Authors:
Viktor Ayzenshtadt
1
;
Christian Espinoza-Stapelfeld
1
;
Christoph Langenhan
2
and
Klaus-Dieter Althoff
3
Affiliations:
1
University of Hildesheim, Germany
;
2
Technical University of Munich, Germany
;
3
University of Hildesheim and German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Germany
Keyword(s):
Multi-Agent Systems, Case-Based Agents, Explanations, Architectural Design Support.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Agent Models and Architectures
;
Agents
;
AI and Creativity
;
Artificial Intelligence
;
Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support Systems
;
Cooperation and Coordination
;
Distributed and Mobile Software Systems
;
Distributed Problem Solving
;
Enterprise Information Systems
;
Knowledge Engineering and Ontology Development
;
Knowledge-Based Systems
;
Multi-Agent Systems
;
Soft Computing
;
Software Engineering
;
Symbolic Systems
Abstract:
In this paper, we describe the general structure and evaluation of a multi-agent based system module that was
conceptualized to explain, and therefore, enrich the search results of the retrieval process within a distributed
case-based framework for support of early conceptual design phase in architecture. This explanation module
is implemented as an essential part of the framework and uses case-based agents, explanation ontology, and
explanation patterns as its underlying foundational components. The module’s main goal is to provide the user
with additional information about the search results to make the framework’s behavior during the retrieval
stage more transparent and traceable. System’s justification for displaying of results plays an important role
as well, and is also included in the explanations. We evaluated the explanation generation process with a
ground-truth set of explanations and a case-based validation process to ensure the suitability of the generated
expla
nation expressions for displaying in user interfaces connected to the framework. The results of the
evaluation confirmed our expectation and showed the general validity of the explanations.
(More)