In the light of the challenges that face today''s organizations, there is a grow­ ing recognition that future market success and long term'' survival of enter­ prises will increasingly depend upon the effective usage of information technology. Of late, a new generation of terminology has emerged to describe enterprises. This terminology draws heavily upon the virtual concep- virtual reality, virtual organization, virtual (working) environment, and indeed virtual product. However, developing computerized organisations for the 21st century demands serious thought with regard to the judicious integration of organizational theory, design and practice with research tools and methods from within information processing technology. Within this book, we approach this aim from the perspective of a radically decentralized (possibly virtual) enterprise. We assume that organizations are becoming increasingly process-orientated, rather than adhering to the former more traditional organizational structures based upon task oriented models. This approach has proved illuminating in that, due to the inherent autonomy of organizational subunits any approach to coordinating decentralized activ­ ities (including workflows and business processes) necessitates a cooperative style of problem solving. This book introduces the reader to a stimulating new field of interdiscipli­ nary research in cooperative problem solving. In Chapter 1 Kim presents a view of three central discip14tes, namely those of Organizational Theory, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI). The applications given here demonstrate how future enterprises will benefit from recent advances in the technological arena of cooperative knowledge processing.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the workshops co-located with the 4th International Joint Conference on Ambient Intelligence, AmI 2013, held in Dublin, Ireland, in December 2013. The 33 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions to the following workshops: 5th International Workshop on Intelligent Environments Supporting Healthcare and Well-being (WISHWell’13) 3d International workshop on Pervasive and Context-Aware Middleware (PerCAM’13), 2nd International Workshop on Adaptive Robotic Ecologies (ARE'13), International Workshop on Aesthetic Intelligence (AxI'13), First International Workshop on Uncertainty in Ambient Intelligence (UAmI13). The papers are organized in topical sections on intelligent environments supporting healthcare and well-being; adaptive robotic ecologies; uncertainty in ambient intelligence; aesthetic intelligence; pervasive and context-aware middleware.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the workshops co-located with the 4th International Joint Conference on Ambient Intelligence, AmI 2013, held in Dublin, Ireland, in December 2013. The 33 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions to the following workshops: 5th International Workshop on Intelligent Environments Supporting Healthcare and Well-being (WISHWell’13) 3d International workshop on Pervasive and Context-Aware Middleware (PerCAM’13), 2nd International Workshop on Adaptive Robotic Ecologies (ARE''13), International Workshop on Aesthetic Intelligence (AxI''13), First International Workshop on Uncertainty in Ambient Intelligence (UAmI13). The papers are organized in topical sections on intelligent environments supporting healthcare and well-being; adaptive robotic ecologies; uncertainty in ambient intelligence; aesthetic intelligence; pervasive and context-aware middleware.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Joint Conference of Ambient Intelligence, AmI 2014, held in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, in November 2014. The 21 revised full papers presented together with 5 short papers and 4 workshop papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 59 submissions. The papers are organized along a set of thematic tracks: ambient assisted living; internet of things; ambient play and learning; smart buildings and cities; intelligent driving; data science; smart healthcare and healing environments; ambient persuasion; and new and emerging themes.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Joint Conference of Ambient Intelligence, AmI 2014, held in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, in November 2014. The 21 revised full papers presented together with 5 short papers and 4 workshop papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 59 submissions. The papers are organized along a set of thematic tracks: ambient assisted living; internet of things; ambient play and learning; smart buildings and cities; intelligent driving; data science; smart healthcare and healing environments; ambient persuasion; and new and emerging themes.

In the light of the challenges that face today's organizations, there is a grow­ ing recognition that future market success and long term' survival of enter­ prises will increasingly depend upon the effective usage of information technology. Of late, a new generation of terminology has emerged to describe enterprises. This terminology draws heavily upon the virtual concep- virtual reality, virtual organization, virtual (working) environment, and indeed virtual product. However, developing computerized organisations for the 21st century demands serious thought with regard to the judicious integration of organizational theory, design and practice with research tools and methods from within information processing technology. Within this book, we approach this aim from the perspective of a radically decentralized (possibly virtual) enterprise. We assume that organizations are becoming increasingly process-orientated, rather than adhering to the former more traditional organizational structures based upon task oriented models. This approach has proved illuminating in that, due to the inherent autonomy of organizational subunits any approach to coordinating decentralized activ­ ities (including workflows and business processes) necessitates a cooperative style of problem solving. This book introduces the reader to a stimulating new field of interdiscipli­ nary research in cooperative problem solving. In Chapter 1 Kim presents a view of three central discip14tes, namely those of Organizational Theory, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI). The applications given here demonstrate how future enterprises will benefit from recent advances in the technological arena of cooperative knowledge processing.

