On the development of Agent-Based Models for infrastructure evolution

On the development of Agent-Based Models for infrastructure evolution

Nikolic, I.
Dijkema, G.P.J.

Technology, Policy and Management

Section Energy and Industry

2010-04-09

Infrastructure systems for energy, water, transport, information etc. are large scale socio-technical systems that are critical for achieving a sustainable world. They were not created at the current global scale at once, but have slowly evolved from simple local systems, through many social and technical decisions. If we are to understand them and manage them sustainably, we need to capture their full diversity and adaptivity in models that respect Ashby's law of requisite variety. Models of evolving complex systems must themselves be evolving complex systems that can not be created from scratch but must be grown from simple to complex. This paper presents a socio-technical evolutionary modeling process for creating evolving, complex agent based models for understanding the evolution of large scale socio-technical systems such as infrastructures. It involves the continuous co-evolution and improvement of a social process for model specification, the technical design of a modular simulation engine, the encoding of formalized knowledge and collection of relevant facts. In the paper we introduce the process design, the requirements for guiding the evolution of the modeling process and illustrate the process for Agent Based Model development by showing a series of ever more complex models.

agent based modeling
evolution
evolutionary process design
infrastructure evolution

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:4055c4ba-5b9f-462b-9a93-0431da2ffe0b

https://doi.org/10.1504/IJCIS.2010.031072

Inderscience

2010-10-01

17418038

International Journal of Critical Infrastructures, 6 (2), 2010 ; post-print version

Institutional Repository

journal article

(c) 2010 Nikolic, I. ; Dijkema, G.P.J. ; Inderscience