Towards a Formal Model of Knowledge Sharing in Complex Systems

Knowledge sharing between various components of a system is a prerequisite for a successful knowledge management system. A knowledge sharing model includes providing knowledge workers with the knowledge, experiences and insights which they need to perform their tasks. We propose a multi-agent system that assists in the process of knowledge sharing between concerned knowledge worker groups. Each agent is a knowledge broker and organizer for a specialized knowledge worker group involved in the operations of a sub-system. In addition to timely access to knowledge, it should help in understanding the motivation which underlies decisions made by other groups and/or the information/knowledge bases for such decisions. Each agent is expected to learn about the activities, contexts of decisions, knowledge employed and experiences of other knowledge workers groups whose activities are considered to be relevant to the group it represents. We shall employ Partial Information State (PIS) to represent the knowledge of the agents. We shall employ a three-valued based nonmonotonic logic for reasoning about PISs. We present a multi-agent based model of argumentation and dialogue for knowledge sharing.