Applying Saaty's Multicriterial Decision Making Approach in Grid Resource Management

In this paper we consider combining ontologically represented information with Saaty's Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to facilitate decision support for Grid users. The context for the proposal is provided by the Agents in Grid project (AiG), which aims at development of an agent-based infrastructure for efficient resource management in the Grid. In the AiG project, agents form teams, managers of which negotiate with clients and workers terms of potential collaboration. Here, we focus on the scenario, in which the user is searching for resources to execute a task, while the resources and the expert domain knowledge are organized in an ontology. Taking into account the complex nature of resource description and domain knowledge, multicriterial assessment of how accurate is the user description of her needs, and how it can be extended/refined, plays a crucial role. For instance, it should help the user to choose optimal algorithm and/or resource to solve her problem. Furthermore, ontologically described contract proposals, that are the results of autonomous negotiations, require multicriterial assessment. The AHP method is based on pairwise comparisons of criteria, and relies on the judgment of a panel of experts. In the context of the AiG project, we show on the example of the AHP method, how multicriteria group decision making can be used to support user in resource selection and assessment of contract proposals.