Distributed data mining and agents

Multi-agent systems (MAS) offer an architecture for distributed problem solving. Distributed data mining (DDM) algorithms focus on one class of such distributed problem solving tasks—analysis and modeling of distributed data. This paper offers a perspective on DDM algorithms in the context of multi-agents systems. It discusses broadly the connection between DDM and MAS. It provides a high-level survey of DDM, then focuses on distributed clustering algorithms and some potential applications in multi-agent-based problem solving scenarios. It reviews algorithms for distributed clustering, including privacy-preserving ones. It describes challenges for clustering in sensor-network environments, potential shortcomings of the current algorithms, and future work accordingly. It also discusses confidentiality (privacy preservation) and presents a new algorithm for privacy-preserving density-based clustering.