Fusing the agent-based and Object – Field models

One of my recent works appeared as an advance online publication at the Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design. The url of the paper is: http://www.envplan.com/abstract.cgi?id=b36001

Abstract. The fusion of agent-based and geospatial models represents an exciting new synthesis for social science and economics. It has the potential to improve the theory and the practice of modelling complex real-world phenomena. Yet, to date, there has been little systematic analysis at the conceptual and logical levels of how to fuse agent-based and geospatial models for the representation and reasoning of socioeconomic phenomena. Here both sets of issues are explored. In particular, it will be argued that the development of synthetic models requires autonomous agents and flexible organisational structures that can complete their objectives while situated in a dynamic and uncertain geoenvironment represented by the concept of Elementary_geoParticle. As an example of the concept, I present a preliminary conceptual model of global energy to demonstrate the validity and possible uses of the proposed technique.

The modelling framework discussed above has been used in the ACEGES project discussed here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1652361. A new paper is currently under review in an energy journal (i will not name the specific journal until the review process completes).

If you are interested in the topic of agent-based and geospatial models, see the gisagents blog ( http://gisagents.blogspot.com/ ) by Dr Andrew Crooks.