The seventh international workshop ESAW 2006 – Engineering Societies in the Agents World VII—was hosted in the School of Computer Science and Inf- matics, University College Dublin, Ireland in September 2006. This workshop was organized as a stand-alone event, running over three days, and continued andenhancedthe high-qualityconferencetheme thatnowuniquelycharacterizes the ESAW workshop series. ESAW VII built upon the success of prior ESAW workshops – Ku¸ sadasi (2005), London (2004) and Toulouse (2004), going back to the inauguralworkshopheld in Berlin(2000). This workshopwasattended by 50 participants from 13 di?erent countries. Over 25 researchers presented their work and substantial time was allocated each day for ad-hoc interactive disc- sions on those presented topics. Indeed, these opportunities for the exchange of views and open discussion with fellow experts are one of the hallmarks of the ESAW series. Discussions coalesced around ESAW’s main themes: – Engineering multi-agent systems – Methodologies for analysis, design, development and veri?cation of agent societies – Interaction and coordination in agent societies – Autonomic agent societies – Trust in agent societies For moreinformationabouttheworkshop,theinterestedreaderisreferredto 1 the ESAW 2006 WWW site . The original contributions have been published as a Technical Report (UCD-CSI-2006-5) and this may be obtained freely from the Technical Report section on the WWW page of the School of Computer Science 2 and Informatics at University College Dublin . These post-proceedings continue the series published by Springer (ESAW 2000: LNAI 1972; ESAW 2001: LNAI 2203; ESAW 2002: LNAI 2577; ESAW 2003: LNAI 3071; ESAW 2004: LNAI 3451; ESAW 2005: LNAI 3963).

In the light of the challenges that face today''s organizations, there is a grow­ ing recognition that future market success and long term'' survival of enter­ prises will increasingly depend upon the effective usage of information technology. Of late, a new generation of terminology has emerged to describe enterprises. This terminology draws heavily upon the virtual concep- virtual reality, virtual organization, virtual (working) environment, and indeed virtual product. However, developing computerized organisations for the 21st century demands serious thought with regard to the judicious integration of organizational theory, design and practice with research tools and methods from within information processing technology. Within this book, we approach this aim from the perspective of a radically decentralized (possibly virtual) enterprise. We assume that organizations are becoming increasingly process-orientated, rather than adhering to the former more traditional organizational structures based upon task oriented models. This approach has proved illuminating in that, due to the inherent autonomy of organizational subunits any approach to coordinating decentralized activ­ ities (including workflows and business processes) necessitates a cooperative style of problem solving. This book introduces the reader to a stimulating new field of interdiscipli­ nary research in cooperative problem solving. In Chapter 1 Kim presents a view of three central discip14tes, namely those of Organizational Theory, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI). The applications given here demonstrate how future enterprises will benefit from recent advances in the technological arena of cooperative knowledge processing.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the workshops co-located with the 4th International Joint Conference on Ambient Intelligence, AmI 2013, held in Dublin, Ireland, in December 2013. The 33 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions to the following workshops: 5th International Workshop on Intelligent Environments Supporting Healthcare and Well-being (WISHWell’13) 3d International workshop on Pervasive and Context-Aware Middleware (PerCAM’13), 2nd International Workshop on Adaptive Robotic Ecologies (ARE'13), International Workshop on Aesthetic Intelligence (AxI'13), First International Workshop on Uncertainty in Ambient Intelligence (UAmI13). The papers are organized in topical sections on intelligent environments supporting healthcare and well-being; adaptive robotic ecologies; uncertainty in ambient intelligence; aesthetic intelligence; pervasive and context-aware middleware.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the workshops co-located with the 4th International Joint Conference on Ambient Intelligence, AmI 2013, held in Dublin, Ireland, in December 2013. The 33 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions to the following workshops: 5th International Workshop on Intelligent Environments Supporting Healthcare and Well-being (WISHWell’13) 3d International workshop on Pervasive and Context-Aware Middleware (PerCAM’13), 2nd International Workshop on Adaptive Robotic Ecologies (ARE''13), International Workshop on Aesthetic Intelligence (AxI''13), First International Workshop on Uncertainty in Ambient Intelligence (UAmI13). The papers are organized in topical sections on intelligent environments supporting healthcare and well-being; adaptive robotic ecologies; uncertainty in ambient intelligence; aesthetic intelligence; pervasive and context-aware middleware.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Joint Conference of Ambient Intelligence, AmI 2014, held in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, in November 2014. The 21 revised full papers presented together with 5 short papers and 4 workshop papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 59 submissions. The papers are organized along a set of thematic tracks: ambient assisted living; internet of things; ambient play and learning; smart buildings and cities; intelligent driving; data science; smart healthcare and healing environments; ambient persuasion; and new and emerging themes.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Joint Conference of Ambient Intelligence, AmI 2014, held in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, in November 2014. The 21 revised full papers presented together with 5 short papers and 4 workshop papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 59 submissions. The papers are organized along a set of thematic tracks: ambient assisted living; internet of things; ambient play and learning; smart buildings and cities; intelligent driving; data science; smart healthcare and healing environments; ambient persuasion; and new and emerging themes.

