ICDM: integrated cooperative decision making-in practice

Multi-agent systems provide an attractive architecture for the implementation of complex systems. Much of the research is focused on complete automation of the decision making process as a means of duplicating human abilities for working with new problems and environments. There is also a need for systems that employ the human as an agent and rely on human abilities for common sense and deep thought. The CAD Research Center at Cal Poly and CDM Technologies have significant experience in building systems of the latter type that assist human users in solving complex problems in planning, design and economics. This experience has generated a set of guidelines and a software development framework that have collectively been identified as ICDM. The paper presents a brief history of major applications built with the ICDM framework, and proposes some basic precepts