Facilitating e-Negotiation Processes with Semantic Web Technologies

1. Facilitating e-Negotiation Processes with Semantic Web Technologies

2. Introduction • Negotiation • a decision process in which two or more parties make individual decisions and interact with each other for mutual gain • negozio =shop in Italian … • e-Negotiation • perform negotiation activities over the Internet

3. Background of Research • D.K.W. Chiu, S.C. Cheung, P.C.K. Hung, S.Y.Y. Chiu* and K.K. Chung*. Developing e-Negotiation Process Support with a Meta-modeling Approach in a Web Services Environment, Decision Support Systems, accepted. (*FYP students) • Peliminary Version at ICWS'03, June 2003 • 6th Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems, Sept 2002 • D.K.W. Chiu, S.C. Cheung, P.C.K. Hung, and H.F. Leung. Constraint-based Negotiation in a Multi-Agent Information System with Multiple Platform Support, HICSS37, Jan 2004. • S.C. Cheung, P.C.K. Hung and D.K.W. Chiu. On e-Negotiation of Unmatched Logrolling Views, HICSS36, Jan 2003. • S.C. Cheung, P.C.K. Hung and D.K.W. Chiu. A Meta-model for e-Contract Template Variable Dependencies Facilitating e-Negotiation, ER2002, Oct 2002

4. Motivation • Are there currently significant practical use of the Semantic Web? • Match-making and beyond • Software requirement engineering / negotiation • Model and solve practical problems with CS and technologies • Cross-over multi-disciplinary research

5. Objectives • How to elicit negotiation requirements? • Semantic Web => Ontologies => help negotiators’ mutual understanding of issues, alternatives, and tradeoffs • Address semantic requirements of negotiation • Reduce cost and improve effectiveness of negotiation(avoid combinatorial explosion of issues) • Development of an effective and efficient negotiation plan • Applications: e-Marketplace, Web-service negotiation, agent negotiation, requirement negotiation…

6. e-Negotiation Portal at e-Marketplaces Suppliers e - Marketplace offers Aggregate requests Repository from Buyers, contact bids potential Suppliers, Ontologies and Concepts match Suppliers e - Negotiation data and Buyers, exchange offers Agreements - … bids and offers, generate e - Contract bids Buyers

7. An Example Ontology for Sale Negotiation of Rubber Gloves in UML Class Diagram Discount Total Amount Shipping Cost {unordered} attributes: deposit, installment, pay-upon-delivery, … Delivery Date Sale Order Delivery Payment Terms * Refunding Policy Order Line Insurance Quantity {ordered} attributes: small, medium, large, extra-large Appearance Unit Cost Insured Amount Premium Payee Insurer Size Color Red Purple {unordered} attributes: brick red, crimson, … {unordered} attributes: light purple, magenta, …

8. Semantic basede-Negotiation Conceptual Model Ontology * involves Negotiation Party 2..* Auxiliary Base 1..* Concept Concept 1..* 1..* * precedes resolves maps to 1 * * Task Issue Concept 1..* indivisibly 1 * * relates to 1 * 1 formulates * drives makes has 1..* 1..* 1 Plan 1..* Offer Alternative 1 Value Accepted Offer Accepted Alternative Value

9. Overall e-Negotiation Process Design Methodology activity process start condition [ not consistent ] select agreed identify for each relevant ontologies alternatives [ consistent ] collection Pre - negotiation of co - related check consistency phase * issue derive concept map issues into of issues &concepts relations ontology concepts formulate identify issues plan [ need to revise [ need to identify tradeoff model ] new issues ] synchronization bar creation of evaluate tradeoffs process termination [ all issues are Negotiation agreement & make offers resolved ] phase [ quit ]

10. How are Ontologies Useful? • Understanding Negotiation Issues from Ontologies • Understanding Dependencies of Issues from Ontologies • Indivisible Components of Issues for Tradeoff Evaluation and Negotiation Plan • Understanding Possible Alternatives for Issues from Ontologies

11. Understanding Negotiation Issues from Ontologies Perform graph search algorithm on the semantic map • Issues are preliminary identified in the first round. • For each identified issue, • check if an issue can be mapped directly to a concept. • If not, see if an issue can be refined into a set of more specific concepts • a cost is refined into constituent costs that sum up to it. • Incomplete Ontologies • Introduce new concepts into the ontology map • Relate it with to existing ones

