Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Fractals

Vlasios Voudouris of the Object-Field Model blog linked to the following talk by Benoit Mandelbrot about "Fractals and the art of roughness." Like Vlasios I found it interesting so I thought I would share it, like him.




On a side note, anyone interested in fractals and want to see them in the context of cities should check out Fractal Cities: A Geometry of Form and Function” by Professors Mike Batty and Paul Longley. It is a well written, a must read and often cited book for anyone interested in or writing about fractals, urban modeling and complexity sciences. The nice thing about the book is it is freely available at: http://www.fractalcities.org/

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

agent-based-models.com

Professor Jeff Schank of the Department of Psychology at the University of California is compiling a great website and a resource for those interested in ABM: agent-based-models.com. The site has a plethora of resources for agent-based modelers, including a blog, a list of ABM blogs, simulation environments, Organizations, Centers, and Institutes involved with ABM, a growing list of researchers involved with ABM.

Modeling Housing Markets: Update

A while ago I blogged about the a simple NetLogo model by Nigel Gilbert et al. which explores how some of the main features of the English housing market emerges from the interactions between buyers, realtors and sellers (click here to run the model). I have just come across an audio recording with accompanying slide presentation by Nigel Gilbert’s which enhances the previous post and thought it was worth sharing. Click here to listen and see the slides. The talk is hosted on the SIMIAN (Simulation Innovation: a Node) project website which aims to promote and develop social simulation methods in the UK.


Reference:
Gilbert, N, Hawksworth, J C, and Sweeney, P (2008) 'An Agent-based Model of the UK Housing Market'. University of Surrey http://cress.soc.surrey.ac.uk/housingmarket/ukhm.html or click here to read the paper.