Agent-Based Simulation: Social Science Simulation and Beyond by Emma Norling and Franziska Klügl

Course description:

This course will provide an overview of agent-based simulation in general, with agent-based social simulation as a particular focus. We will look at the types of applications and domains for which agent-based simulation can be useful, and illustrate this with a series of examples. We will then use these examples to explore a range of conceptual issues -- including the link between individual and group behaviour, complexity, level of detail, and size and scalability -- as well as a number of technical details -- size and scalability again, assumptions and sensitivity, and validation and verification. Finally, we will conclude with a summary of tools available for agent-based simulation.


Tutor bio:

Emma Norling undertook her PhD studies in the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering at the University of Melbourne, with a thesis titled "Modelling Human Behaviour with BDI Agents." Since January 2005 she has been working at the Centre for Policy Modelling at Manchester Metropolitan University on an EPSRC-funded project which brings together researchers from a wide variety of disciplines to investigate generic computational techniques to study and understand
complex dynamic systems. Her research focus is in the area of agent-based social simulation (ABSS), but also involves applying
techniques used in ABSS to other disciplines.

Franziska Kluegl works in the area of agent-based simulation since 1995. She received her PhD in 2000. As part of her PhD thesis she developed a tool for visually developing multi-agent simulations based on declarative behaviour representation. Currently, she is working as an assistant professor at the Dept. of Artificial Intelligence at the University Würzburg. Her research focus is in methods and applications of agent-based simulation in different domains, interdisciplinary research projects, like traffic simulation or simulation of biological systems or industrial applications, like the agent-based simulation of automatic high bay warehouses.