Risk assessment through argumentation over contractual data

Argumentation and trust models have been increasingly used in multi-agent systems research, with applications in several domains such as e-commerce. Negotiation is a form of interaction in which argumentation and trust can play a relevant role. Argumentation in a negotiation context has been defined as a way of interaction between trading parties that enables them to exchange information in order to explain their current position with the intention of increasing the chance of success. We propose an argumentation model based on past contractual data aiming at enriching electronic contracting processes. The idea behind this argumentation model is to prevent failures in future agreements. For that, an important step is to define a reasoning model that allows trading parties to point out some past contractual failures or explain such past failures. The purpose of this paper is then to investigate on how argumentation-based negotiation using historical contractual data may affect the outcome of a contracting process, taken as a comprehensive activity ranging from negotiation, monitoring and enactment assessment. This may be achieved through a careful selection of the partner with whom a contract is to be established, complemented with an argumentation-based negotiation of contract terms.