An Agent-Oriented Method for Designing Large Socio-technical Service-Ecosystems

The development of large socio-technical systems is now more feasible with the availability of service-oriented cloud computing although this results in a higher complexity level with respect to security and dependability in service-ecosystems. Additionally, the communication between humans and software is more complex too. Developing system architectures that comprise proactive agents are a means to tackle that complexity. However, there is a lack of socio-technical design methods for generating agent-based architectures that get deployed on platforms as a service in Clouds. Such a method must be easy to comprehend and enactable in a pragmatic way. To demonstrate the method, the paper uses a running case based on an emergency healthcare-provision scenario in homes for elderly in sparsely populated areas.