Agent Based Modelling and its Real World Applications

November 25, 2009

6.00pm – 8.00pm

Speakers:
Liz Varga and Patrick Beautement

A collaborative event between the GSD project and the Lighthill Institute for Mathematics (LIMs)

An agent-based model is a tool used by social scientists to study how large-scale social dynamics result from micro-level individual behavior. In its basic form, a collection of individuals, or agents, are programmed into a computer, along with a simple behavioral algorithm describing how they act. The computer then allows the agents to interact (possibly in both space and time), and ultimately generates a social dynamic that can then be analyzed in terms of the behavioral rules.

Patrick Beautement

Research Director, The Abaci Partnership

Previously Patrick has led QinetiQ’s ‘Intelligent Distributed Systems’ Team which implemented a series of models and tools with both commercial and academic relevance. Working with Southampton and Edinburgh Universities and with the Institute of Human-Machine Cognition at the University of West Florida, the Santa Fe Institute and British Telecom, Patrick was instrumental in researching both the conceptual and practical aspects involved in making agents, and agent-based modelling, ‘industrial weight’.

Patrick has recently completed work on an evaluation of the utility of systems dynamics (in comparison with other approaches, such as agent-based modelling) for ‘Decision-support in Complex Environments’.

Liz Varga

Senior Research Fellow, Complex Systems Research Centre, Cranfield School of Management 

Liz’s research concerns the co-evolution of the Organization and the Supply Chain, with particular reference to the Aerospace Industry. The outcomes of the research project are to create a framework for Evolution Management, a mapping of the organizational and supply chain structures of the industry and a spatial, dynamic model of the firms and supply chain.