Formal reasoning about resilient goal-oriented multi-agent systems

In this paper we present our formalisation of a resilient goal-oriented multi-agent system and its essential properties. The formalisation covers the notions of system goals and agents, various formal structures (functions and relations) defining different interrelationships between these notions, as well as constraints on the system dynamics allowing a multi-agent system to become more reconfigurable and thus resilient in order to achieve the system goals. The formalisation results in establishing connections between goals at different levels of abstraction, system architecture and agent responsibilities. The proposed formal systematisation of the involved concepts can be seen as generic guidelines for formal development of reconfigurable systems. Moreover, we demonstrate how such guidelines can be interpreted within the Event-B framework.