Ontology and goal model in designing BDI multi-agent systems

Nowadays several methodological approaches exist, each of them tightly tied up with the implementation platform supporting it. In this paper we propose an intermediate step toward the definition of a methodological approach for supporting the JACAMO framework. This paper resumes a previous work, focused on modeling BDI organizations, and we now address the requirements analysis phase. In particular, we propose the use of an ontological model and a goal model for representing requirements and the domain formalization respectively. The two portions of design process are connected by a heuristic process that allows to extract goals from the ontological model. The resulting models are also used for completing each other and for enhancing the problem description that is considered an input to our process. In the paper we use the well-known case study of the conference management system for illustrating the proposed portion of process.