Título: An Environment Model for Multi-Agent Systems Suitable for Formal
        Verification 
Palestrante: Paulo Salem

Resumo: Multi-agent systems are employed to model complex systems, which can
be decomposed into several interacting pieces called agents. In such systems,
agents exist, evolve and interact within an environment. In this presentation
I will show a model for the specification of such environments. This model
defines both structural and dynamic aspects of environments. Structurally, it
connects agents by a social network, in which the link between agents is
specified as the capability that one agent has to act upon
another. Dynamically, it provides operations that can be composed together in
order to create a number of different environmental situations and to respond
appropriately to agents' actions. These features are founded on a new
mathematical model that defines rigorously what constitutes an
environment. Formality is achieved by employing the pi-calculus process
algebra. This allows, in particular, a simple characterization of the
evolution of the environment structure. Moreover, owing to this formal
semantics, it is possible to perform formal analyses on environments thus
described. I shall comment on why and how to do so.