Cooperative information-gathering: a distributed problem-solving approach

With the proliferation of electronically available information an additional burden has been placed on the implementors of information gathering IG systems The set of data that represents the best response to a query may be the aggregation of data acquired from distributed heterogeneous information sources In such environments we distinguish be tween two approaches to the problem of information gathering that may be characterized as distributed processing and distributed problem solving DPS The former is characteristic of existing IG systems while the latter is the raison d etre for Multi Agent Systems MAS We examine features of problems that point to the need for a DPS approach and discuss the bene ts of viewing information gathering as distributed problem solving which subsumes distributed processing This approach called Cooperative Information Gathering CIG in volves concurrent and asynchronous access and composition of associated information spread across a network of information servers by a group of intelligent agents Top level queries drive the creation of partially elaborated information gathering plans resulting in the em ployment of multiple semi autonomous cooperative agents for the purpose of achieving goals and subgoals within those plans Finally we brie y survey current work on distributed and agent based approaches to Information Gathering This material is based upon work supported by the NSF Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval ONR contract N J ARPA under ONR contract N J The content of the information does not necessarily re ect the position or the policy of the Government and no o cial endorsement should be inferred