An ontology driven, multi-agent based framework for automated resource allocation in Mobile Workforce Management systems

Rapid advancement in Mobile Information and Communication Technology (ICT) caused an enormous increment in mobile workforce population of the world. Consequently, this rapid increment created a high-demand for reliable and automated mobile workforce management (MWM) amongst them, Resource Allocation (RAL), which is the focus of this paper, is of high importance. The better performance and reliability that an RAL system exhibits, the more reliable its corresponding MWM will be. A reliable resource allocation process in a mobile environment however, should be able to adequately challenge human resource risks (unpredictable unavailability) as well as environmental risks, such as frequent disconnection, caused by mobility of the resources. In this paper an ontology driven multi-agent based framework for such RAL systems is proposed. The main emphasis of this framework is to describe a dynamic coordination model for Mobile Workforce Brokerage System, a multi-agent system which is utilized to automate the resource allocation process in presence of the abovementioned risks and challenges.