Multi-Agent Based Simulation (MABS) is concerned with the utilisation of agent based technology for the purpose of running simulations of real world scenarios. The challenge is in encoding the agents so that they operate as realistically as possible. The work described in this paper is directed at the mining of movement information from video data which can then be used to encode the operation ...

This paper introduces some considerations about simulation practice and a schema of the models that are implicitly and explicitly involved in a Multi-Agent Based Simulation (MABS). The aim of this work is to set simulation inside scientific framework. In order to do that we give an interpretation of the levels that compound a simulation and that constitute different kinds of abstraction. A clea...

This special section on "Engineering Agent-Based Social Simulations" aims to represent the current state of the art in using Software Engineering (SE) methods in ABSS. It includes a mixture of theoretically oriented papers that describe frameworks, notations and methods adapted from SE and practice-oriented papers that demonstrate the application of SE methods in real world ABSS projects.

This special section on "Engineering Agent-Based Social Simulations" aims to represent the current state of the art in using Software Engineering (SE) methods in ABSS. It includes a mixture of theoretically oriented papers that describe frameworks, notations and methods adapted from SE and practice-oriented papers that demonstrate the application of SE methods in real world ABSS projects.

The term computer simulation is related to the usage of a computational model in order to improve the understanding of a system's behavior and/or to evaluate strategies for its operation, in explanatory or predictive schemes. There are cases in which practical or ethical reasons make it impossible to realize direct observations: in these cases, the possibility of realizing 'in-machina' experime...

This paper analyzes two modeling approaches for occupant behaviour in buildings. It compares a purely statistical approach with a multi-agent social simulation based approach. The study concerns the door openings in an office.

For the purpose of an AIDS prevention game, a model was developed that focuses on training safe sex negotiations. Non-player characters in the game are socially intelligent agents that are equipped with a Theory of Mind that allows them to reason about the mental processes and behavior of others. The underlying model for the negotiation about safe sex between player and agent was implemented in...

Space syntax derives from a set of analytic measures of configuration that have been shown to correlate well with how people move through and use buildings and urban environments. Space syntax represents the open space of an environment in terms of the intervisibility of points in space. The measures are thus purely configurational, and take no account of attractors, nor do they make any assump...

Agent-Based Computational Economics (ACE) and Agent Based Simulation (ABS) are two relatively young fields of research that lie on the boundary of social science, computer science and the cognitive sciences (AI and cognitive psychology). Originally these fields find their origin in computational physics, where multi-agent systems (MAS) are used to study models with heterogeneous agent populatio...