Re: Simulating Individual Behavior

[Philippe LAVAL]

Paul Fishwick said :
>A key problem with IBM is not that it is necessarily
>computationally prohibitive, but that not enough data are
>available to calibrate the model...

Perhaps you are talking about ecosystems from your simulation-oriented
point of view, as the word 'calibrate' indicates. I think that a complex
system like an ecosystem cannot be modeled with some large FSM  or even
with a set of stochastic equations (except in the short-term): in an
ecosystem there is probably no unique latent 'model' to be discovered,
against which we could compare some data and make adjustments. Instead
there probably exists many possible modes, with the system unpredictably
switching from time to time to one or another.

The first thing to do could be to try to recognize these modes. Because
switching is unpredictable (ecosystems seem to exhibit self-organized
critical modes), it makes no sense to try to 'calibrate' the whole system,
in the same manner simulation engineers calibrate a model of a factory or a
flexible workshop.


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Philippe Laval
Station zoologique
B.P. 28 - 06234 Villefranche-sur-Mer CEDEX (France)
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