Agent-based modelling; Microsimulation; Ordering of models; Population evolution; Robustness; Computer Science (miscellaneous); Social Sciences (all); General Social Sciences
Abstract :
[en] Agent based modelling is nowadays widely used in transport and the social science. Forecasting population evolution and analysing the impact of hypothetical policies are often the main goal of these developments. Such models are based on sub-models defining the interactions of agents either with other agents or with their environment. Sometimes, several models represent phenomena arising at the same time in the real life. Hence, the question of the order in which these sub-models need to be applied is very relevant for simulation outcomes. This paper aims to analyse and quantify the impact of the change in the order of sub-models on an evolving population modelled using TransMob. This software simulates the evolution of the population of a metropolitan area in South East of Sydney (Australia). It includes five principal models: ageing, death, birth, marriage and divorce. Each possible order implies slightly different results mainly driven by how agents’ ageing is defined with respect to death. Furthermore, we present a calendar-based approach for the ordering that decreases the variability of final populations. Finally, guidelines are provided proposing general advices and recommendations for researchers designing discrete time agent-based models.
Disciplines :
Business & economic sciences: Multidisciplinary, general & others
Author, co-author :
Dumont, Morgane ; Université de Liège - ULiège > HEC Liège : UER > UER Opérations : Quantitative Models and Methods in Management ; Namur Institute for Complex Systems, University of Namur, Namur, Belgium
Barthelemy, Johan; SMART Infrastructure Facility, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia
Huynh, Nam; SMART Infrastructure Facility, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia
Carletti, Timoteo; Namur Institute for Complex Systems, University of Namur, Namur, Belgium
Language :
English
Title :
Towards the right ordering of the sequence of models for the evolution of a population using agent-based simulation
Publication date :
October 2018
Journal title :
Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation
eISSN :
1460-7425
Publisher :
University of Surrey
Volume :
21
Issue :
4
Peer reviewed :
Peer reviewed
Funding text :
This research is part of a project with the support and funding of the Public Service of Wallonia (DGO6), under Grant No. 1318077. Computational resources have been provided by the Consortium des Équipements de Calcul Intensif (CÉCI), funded by the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique de Belgique (F.R.S.-FNRS) under Grant No. 2.5020.11. Finally we gratefully acknowledge the support of NVIDIA Corporation with the donation of the Titan Xp GPU used for this research.
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