In the light of the challenges that face today's organizations, there is a grow­ ing recognition that future market success and long term' survival of enter­ prises will increasingly depend upon the effective usage of information technology. Of late, a new generation of terminology has emerged to describe enterprises. This terminology draws heavily upon the virtual concep- virtual reality, virtual organization, virtual (working) environment, and indeed virtual product. However, developing computerized organisations for the 21st century demands serious thought with regard to the judicious integration of organizational theory, design and practice with research tools and methods from within information processing technology. Within this book, we approach this aim from the perspective of a radically decentralized (possibly virtual) enterprise. We assume that organizations are becoming increasingly process-orientated, rather than adhering to the former more traditional organizational structures based upon task oriented models. This approach has proved illuminating in that, due to the inherent autonomy of organizational subunits any approach to coordinating decentralized activ­ ities (including workflows and business processes) necessitates a cooperative style of problem solving. This book introduces the reader to a stimulating new field of interdiscipli­ nary research in cooperative problem solving. In Chapter 1 Kim presents a view of three central discip14tes, namely those of Organizational Theory, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI). The applications given here demonstrate how future enterprises will benefit from recent advances in the technological arena of cooperative knowledge processing.

The seventh international workshop ESAW 2006 – Engineering Societies in the Agents World VII—was hosted in the School of Computer Science and Inf- matics, University College Dublin, Ireland in September 2006. This workshop was organized as a stand-alone event, running over three days, and continued andenhancedthe high-qualityconferencetheme thatnowuniquelycharacterizes the ESAW workshop series. ESAW VII built upon the success of prior ESAW workshops – Ku¸ sadasi (2005), London (2004) and Toulouse (2004), going back to the inauguralworkshopheld in Berlin(2000). This workshopwasattended by 50 participants from 13 di?erent countries. Over 25 researchers presented their work and substantial time was allocated each day for ad-hoc interactive disc- sions on those presented topics. Indeed, these opportunities for the exchange of views and open discussion with fellow experts are one of the hallmarks of the ESAW series. Discussions coalesced around ESAW’s main themes: – Engineering multi-agent systems – Methodologies for analysis, design, development and veri?cation of agent societies – Interaction and coordination in agent societies – Autonomic agent societies – Trust in agent societies For moreinformationabouttheworkshop,theinterestedreaderisreferredto 1 the ESAW 2006 WWW site . The original contributions have been published as a Technical Report (UCD-CSI-2006-5) and this may be obtained freely from the Technical Report section on the WWW page of the School of Computer Science 2 and Informatics at University College Dublin . These post-proceedings continue the series published by Springer (ESAW 2000: LNAI 1972; ESAW 2001: LNAI 2203; ESAW 2002: LNAI 2577; ESAW 2003: LNAI 3071; ESAW 2004: LNAI 3451; ESAW 2005: LNAI 3963).