Distributed Agent-Based Agricultural Knowledge Based Systems

An architecture is presented that utilizes both knowledge-based systems technology and Intelligent Agents technology to design and implement computerized systems for agricultural management that are flexible, extendible, and reusable. While stand-alone knowledge based systems provide valuable agricultural management information, collaboration among several knowledge-based systems with related functionality promises an enhanced level of utility. By redefining knowledge-based systems as individual autonomous agents with well-defined capabilities, tremendous flexibility can be achieved. Complex problem solvers are assembled from individual agents. These problem solvers would then have capabilities that far exceed the sum of the capabilities of the individual agents. By thinking of the agents in terms of their advertised capabilities regardless of their physical location, this approach enables the use of geographically dispersed agents represented as web services to cooperatively solve complex problems.