Argumentation for Decision Support

In this paper we describe an application based on a general approach towards modelling practical reasoning through defeasible argumentation. The purpose of the paper is to show how the incorporation of an argumentation component can add value to a collection of existing information agents. The example application is a system for reasoning about the medical treatment of a patient. An agent, called the Drama agent, orchestrates a number of information sources to supply a set of arguments on the basis of which the decision regarding treatment can be taken. We describe the general approach and its instantiation for this application, and illustrate the operation of the system with a running example.