12. Understanding Negotiation Issues from Ontologies (Cont) Perform graph search algorithm on the semantic map • For each identified concept c, • Examine every un-visited node n adjacent to c in the ontology map. • For each such node n, see if the new concept is relevant to the negotiation problem. • Repeat until no more related new concepts can be identified. • Only after successful negotiation do we need to consider combining newly identified concepts back to specify a more concise agreement

13. Understanding Dependencies of Issues from Ontologies • Functional dependency • borrowed from fundamental relational database concepts • motivate this research • The alternative for an issue is determined by the alternatives(s) of other issue(s). • cost of production depends on delivery date and quantity. • Computational dependency – • more obvious type of functional dependency • hardwired computational formula • E.g. insurance amount = percentage * cost of goods.

14. Understanding Dependencies of Issues from Ontologies • Requirement dependency (constraint satisfaction) • Only after the determinant value is known can viable alternatives be determined. • E.g., whether a customer may pay by credit card, bank draft, or remittance is evaluated according to the total amount. • Classification dependency • A special type of requirement dependency in which the classification of another issue is dependent on the outcome of an agreed issue.

15. Indivisible Components of Issues for Tradeoff Evaluation and Negotiation Plan Negotiate Size Negotiate Shipping Cost & Payee Negotiate Discount Negotiate Unit Cost, Quantity & Delivery Date Negotiate Color Negotiate Payment Terms Compute Total Amount Negotiate Refund Policy Negotiate Insurance Premium, Insured Amount & Payee • Indivisible Components of Issues • Cyclic dependencies among the concepts • Tradeoff Evaluation

16. Un-Matching Tradeoff Views

17. Matching Tradeoff Views

18. Understanding Possible Alternatives for Issues from Ontologies • Alternative for issues are often in discrete values • cannot be expressed in numerical values • not quantized in normal practices because of difficulties in recognizing them, e.g., color • for simplicity and convenience (size => S, M, L, XL) • The elicitation of options is streamlined when a complicated issue is decomposed into concepts(appearance => size + color + shapes) • Ontologies provide • explicit ordering of them (size => S < M < L < XL) • implicit ordering • inheritance (“is-a”) hierarchies • composition hierarchies

19. System Implementation Architecture e-Negotiation Process Generator Multiplatform Support Subsystem WebServer WAP Gateway SMS Gateway Internet Messenger e-Negotiation Session Manager Ontology Generator Multi-platform Devices e-Negotiation Matching Subsystem task dependency bids & offers issue dependency e-Negotiation Executing Subsystem e-Negotiation process ontology, issue Ontology Editor Issue Dependency Editor Criteria & Issues Editor Ontology Maintenance Subsystem revised ontology, issues ontology criteria, issues e-Negotiation Data & Repository Search Engine Tasks Organizer ontology existing ontology e-Negotiation process

20. Making Offers and Counter-offers in a Negotiation Session [acceptance received] [failure received] Make offer /counter-offer Revise reservation prices [ready to make an offer] Identify the issue(s) to be next negotiated in the plan Prepare reservation prices [counter-offer received] [false] Quit? Evaluate offer /counter-offer [unacceptable offer] [offer received] Notify counterparty of acceptance [acceptable offer] start a new negotiation cycle [true] Notify counterpartyof failure Have all issues been negotiated? Successful negotiation [false] [true]

21. Conclusions • Formulation of negotiation plan with maturing of Semantic Web technologies • Elicitation of negotiation issues, issue dependencies, tradeoff, and alternatives • Control the openness of issues • Our algorithm verifies the completeness of elicited negotiation requirements • Negotiation processes are properly guided, recorded, and managed • For e-commerce activities are usually more structural and repeatable (as opposed to political negotiations) • Ontologies and plans are therefore reusable • Negotiation automation with agents / integration with EIS

22. Future Work • Formal models • Elicitation of semantic distances • Users having different tradeoff views (i.e., different negotiation plan in mind) • Multi-lateral negotiation • Ranking of different types of issues and criteria for tradeoff issues (Hung, HICSS 2003) • Decision making to reach an optimal and stable state for negotiators (Nash equilibrium) • Study of e-Contract enforcement (Chiu et al., HICSS 2003) • Real-life negotiation practices • General requirement elicitation (e.g. software)