Rule Conflicts in Holonic Institutions

Abstract

Large-scale self-organised systems, such as distributed community energy systems, have called for coordination approaches that are able to deal with issues such as heterogeneity, inter-dependence and dynamic variability. Holonic institutions have been proposed as an approach to converging the structuration required for multi-scale, multi-criteria optimisation in nested enterprises with the formal representation of institutionalised powers required for the minimal recognition of the rights to self-organise. A holonic institution is composed of interrelated sub-institutions, each of which may again be composed of interrelated sub-institutions, and may itself be nested in a supra-institution. With constituting components having possibly conflicting interests and values, a critical module of such holonic structures is conflict resolution, i.e., Each institution must be able to detect and resolve conflicts (1) between its own rules and that of the supra-institution (external), and (2) between its own rules and that of the individual members (internal). For this purpose, this paper presents a detailed analysis of rule conflicts that may exist in holonic institutions. By means of Event Calculus, we provide a preliminary formalisation of such conflicts.