Virtual Knowledge Communities for Distributed Knowledge Management: A Multi-Agent-Based Approach using JADE

Virtual communities are becoming increasingly popular, particularly on the internet, as a means for like-minded individuals to meet, share and gain access to the information they are most interested in quickly and efficiently, from other individuals they can learn to trust. The concept of a community of practice or a community of interest can be supported in a virtual community in order to bring the appropriate parties together, to share their knowledge with each other. In this project, the most general model for modelling distributed knowledge management is investigated, that involves extending the abstraction of an agent, such that it becomes an actor within a knowledge community. In this model, agents themselves, software or human, are the members of the virtual knowledge sharing communities. Agents can choose to join, leave, create and destroy communities, and can be member of many communities simultaneously. A Jade-based prototype design and implementation are used to show how such a system can operate and be useful in practice.