NPE - A Conceptual Model and Language for the Representation of Norms

Originating in Deontic logic, norms and normative facts enable philosophers, designers and developers to reason over actions an actor may or may not perform with respect to social rules. Normative concepts have the power to enable us to reason with flexibility over actions and beliefs. In the context of Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs), where communities of potentially autonomous, heterogeneous, independently designed components may be interacting; the introduction of norms to influence behaviour could be indispensable. Norms should not be seen as constraints to behaviours, rather they are metrics against which behaviours can be measured. Applying this analogy to components in SOAs enables participants to reason over behaviours with the flexibility to react to changing community norms whilst putting their own interests first. This paper presents a formalism for the representation of norms in agent and service based architectures. Specifically, we propose a method for modelling norms in expected behaviours of actors. The result of our work provides a language, NPE, enabling participants to reason over norms, actions and beliefs