Whitestein Series in Software Agent Technologies and Autonomic Computing, 139–169 c  2009 Birkh¨auser Verlag Basel/Switzerland Cognitive Agents as a Design Metaphor in Environmental-Knowledge Management Luigi Ceccaroni, Alfredo Sim´ on-Cuevas, Alejandro Rosete-Su´arez and Mailyn Moreno-Espino To all the kids who will have to clean up our mess in the future. Abstract. Representing and sharing knowledge has been a central problem in artificial intelligence since its inception. Representations such as semantic networks, frames, concept maps and ontologies, as well as various method- ologies for using these systems have been proposed for dealing with such issues. However, problems exist about issues such as communication among heterogeneous agents, incomplete or uncertain knowledge, imprecise formal- izations, and so on. Here, a mapping system between knowledge represen- tations (concept maps and ontologies) is modeled using a methodology for the development of multi agent systems. Ontologies are formalized from non- formal concept maps and can then be used to represent agents knowledge, and to facilitate the communication among persons and software agents. A system is presented, in which a set of agents, implementing three functionali- ties (retrieval, disambiguation and formalization), collaborates in the process of knowledge management. This multi-agent system is part of a larger knowl- edge management system based on concept maps, and facilitates the use of generated and managed knowledge by not only people but also other software agents, namely those which require knowledge about domains that have been represented as concept maps, such as the environment domain, object of this book. Keywords. Cognitive Agents, Concept Maps, Environmental Knowledge, On- tologies, Semantics. 1. Preamble Artificial intelligence provides a variety of useful techniques which can be applied to environmental science to improve knowledge management and problem solving. In this article we will see a system that integrates two knowledge representations