Week 11

Agent-Based Models

This week, we will study agent-based models (ABM) to simulate the actions and interactions of autonomous agents in urban science.

We will practice the use of ABM with a simple model to study epidemics in the City of Boston and the effect of interventions.

Prepare

📖 Read some papers about use of ABM for problems in urban science:

• Chapter 4: “Sorting and Mixing” by Schelling in his book “Micromotives and Macrobehavior” [1]

• The Idea of Agent-Based Modeling by Gilbert, in the SAGE Research Methods Book on Agent-Based Modeling [2]

• Agent-Based Models in empirical social research by Bruch and Atwell [3]

• Agent-Based Modeling and the City: a gallery of applications by Crooks et al [4]

• Modelling the impact of testing, contact tracing and household quarantine on second waves of COVID-19 by Aleta et al [5]

Participate

🖥️ Lecture 11 - Agent-Based Models

Perform

⌨️ Lab 11-1 - Epidemics using ABMs

Back to course schedule ⏎

References

[1]

T. C. Schelling, Micromotives and Macrobehavior, Revised edition. Erscheinungsort nicht ermittelbar: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006.

[2]

N. Gilbert, “The Idea of Agent-Based Modeling,” in Agent-Based Models, SAGE Publications, Inc., 2008, pp. 2–21. doi: 10.4135/9781412983259.

[3]

E. Bruch and J. Atwell, “Agent-based models in empirical social research,” Sociological Methods & Research, vol. 44, no. 2, pp. 186–221, 2015, doi: 10.1177/0049124113506405.

[4]

A. Crooks, A. Heppenstall, N. Malleson, and E. Manley, “Agent-Based Modeling and the City: A Gallery of Applications,” in Urban Informatics, W. Shi, M. F. Goodchild, M. Batty, M.-P. Kwan, and A. Zhang, Eds., Singapore: Springer, 2021, pp. 885–910. doi: 10.1007/978-981-15-8983-6_46.

[5]

A. Aleta et al., “Modelling the impact of testing, contact tracing and household quarantine on second waves of COVID-19,” Nature Human Behaviour, vol. 4, no. 9, pp. 964–971, Sep. 2020, doi: 10.1038/s41562-020-0931-9.