[Modeling] about modeling environment in agent-based simulation

[Danny Weyns]

Hello Ye,

your question concerns an important issue in agent-based systems. In my
opinion the environment need to be treated as a primary abstraction in
multi-agent systems, without any doubt!
In most models for mas, the environment is reduced to communication
infrastructure. However, this neglect the true potential of the
environment. Here are a couple of questions of my favourite list to
illustrate the necessity of the environment as an abstraction on its own
right:
-how to deal with objects or data in the environment
-what about the actions (possibly simultaneous actions) of agents onto
these objects
-how to control the effects of the agents' interactions independently of
the internal architecture of the agents
-how to deal with the (dynamic) topology of environments
-what about processes in the environment that do not directly
relate to agent activity such as the variation of an environmental
variable (e.g. temperature), the expansion of a field in the
environment, the movement of an object or the evaporation of a
pheromone?
We need the environment as an abstraction to model these issues, it seems
unnatural to me to put it all in the agents?

In my work, environment is treated as a primary abstraction, please find
my papers at
http://www.cs.kuleuven.ac.be/~danny/publications.html

Note that at the next AAMAS conference a workshop is dedicated to
environment for mult-agent systems, see
http://www.cs.kuleuven.ac.be/~distrinet/events/e4mas/

with regards,
Danny Weyns

> hello, all.
>     Can anybody tell me how to represente environment in agent-based
> simulation? I think there are three ways to do it.
> 		1st, implicitly in agents.
> 		2nd, as specific data structures in the models.
> 		3rd, explicityly as agents.
> Who can give me some examples in which environment is represented in one
> of these ways?
>
> Thanks
>
>
>
> 　　　　　　　　Ye Chaoqun
> 　　　　　　　　cqyie@163.com
> 　　　　　　　　　　2004-02-29
>
>
>
>
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