Pedagogic Aspects of TeachingAgent Based Modelling using StarLogo

Bob AbrahartSchool of Geography

University of Nottingham

The Place of GIS in the CurriculumUniversity of Leicester, 11-12 May 2005

Agent Based Modelling …Why bother?– a new and growing field

Bibliography on software agentsURL: liinwww.ira.uka.de/bibliography/Ai/software.agents.html

StarLogo•StarLogo is a programmable modeling environment for

exploring the behaviors of decentralized systems, systems without leaders. Examples of these systems in our everyday life include bird flocks, traffic jams, and ant colonies.

• In decentralized systems, orderly patterns can arise without centralized control. Increasingly, researchers are choosing decentralized models for the organizations and technologies that they construct in the world, and for the theories that they construct about the world.

•But many people continue to resist these ideas, assuming centralized control where none exists -- for example, assuming (incorrectly) that bird flocks have leaders.

•StarLogo is designed to help students (as well as researchers) develop new ways of thinking about and understanding decentralized systems.

http://lcs.www.media.mit.edu/courses/mas712/slweb/index.html

http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/

Concepts 1: Agent Based Modelling

Different Views on Agent TopologiesConcepts 2:

Agent Properties

Property Other Names

Meaning

reactive (sensing and acting)

responds in a timely fashion to changes in the environment

autonomous exercises control over its own actions

goal-oriented pro-active purposeful

does not simply act in response to the environment

temporally continuous

is a continuously running process

communicative socially able communicates with other agents, perhaps including people

learning adaptive changes its behavior based on its previous experience

mobile able to transport itself from one machine to another

flexible actions are not scripted

character believable "personality" and emotional state.

Concepts 3:

The idea of emergence is used to indicate the arising of patterns, structures, or

properties that do not seem to be adequately explained by referring only to the system’s pre-existing components and

their interaction.

Concepts 4:Exploring “Emergence”

Organizations of agents

Animate agents

Data

Artificial world

Observer

Inanimate agents

If <cond>

then <action1>

else <action2>

If <cond>

then <action1>

else <action2>

Bottom-Up ModellingConcepts 5:

http://www-transims.tsasa.lanl.gov/

TRansportation ANalysis SIMulation System (TRANSIMS)

Existing

Proposed

40% increase in Visitors

+12 Bus Parking+20 Caravan Parking

+130 Car ParksNew Visitor Centre

300 Metre walk to 12 Apostles viewpoint

RBSim - Recreation Behavior Simulatorhttp://srnr.arizona.edu/~gimblett/rbsim.html

StarLogo: Spread of Malaria in Haiti http://www.irit.fr/COSI/training/evaluationoftools/haitimodel/haiti.html

StarLogo: Simulation of Ant's Emergent Behavior

http://www.thepangburns.com/jesse/projects/ant_simulation.htm

Two books exist:

Adventures in Modeling: Exploring Complex Dynamic Systems with StarLogoVanessa Stevens Colella, Eric Klopfer, and Mitchel Resnick

Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams: explorations in massively parallel microworldsMitchel Resnick

Show and tell…..