Lauren Thévin - A normative multi-agent system for evaluative support to human-machine collaboration: application to Crisis Management

We discuss in this thesis about designing an computer system for an evaluative support , to support and evaluate in real-time the collaborative activity in the particular case of "an activity governed by processes from different organizations". We define a process as a set of rules, policies, plans, standards which aim to guide and be a reference for the realization of a collaborative activity. Our research is applied to training in crisis management, and situated in the technological context of tangible interaction.
To implement a flexible and comprehensible evaluative support, we propose a socio-technical systemfor bringing the actors shared and distributed organizational consciousness.
In this context, three key issues are considered: (1) representation and management of the contexts associated with the sustained activity and the interactions between the involved stakeholders, (2) representation and management of various processes associated with the sustained activity and the interaction and (3) the articulation between the sustained activity and the interaction.
To answer these issues, we offer the OrA system based on three groups of principles, both about sutained activiy and interaction : modularity and representation of processes and contexts, autonomous management and loosely coupled processes and contextual elements, flexible coordination between these process and context management mechanisms.
These principles are implemented in a computer system based on the model of groupware, especially CLOVER, a traces models, and normative multi-agent systems.
This system is evaluated by demonstrating the ability to model the process of a practical case of crisis management exercise, and by providing a use situation of a real exercise training in crisis management.