Friday, May 22, 2009

meta beta's Flu Model

Miles Parker writer of the meta beta blog has had some interesting posts recently about modeling influenza using agent-based models. In his first post he explained the design of simple agent-based model of influenza (including agents attributes and behaviours), in a second post he details some experiments (including the importance of carrying out batch runs) and the third post allows users to interact with the model through a applet. The model itself was developed using metaABM.

The effect of movement on the maximum infection Level (21 runs) (Source meta beta)


Miles is also the founder of Metascape and metaABM. metaABM is an opensource project which provides tools to allow for models to be visually edited without reqiring programming experience. Along with being tightly integrated within the Eclipse IDE toolset and can be linked to Repast Simphony. For more details readers are referred to the metascape website which has more information about the metaABM project along with some interesting videos on the overview of metaABM how one can install and design agent-based models in a relatively visual environment.

metaABM from Metascape

On a related note I found the movie below of an interview of Josh Epstein, were he talks about agent-based modelling and the spread of smallpox.



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