In some areas of software engineering research, there are several metamodels claiming to capture the main issues. Though it is profitable to have variety at the beginning of a research field, after some time, the diversity of metamodels becomes an obstacle, for instance to the sharing of results between research groups. To reach consensus and unification of existing metamodels, metamodel-driven software language engineering can be applied. This paper illustrates an application of software language engineering in the agent-oriented software engineering research domain. Here, we introduce a relatively generic agent-oriented metamodel whose suitability for supporting modeling language development is demonstrated by evaluating it with respect to several existing methodology-specific metamodels. First, the metamodel is constructed by a combination of bottom-up and top-down analysis and best practice. The concepts thus obtained and their relationships are then evaluated by mapping to two agent-oriented metamodels: TAO and Islander. We then refine the metamodel by extending the comparisons with the metamodels implicit or explicit within five more extant agent-oriented approaches: Adelfe, PASSI, Gaia, INGENIAS, and Tropos. The resultant FAML metamodel is a potential candidate for future standardization as an important component for engineering an agent modeling language. Disciplines Physical Sciences and Mathematics Publication DetailsBeydoun, G., Low, G. Abstract-In some areas of software engineering research, there are several metamodels claiming to capture the main issues. Though it is profitable to have variety at the beginning of a research field, after some time, the diversity of metamodels becomes an obstacle, for instance to the sharing of results between research groups. To reach consensus and unification of existing metamodels, metamodel-driven software language engineering can be applied. This paper illustrates an application of software language engineering in the agent-oriented software engineering research domain. Here, we introduce a relatively generic agent-oriented metamodel whose suitability for supporting modeling language development is demonstrated by evaluating it with respect to several existing methodology-specific metamodels. First, the metamodel is constructed by a combination of bottom-up and top-down analysis and best practice. The concepts thus obtained and their relationships are then evaluated by mapping to two agent-oriented metamodels: TAO and Islander. We then refine the metamodel by extending the comparisons with the metamodels implicit or explicit within five more extant agent-oriented approaches: Adelfe, PASSI, Gaia, INGENIAS, and Tropos. The resultant FAML metamodel is a potential candidate for future standardization as an important component for engineering an agent modeling language.Index Terms-Modeling, metamodel, multiagent systems.

Recent technological advances in the Power Generation and Information Technologies areas are helping to change the modern electricity supply system, in order to comply with higher energy efficiency and sustainability standards. Smart Grids are an emerging trend which introduces intelligence in the power grid to optimize resource usage. In order for this intelligence to be effective, it is necessary to retrieve enough information about the grid operation together with other context data such as environmental variables and intelligently modify the behaviour of the network elements accordingly. This paper presents a Multi-Agent System model for Virtual Power Plants, a new power plant concept in which generation no longer occurs in big installations, but is the result of the cooperation of smaller and more intelligent elements. The proposed model is not only focused on the management of the different elements, but includes a set of agents which are embedded with Artificial Neural Networks for collaborative forecasting of disaggregated energy demand of domestic end users, the results of which are also shown in this paper.

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