@conference {1509598, title = {How Local Is That Optimum? k-optimality for DCOP }, booktitle = {Fourth International Joint Conference Poster on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS)}, year = {2005}, abstract = {In multi-agent systems where sets of joint actions (JAs) are generated, metrics are needed to evaluate these sets and efficiently allocate resources for the many JAs. For the case where a JA set can be represented by multiple solutions to a DCOP, we introduce koptimality as a metric that captures desirable properties of diversity and relative quality, and apply results from coding theory to obtain upper bounds on cardinalities of k-optimal JA sets. These bounds can help choose the appropriate level of k-optimality for settings with fixed resources and help determine appropriate resource allocation for settings where a fixed level of k-optimality is desired.}, author = {Jonathan P. Pearce and Rajiv T. Maheswaran and Tambe, Milind} }