Micropolis: Open source SimCity

SimCity is a city-building simulation game whose objective as the name suggests is to build and design a city. The original SimCity has now been released under the name Micropolis through a GPL license, therefore allowing people to experiment with the original model, maybe even adding more complex behaviors and rules?

Adams (1998) highlights how SimCity provides a valuable teaching tool for urban geography, planners, designers and policy makers. The GUI of the game facilitate the learning about the complex, dynamic, and interrelated nature of urban problems.

References:

• Adams, P.C. (1998), 'Teaching and Learning with SimCity 2000', Journal of Geography 97(2): 45-55.
• Wikipedia entry on SimCity

Agent Analyst movies

Agent Analyst is an Agent-based modelling extension that allows users to create, edit, and run RepastJ and RepastPy models from within ArcGIS. The Agent Analyst toolkit was developed by Argonne National Laboratory’s Center for Complex Adaptive Agent Systems Simulation in collaboration with ESRI and to promote cooperation and collaboration between GIS professionals and agent-based modellers

While its been around for some time, I have recently just come across two videos from the Redlands Institute, however the actual models and further details is limited, they show the potential of the extension for agent-based modelling. The first demonstrates the integration of Agent Analyst and Tracking Analyst within ArcGIS Desktop. Specifically the model shows a simulation of bird migration patterns of 2 species. The second model uses Agent Analyst to compare two urban growth scenarios.

Bird migration patterns



Comparing two urban growth scenarios

For more information including tutorials on how to use Agent-Analyst see the Agent Analyst website.

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.

NetLogo to 3D Max

I am a great fan of NetLogo for the development of agent-based models. At CASA we have been exploring how one can loosely couple NetLogo models with 3D Max. The reason being that 3D Max offers a means of visualization which is beyond NetLogo's for example, building 3D city scapes.

Ateen Patel a PhD student at CASA and author of the Crowd Simulation Blog has written a short tutorial (including the code) and several other posts on how to get information from a simple NetLogo Traffic Model and to visualize the model in 3D Max.

Such outputs can be seen in the movie below from Digital Urban:

The Crowd Simulation Blog is worth keeping an eye on for those interested in pedestrian modeling as Ateen's research and his blog explores new methods for rendering very large crowd scenes that contain the correct kinds of physics and dynamics that enable realistic simulations to be generated.

Update: Agent-based models in Second Life

We just finished another part of Agent-Street where agents and avatars can interact with each other. The idea here is to merge iconic and symbolic urban models in a multi-user real time environment.

The movie below shows Agent-Street and how one can download the models we have created by clicking on the model vending machines. By clicking on the vending machines, models can be downloaded and saved. Such vending machines are common features in Second Life and allow users to store objects and scripts in their personal inventory for later use such as rebuilding the models on their own Land or in free sand-boxes. We have been using the Mauve Land for this (SLURL).

In our previous models avatars could only visualise and initiate the models. For example, in the pedestrian evacuation model users could only observe how agents exited the building (in a similar way to professionally developed 3D pedestrian modelling software packages such as STEPS). In this new model, we extend the basic pedestrian evacuation model, so that agents not only consider their environments but also other avatars. In this sense we are not only incorporating iconic and symbolic modelling styles but also adding a further human dimension, moving towards an augmented reality (i.e. as if the agents and the humans were in the same crowd). The movie below shows how pedestrian paths change when avoiding an avatar. The movie shows a how an avatar stationed near the exit impacts on pedestrian egress as agents have to move around it.

Previous posts on our and others work on Second Life can be found by clicking here. We have also set up a website outlining the work in detail (click here) or alternatively if you have a Second Life account this SLurl will take you to the Land, once you teleport to the area, follow the red arrow (beam of red light) into the sky to find Agent-Street. If the models are running slow let us know as we having problems with fish entering our land from a neighbouring island.