Full Description
Becoming an Agent-based Modeller takes you on a journey, from curiosity about social phenomena to generating them with a computer simulation. The book introduces agent-based modelling as a method to understand societies as complex systems, systems of interconnected, interdependent and interacting agents.
The book is structured like a course rather than a textbook or reference book. The core of the book is an extended tutorial introducing the NetLogo programming language. Using the example of an epidemic, it explores how an agent-based model of social influence, situational awareness, and contextual decisions by individual agents about protective behaviour can help us understand plausible epidemic trajectories. The tutorial demonstrates how to build an agent-based model from scratch and use it in research, including the conceptualisation stage, the operationalisation and implementation, experimentation and interpretation. This practical part of the book is embedded in chapters on theory, epistemology and ethics of agent-based modelling.
With pedagogical tools including key discussion points, illustrations, and highlighted concepts, this is an ideal resource for courses on ABM, and for postgraduate students, and researchers in the social sciences and beyond, who wish to develop their understanding of agent-based modelling.
Contents
I: Conceptualising Agent-based Models 1. Modelling the Social World 2. Building an Agent-based Model 3. Ethics of Agent-Based Modelling; II: Building Agent-based Models 4. Preliminaries 5. Model 1: Model Entities 6. Model 2: Introducing Time and Space 7. Model 3: Agents Making Decisions 8. Model 4: Representing Relationships 9. Models 5-8: Enhancements 10. Bringing it all Together; III: Working with Agent-based Models 11. Turtles on the Move 12. Tricks of the Trade 13. Experiments 14. Is your Model Fit for Purpose? 15. Being an Agent-Based Modeller
