Frans Coenen - Böcker

Knowledge-based (KB) technology is being applied to complex problem-solving and critical tasks in many application domains. Concerns have naturally arisen as to the dependability of knowledge-based systems (KBS). As with any software, attention to quality and safety must be paid throughout development of a KBS and rigorous verification and validation (V&V) techniques must be employed. Research in V&V of KBS has emerged as a distinct field only in the last decade and is intended to address issues associated with quality and safety aspects of KBS and to credit such applications with the same degree of dependability as conventional applications. Since 1995, V&V of KBS has been the topic of annual workshops associated with the main AI conferences, such as AAAI, IJACI and ECAI. This is a collection of papers dealing with all aspects of KBS V&V, presented at the Fifth European Symposium on Verification and Validation of Knowledge Based Systems and Components, which was held in Oslo in the summer of 1999, and was sponsored by Det Norske Veritas and the British Computer Society's Specialist Group on Expert Systems (SGES).

Knowledge-based (KB) technology is being applied to complex problem-solving and critical tasks in many application domains. Concerns have naturally arisen as to the dependability of knowledge-based systems (KBS). As with any software, attention to quality and safety must be paid throughout development of a KBS and rigorous verification and validation (V&V) techniques must be employed. Research in V&V of KBS has emerged as a distinct field only in the last decade and is intended to address issues associated with quality and safety aspects of KBS and to credit such applications with the same degree of dependability as conventional applications. In recent years, V&V of KBS has been the topic of annual workshops associated with the main AI conferences, such as AAAI, IJACI and ECAI. Validation and Verification of Knowledge Based Systems contains a collection of papers, dealing with all aspects of KBS V&V, presented at the Fifth European Symposium on Verificationand Validation of Knowledge Based Systems and Components (EUROVAV'99 - which was held in Oslo in the summer of 1999, and was sponsored by Det Norske Veritas and the British Computer Society's Specialist Group on Expert Systems (SGES).

The papers in this volume are the refereed technical papers presented at AI2005, the Twenty-fiftth SGAI International Conference on theory, practical and application of Artificial Intelligence, held in Cambridge in December 2005.The papers in this volume present new and innovative developments in the field, divided into sections on Machine Learning, Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, Knowledge Acquisition, Constraint Satisfaction and Scheduling, and Natural Language Processing.This is the twenty-first volume in the Research and Development series. The series is essential reading for those who wish to keep up to date with developments in this important field.The Application Stream papers are published as a companion volume under the title Applications and Innovations in Intelligent Systems XIII.

M.A.BRAMER University ofPortsmouth, UK This volume comprises the refereed technical papers presented at AI-2006, the Twenty-sixth SGAI International Conference on Innovative Techniques and Applications of Artificial Intelligence, held in Cambridge in December 2006. The conference was organised by SGAI, the British Computer Society Specialist Group on Artificial Intelligence. The papers in this volume present new and innovative developments in the field, divided into sections on AI Techniques, Knowledge Discovery in Data, Argumentation, Dialogue Games and Optimisation, Knowledge Representation and Management, Semantic Web, and Model Based Systems and Simulation. For the first time the volume also includes the text of short papers presented as posters at the conference. This year's prize for the best refereed technical paper was won by a paper entitled Combining Task Execution with Background Knowledge for the Verification of Medical Guidelines' written by a team comprising Arjen Hommersom, Perry Groot and Peter Lucas (University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands) and Michael Balser and Jonathan Schmitt (University ofAugsburg, Germany). SGAI gratefully acknowledges the long-term sponsorship of Hewlett-Packard Laboratories (Bristol) for this prize, which goes back to the 1980s. This is the twenty-third volume in the Research and Development series. The Application Stream papers are published as a companion volume under the title Applications and Innovations in Intelligent Systems XIV. On behalfofthe conference organising committee I should like to thank all those who contributed to the organisation of this year's technical programme, in particular the programme committee members, the executive programme committee and our administrator Mark Firman.

An agent in a multi-agent system (MAS) has to generate plans for its individual goal, but these plans may con?ict with those that are already being scheduled or executed by other agents. It must also be able to complete its planning and resolution of these con?icts within a reasonable time to have an acceptable quality plan. Although we adopt hierarchical planning (HP, for example, see [7, 12]) using the decision-theoretic planning (DTP) approach [6] for ef?cient planning, it is not trivial to apply HPO to MAS. In HP, appropriate (abstract) plans are selected level by level to maximize the utility U (p), where where p is the expected ?nal plan comprising a sequence of primitive actions. However, in the MAS context, con?icts between agents affect the ef?ciency and quality of resulting plans. When a con?ict is found at lower levels, an additional sophisticated process for avoiding it (con?ict resolution) must be invoked and some extra actions (such as waiting for synchronization and detouring) may have to be added to the plan. The con?ict resolution process may become costly or fail. Even a single con?ict, if it is dif?cult to resolve, will result in a plan with considerably lower quality than it otherwise would have. As a result, in multi-agent systems, the second- or third-best plans may result in better overall performance.

The papers in this volume are the refereed technical papers presented at AI-2008, the Twenty-eighth SGAI International Conference on Innovative Techniques and Applications of Artificial Intelligence, held in Cambridge in December 2008.They present new and innovative developments in the field, divided into sections on CBR and Classification, AI Techniques, Argumentation and Negotiation, Intelligent Systems, From Machine Learning To E-Learning and Decision Making. The volume also includes the text of short papers presented as posters at the conference.This is the twenty-fifth volume in the Research and Development series. The series is essential reading for those who wish to keep up to date with developments in this important field.The Application Stream papers are published as a companion volume under the title Applications and Innovations in Intelligent Systems XVI.

