Extensible multi - agent system for optimal design of complex 8 systems using analytical target cascading

Analytical target cascading (ATC) has emerged 12 as an integrated approach and methodology for optimal 13 design of complex hierarchical systems with good conver-14 gence. It facilitates collaborative design problem solving 15 and enables distributed computing to extend both the 16 capability and capacity. ATC is very powerful yet requiring 17 comprehensive understanding and efforts in setting up 18 specific projects. This paper presents a generic and ex-19 tensible information infrastructure called atcPortal in the 20 form of a web portal where the ATC analyst defines the 21 ATC problem using a special-purpose XML-based lan-22 guage called atcXML, conducts the ATC analysis, and 23 obtains the analytical results. atcPortal not only reduces the 24 overheads for analysts to set up the projects for practical 25 applications, but also allows the researchers to experiment 26 and extend the ATC methods under different system 27 structures and/or different ATC strategies.