A Goal Model for Collective Adaptive Systems

Abstract

A collective adaptive system is composed of large numbers of autonomous and self-adaptive entities which are able to provide benefits for other participants and have to cooperate with each other to accomplish their individual goals. When entities adapt their own behaviour due to unexpected situations, this may result in breaking the overall collaboration if these are not executed simultaneously and do not respect some collective constraints. The objective of this paper is to present a goal model that allows to express requirements for collective adaptability. It includes (i) how to specify the behaviour of the entities that encodes cooperation with other entities, (ii) how to link collaborative goals and individual goals, and (iii) how to specify constraints that are imposed on different entities to preserve some form of collective consistency while they are adapted.