepted Alternative Value

Alternative Value

makes

1

1..*

1..*has

1..*

1..*

*indivisiblyrelates to

1..*

2..*

involves

Issue1

1

*

*

Ontology

AuxiliaryConcept

precedes

Concept

Accepted Offer

maps to

PlanOffer

drives formulates *

1

1..*

1 ***

*resolves

1..*Task 1

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Overall e-Negotiation Process Design Methodology

select agreed relevant ontologies

identify issues

evaluate tradeoffs & make offers

[need to revise tradeoff model]

creation ofagreement [all issues are

resolved][quit]

map issues into ontology concepts

check consistencyof issues &concepts

*

[consistent]

[not consistent]

synchronization bar

activity

process termination

process startcondition

Pre-negotiationphase

Negotiationphase

formulateplan

for eachcollectionof co-relatedissue derive concept

relations

[need to identify new issues]

identify alternatives

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How are Ontologies Useful?

Understanding Negotiation Issues from Ontologies

Understanding Dependencies of Issues from Ontologies

Indivisible Components of Issues for Tradeoff Evaluation and Negotiation Plan

Understanding Possible Alternatives for Issues from Ontologies

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Understanding Negotiation Issues from Ontologies

Perform graph search algorithm on the semantic map

Issues are preliminary identified in the first round.

For each identified issue, check if an issue can be mapped directly to a concept. If not, see if an issue can be refined into a set of more

specific concepts a cost is refined into constituent costs that sum up to

it. Incomplete Ontologies

Introduce new concepts into the ontology map Relate it with to existing ones

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Understanding Negotiation Issues from Ontologies (Cont)

Perform graph search algorithm on the semantic map

For each identified concept c, Examine every un-visited node n adjacent to c in the

ontology map. For each such node n, see if the new concept is

relevant to the negotiation problem. Repeat until no more related new concepts can be

identified. Only after successful negotiation do we need to

consider combining newly identified concepts back to specify a more concise agreement

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Functional dependency borrowed from fundamental relational database

concepts motivate this research The alternative for an issue is determined by the

alternatives(s) of other issue(s). cost of production depends on delivery date and

quantity. Computational dependency –

more obvious type of functional dependency hardwired computational formula E.g. insurance amount = percentage * cost of goods.

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Requirement dependency (constraint satisfaction) Only after the determinant value is known can viable

alternatives be determined. E.g., whether a customer may pay by credit card,

bank draft, or remittance is evaluated according to the total amount.

Classification dependency A special type of requirement dependency in which

the classification of another issue is dependent on the outcome of an agreed issue.

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Indivisible Components of Issues for Tradeoff Evaluation and Negotiation Plan

Indivisible Components of Issues Cyclic dependencies among the concepts Tradeoff Evaluation

Negotiate Size

Negotiate Color

Negotiate Refund Policy

Negotiate Unit Cost, Quantity

& Delivery Date Negotiate

Payment Terms

Negotiate Shipping

Cost & Payee

Negotiate Insurance

Premium, Insured Amount & Payee

Negotiate Discount

Compute Total

Amount

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Un-Matching Tradeoff Views

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Matching Tradeoff Views

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Understanding Possible Alternatives for Issues from Ontologies

Alternative for issues are often in discrete values cannot be expressed in numerical values not quantized in normal practices because of difficulties

in recognizing them, e.g., color for simplicity and convenience (size => S, M, L, XL)

The elicitation of options is streamlined when a complicated issue is decomposed into concepts(appearance => size + color + shapes)

Ontologies provide explicit ordering of them (size => S < M < L < XL) implicit ordering

inheritance (“is-a”) hierarchies composition hierarchies

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System Implementation Architecture

Criteria& Issues

EditorSearchEngine

Ontology Editor

criteria,issues

ontologye-Negotiation

Data & Repository

existing ontology

Ontology MaintenanceSubsystem

IssueDependency

EditorTasks

Organizer

e-NegotiationProcess

Generator

ontology, issue

issuedependency

taskdependency

e-NegotiationMatchingSubsystem

OntologyGenerator

e-NegotiationSession Manager

e-NegotiationExecuting Subsystem

e-Negotiation process

ontology

revised ontology, issues

InternetMessenger

SMS Gateway

WAPGateway

WebServer

bids & offers

Multiplatform Support Subsystem

e-Negotiation process

Multi-platformDevices

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Making Offers and Counter-offers in a Negotiation Session

Identify the issue(s) to be next negotiated in the

plan

Preparereservation

prices

Make offer /counter-offer

Evaluate offer /counter-offer[offer received]

[counter-offer received]

Notify counterparty

of failure

Quit?

Revise reservation

prices

[false]

[true]

[unacceptable offer]

Have all issues been negotiated?

[false] Successfulnegotiation

[true]

[acceptable offer]Notify counterpartyof acceptance

[acceptance received]

[failure received]

start a new negotiation cycle

[ready to make an offer]

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Conclusions Formulation of negotiation plan with maturing of

Semantic Web technologies Elicitation of negotiation issues, issue dependencies,

tradeoff, and alternatives Control the openness of issues Our algorithm verifies the completeness of elicited

negotiation requirements Negotiation processes are properly guided, recorded,

and managed For e-commerce activities are usually more structural

and repeatable (as opposed to political negotiations) Ontologies and plans are therefore reusable Negotiation automation with agents / integration with

EIS

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Future Work

Formal models Elicitation of semantic distances Users having different tradeoff views (i.e., different

negotiation plan in mind) Multi-lateral negotiation Ranking of different types of issues and criteria for tradeoff

issues (Hung, HICSS 2003) Decision making to reach an optimal and stable state for

negotiators (Nash equilibrium) Study of e-Contract enforcement

(Chiu et al., HICSS 2003) Real-life negotiation practices General requirement elicitation (e.g. software)

facilitating e-negotiation processes with semantic web technologies

Documents

agent negotiation

negotiation requirements

italian enegotiation

enegotiation processes

negotiation activities

effectiveness of negotiation

enegotiation process

webservice negotiation