This volume contains the refereed application papers presented at ES99, the Nineteenth SGES International Conference on Knowledge Based Systems and Applied Artificial Intelligence, held in Cambridge in December 1999. The papers in this volume demonstrate the maturity and continued development of AI as a commercially viable technology. They illustrate the application of a wide variety of AI techniques in diverse business and engineering domains, solving real world problems and delivering significant business benefits. This is the seventh volume in the Applications and Innovations series. The series serves as a key reference as to what can be, and what has been, achieved by the application of AI technology. The Technical Stream papers from ES99 are published as a companion volume under the title Research and Development in Intelligent Systems XVI.

This volume contains the refereed technical papers presented at ES99, the Nineteenth SGES International Conference on Knowledge-Based Systems and Applied Artificial Intelligence, held in Cambridge in December 1999. The papers in this volume present new and innovative developments in the field, divided into sections on knowledge engineering, knowledge discovery, case-based reasoning, learning and knowledge representation and refinement. This is the sixteenth volume in the Research and Development series. The series is essential reading for those who wish to keep up to date with developments in this important field. The Application Stream papers are published as a companion volume under the title Applications and Innovations in Intelligent Systems VII.

The papers in this volume are the Applications papers presented at ES 2000, the Twentieth SGES International Conference on Knowledge Based Systems and Applied Artificial Intelligence, held in Cambridge in December 2000. The scope of the Application papers has expanded over recent years to cover not just innovative applications using traditional knowledge based systems, but also to include applications demonstrating the whole range of AI technologies. These papers continue to illustrate the maturity of AI as a commercially viable technology to solve real world problems. This is the eighth volume in the Applications and Innovations in Intelligent Systems series. The series serves as a key reference as to how AI technology has enabled organisations to solve complex problems and gain significant business benefits. The Technical Stream papers from ES 200 are published as a companion volume under the title Research and Development in Intelligent Systems XVII.

The papers in this volume are the refereed technical papers presented at ES2000, the Twentieth SGES International Conference on Knowledge Based Systems and Applied Artificial Intelligence, held in Cambridge in December 2000. The papers in this volume present new and innovative developments in the field, divided into sections on learning, case-based reasoning, knowledge representation, knowledge engineering, and belief acquisition and planning. This is the seventeenth volume in the Research and Development series. The series is essential reading for those who wish to keep up to date with developments in this important field. The Application Stream papers are published as a companion volume under the title Applications and Innovations in Intelligent Systems VIII.

The papers in this volume are the refereed technical papers presented at ES2001, the Twenty-first SGES International Conference on Knowledge Based Systems and Applied Artificial Intelligence, held in Cambridge in December 2001. The papers in this volume present new and innovative developments in the field, divided into sections on Machine Learning, Constraint Satisfaction, Agents, Knowledge Representation and Knowledge Engineering. This is the eighteenth volume in the Research and Development series. The series is essential reading for those who wish to keep up to date with developments in this important field. The Application Stream papers are published as a companion volume under the title "Applications and Innovations in Intelligent Systems IX".

The papers in this volume are the referred Applications papers presented at ES 2002, the Twenty-second SGES international Conference on Knowledge Based Systems and Applied Artificial Intelligence, to be held in Cambridge during December 2002. The Application stream is the largest annual showcase in Europe of real applications using AI technology. Papers presented in this volume describe the application of AI to address real-world problems, including commerce, manufacturing and defence and every major AI technique; and highlight critical areas of success (and failure) and present the benefits and lessons of value to other developers. This is the tenth volume in the Applications and Innovations in Intelligent Systems series. The series serves as a key reference as to how AI technology has enabled organisations to solve complex problems and gain significant business benefits. The Technical Stream papers are published as a companion volume under the title Research and Development in Intelligent Systems XIX.

These are the refereed technical papers presented at ES 2002, the Twenty-second SGAI International Conference on Knowledge Based Systems and Applied Artificial Intelligence, held in Cambridge in December 2002. The papers in this volume present developments in the field, divided into sections on machine learning, knowledge representation and reasoning, knowledge acquisition, constraint satisfaction and scheduling, and natural language processing.

The papers in this volume are the refereed technical papers presented at AI-2003, the Twenty-third SGAI International Conference on theory, practical and application of Artificial Intelligence, held in Cambridge in December 2003. The papers in this volume present new and innovative developments in the field, divided into sections on Machine Learning, Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, Knowledge Acquisition, Constraint Satisfaction and Scheduling, and Natural Language Processing. This is the twentieth volume in the Research and Development series. The series is essential reading for those who wish to keep up to date with developments in this important field. The Application Stream papers are published as a companion volume under the title "Applications and Innovations in Intelligent Systems XI".

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management, IC3K 2022, held in Valletta, Malta, during October 24–26, 2022. The 14 full papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 127 submissions.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 15th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management, IC3K 2023, held in Rome, Italy, during November 13-15, 2023. The 9 full papers and 8 short papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 166 submissions.

This book constitutes the refereed post proceedings of the 16th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management, IC3K 2024, held in Porto, Portugal during November 17–19, 2024.The 12 full papers and 5 short papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 175 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: knowledge discovery and information retrieval; knowledge engineering and ontology development and knowledge management and information systems.