Reconciling inconsistent perspectives in collaborative GIS using multi-agent method

Reconciliation of inconsistent perspectives is an important issue for collaborative GIS and group decision making support systems. Although some methods, such as extended Speech Act Theory (ESAT), have been used to handle this issue, some problems still remain unsolved such as how to define and process the negotiation workflow, how to handle the complex interactions among distributed users, and how to define the reconciliation objects. The multi-agent system, which has special features in adaptivity, autonomy, collaborative behavior, mobility and so on, has the potential to help solve these problems in collaborative computing, shared knowledge and rules, and complex communication, negotiation and voting.