Publisher's Synopsis
This work provides an overview of the theoretical, as well as the practical, aspects involved in the study and implementation of many-agent simulation models. The model presented here is based on the idea that programs exhibit behaviours entirely described by their internal mechanisms, namely the program instructions. By relating an individual to a program, it is possible to achieve an artificial world inhabited by interacting processes. It is possible, then, to achieve simulation by transposing the population of a real system to this artificial counterpart in which particular hypotheses can be explored by repeating experiments the same way as in a real laboratory, but more easily. Each member of a population is then represented as an agent whose behaviour is programmed with all the required details. Many-agent simulations therefore primarily help to model situations in which individuals have complex and different behaviours, while taking into account both quantitative (numerical parameters) and qualitative (individual behaviours) properties of the system.
