Author(s)

X. Liu & K. W. Wirtz

Abstract

Contingency management facing an imminent oil spill is often a difficult task as the long-term consequences of decisions generally affect the interests of different stakeholder groups - including the broad public. We suggest here that a balanced response scheme can be achieved by integrating various interests within a vir-tual negotiation process. This paper designs a hybrid negotiation protocol where multiple issues including money compensation are traded by parties. Aiming to examine appropriate designs of this process in multi-agent systems, we simulate negotiations based on the Prestige oil spill response scenario. Experiment results show that this designed protocol may work as a robust conflict resolution mech-anism for deriving a multi-agent consensus. Finally, by comparing two different rational strategies taken by agents, we add support to the view that learning tech-niques help agents to improve their payoffs in negotiations. Keywords: oil spill, negotiation, multiagent system,decision making. 1 Introduction One of the major episodic threats for near-shore and coastal ecosystem and the human use of coastal areas arise from large oil or chemical spills. Contingency management thus aims to simply keep the drifting oil away from sensible coastal areas, depending on the weather situation and available combat facilities. This goal is mostly only partially achieved in real time operations. Given the complex dynamics of the physical system in the coastal zone and the different environ-mental and economic values of coastal areas under risk, decision making during

Keywords

oil spill, negotiation, multiagent system,decision making.