Advantage of multi agent system over single agent system
Answers
IMO the biggest advantage of a multi-agent system would be the autonomy, assuming individual agents are partially if not fully independent of the other agents. This would basically eliminate system downtime due faults occurring from a central control agent, as each agent is at the very least partially self-contained.
Another argument for a multi-agent system is decentralisation. This mitigates the effects of potential security breaches, as it would require much more time/effort to compromise the many agents, and multi-agent systems are also usually very large and complex in scale, if it were even at all exploitable in the first place. Granted, a SCADA system in many cases may offer better security, but one single exploit is all that’s required to deliver a successful malicious attack, with potentially disastrous consequences.
That being said, SCADA systems offer so much more than multi-agent systems, and are the default choice in controlling automation machinery. Modern, advanced SCADAs offer excellent security and redundancy features to cover some of the issues highlighted above, with the convenience of a central data repository and process control.