Rethinking the NAIHS Model for NEC
Advances in network technologies enable distributed systems, operating in complex environments to coordinate their activities over larger areas within shorter time intervals. Recently a model for such systems called the NAIHS model has been proposed, where NAIHS stands for Networked Adaptive Interactive Hybrid (human and artificial) System. The NAIHS model identifies information, temporal and physical abstractions to structure the system functions that act as agents. In this paper we investigate how this model relates to other models that try to structure such systems like the JDL model that focuses on sensor fusion, the model of Endsley on human situation awareness, the approach of Rasmussen that focuses on (physical) structure and the approach of Brooks that advocates a temporal hierarchy of sensor actuator layers. We then investigate the applicability of this NAIHS model for NEC. In the domain of NEC a number of maturity levels have been identified. Particularly at the higher maturity levels, next to the humans, the artificial part of the system will also behave in a more intelligent manner. From this perspective it seems natural to model the future NEC systems as a (complex adaptive) multi (human and artificial) agent system where the agents have the intention to cooperate as good as possible while they adapt themselves to a dynamic environment. The applicability of the NAIHS model to NEC is first considered from a functional perspective, i.e. how do the functional components identified in the NAIHS model relate to the NEC domain. Then we consider, for the higher NEC maturity levels, the interaction mechanisms between the agents