An architecture of a multi-agent system for SCADA: Dealing with uncertainty, plans and actions

This paper presents a multi-agent system approach to address the difficulties encountered in traditional SCADA systems deployed in critical environments such as electrical power generation, transmission and distribution. The approach models uncertainty and combines multiple sources of uncertain information to deliver robust plan selection. We examine the approach in the context of a simplified power supply/demand scenario using a residential grid connected solar system and consider the challenges of modelling and reasoning with uncertain sensor information in this environment. We discuss examples of plans and actions required for sensing, establish and discuss the effect of uncertainty on such systems and investigate different uncertainty theories and how they can fuse uncertain information from multiple sources for effective decision making in such a complex system.