An intelligent agent approach to adaptive project management

This paper presents the initial steps to integrating a distributed discrete event simulation system with a framework for intelligent software agents. The resulting system has a simulation component that is based on the high-level architecture (HLA) and an agent component that implements the belief-desireintention (BOI) approach to agent modelling. The architecture is connected to a real-time information source. The framework was successfully applied to a real-life monitoring system for a tunnel-boring machine excavation project that helped with forecasting and managing the project timelines in response to the changes in the uncertain excavation environment. This project is presented as a test case and demonstrates encouraging results for integrative modelling of large-scale problems with elements of uncertainty.