An Architectural Description Language for Secure Multi-Agent Systems

Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) architectures are gaining popularity for building open, distributed, and evolving
information systems. Unfortunately, despite considerable work in the fields of software architecture and MAS during the last
decade, few research efforts have aimed at defining languages for designing and formalising secure agent architectures. This
paper proposes a novel Architectural Description Language (ADL) for describing Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) secure MAS.
We specify each element of our ADL using the Z specification language and we employ two example case studies: one to
assist us in the description of the proposed language and help readers of the article to better understand the fundamentals of the
language; and one to demonstrate its applicability.

Citation:
Mouratidis, H., Kolp, M., Giorgini, P., Faulkner, S. (2010) ‘An Architectural Description Language for Secure Multi-Agent Systems’ Web Intelligence and Agent Systems 8 (1) pp.99-122.