ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an extensible dynamic distributed information communication technologies (ICT) infrastructure for cross-company teamwork in virtual organisations which allows to set up easily and user-friendly team-oriented information spaces assembled ad-hoc from different information sources. It provides insights to the three conceptual layers applied, namely the Peer-To-Peer (P2P) layer, the agent layer and the ontology layer. The hybrid agent-enabled P2P infrastructure was designed and developed to support cross-company teamwork in virtual organisations of the construction industry. The P2P communication model allows process chains and other computational entities, connected in a network, to communicate or share computational tasks and resources without the explicit need for a server. Each node is equal to all others, and may operate as router, client, or server according to the task to be performed. The P2P layer establishes a dynamic ‘flat’ network topology ensuring the overall technical interoperability and the basic information and resource management.
