Cooperative information agents XI

These are the proceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Cooperative Information Agents (CIA 2007), held at the Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands, September 19–21, 2007. Intoday’sworldofubiquitouslyconnectedheterogeneousinformationsystems and computing devices, the intelligent coordination and provision of relevant added-value information at any time, anywhere is of key importance to a va- ety of applications. This challenge is envisioned to be coped with by means of appropriate intelligent and cooperative information agents. An information agent is a computational software entity that has access to one or multiple heterogeneous and geographically dispersed data and infor- tion sources. It pro-actively searches for and maintains information on behalf of its human users, or other agents preferably just in time. In other words, it is managing and overcoming the di? culties associated with information overload in open, pervasive information and service landscapes. Each component of a modern cooperative information system is represented by an appropriate intelligent information agent capable of resolving system and semantic heterogeneities in a given context on demand. Cooperative infor- tion agents are supposed to accomplish both individual and shared joint goals depending on the actual user preferences in line with given or deduced limits of time, budget and resources available. One major challenge of developing age- based intelligent information systems in open environments like the Internet and the Web is to balance the autonomy of networked data, information, and knowledge sources with the potential payo? s of leveraging them by the use of cooperative and intelligent information agents.