Modelling and simulation of trust evolution: technical report no.DCSE/TR-2006-02

Several studies coming from psychological or social sciences examine the meaning and characteristics of trust. The information technologies significantly influence almost all activities in modern society. This increases the need of studying the concept of trust in the environment of information systems. On the other hand, the methods and tools coming from computing sciences are used for trust modelling and simulation. This study discusses possible appropriate concepts of modelling and simulation of the trust evolution. The terms trust, and trust representation and visualization are introduced. The approach in human trust modelling is based on the theory of information and social communication knowledge. Some terms of probability theory and information theory are presented. The principle of some phenomena dissemination is demonstrated by epidemic algorithms. The multi-agent system is the modern technology that is used for modelling of not only the technical systems but also the social ones. Some needed terms from the agent theory are mentioned. The agent approach is chosen for modelling the trust in a community. Fundamentals of trust formation, trust dissemination, and trust evolution are presented by deploying the agent system. Finally, summary of well known tools for modelling and simulation multi-agent systems is presented. Finally, an outlook for the future work is proposed