Multi-Agent Systems and Applications ; 9th ECCAI Advanced Course ACAI 2001 and Agent Link's 3rd European Agent Systems Summer School, EASSS 2001, Prague, Czech Republic, July 2-13, 2001. Selected Tutorial Papers

The Advanced Course on Artificial Intelligence ACAI 2001 with the subtitle M ulti- Agent Systems and Their Applications , held in Prague, Czech Republic, was a joint event of ECCAI (the European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence) and AgentLink, the European Network of Excellence for Agent-Based Computing. Whereas ECCAI organizes two-week ACAI courses on different topics every second year, AgentLink s European Agent Systems Summer School (EASSS) has been an annual event since 1999. This year, both of these important events were merged together, giving weight to the fact that multi-agent systems currently represent one of the hottest topics in AI research. The name, ACAI 2001 Summer School, is intended to emphasize that this event continues the tradition of regular ECCAI activities (ACAI), as well as the EASSS summer schools of AgentLink.