Agent-based Modeling and Simulation

How is it possible that a whole ancient civilization disap-peared? Was this caused by climate changes? What typeof recruitment strategy among social insects is best adapted to their particular environment? How much time does it take to evacuate an airport if people have limited perception caused by smoke as well as restricted mobility? What if many of these people travel in groups or families? How long does it take for commuters to reach their destinations if an important arte-rial in the Los Angeles area is closed? These are the kind of ques-tions that can be and are answered by agent-based modeling and simulation (ABMS). In this paradigm, simulated human beings or animals are modeled as agents, interacting with some of their peers as well as with their environment. The environment, as in many mul-tiagent systems, plays a key role and must therefore be careful-ly taken into account. For instance, passengers seeking to leave the airport just mentioned try to find the shortest way to an exit, which may be partially hindered by debris. These are only some examples of scenarios — also characterized as complex adaptive systems — that can be investigated using ABMS. The core idea here is to use simulated agents for producing a phe-nomenon that shall be analyzed, reproduced, or predicted. This generative, bottom-up nature of modeling and simulation pro-vides great potential for dealing with problems in which con-ventional modeling and simulation paradigms have difficulties capturing the core features of the original system. In what follows, this particular modeling and simulation par-adigm, its concept, properties, and application are introduce