Re: Combining antropology & complexity science, anyone?

[Rick Riolo]

I have lost the start of this thread, so excuse me
if I am giving you some info you don't want!

Presumably you have read this book:

  ABM's in Anthropology. Readings from Dynamics in Human and Primate
  Societies, T.A. Kohler and G. J. Gumerman (eds.), 2000

Also you might find some papers of interest at

   http://www.pscs.umich.edu/research/techReports.html

There are several models of various aspects of human
behavior there, more or less "realistic" (mostly less!).
There are some papers that argue why "less is more"
for models of many CAS phenomena.


I think you mentioned supply chains.
One paper at the above site that deals with supply chains as an example,
while comparing EBM (equations-based approach) to ABM is:

  PSCS-98-12-004: Agent-Based Modeling vs. Equation-Based Modeling: A Case
  Study and  Users Guide. Parunak, V., Savit, R., Riolo, R.
  Proceedings of Workshop on Multi-agent systems
  and Agent-based Simulation (MABS'98), Springer,
  1998. Center for Electronic Commerce Paper  CEC-0 115.

But its *not* about how humans act, its about how some
models of MRP algorithms handle the situation.

There are several general books and papers at

  www.pscs.umich.edu/education/CSCS-courses/cscs530/generalCasReadings.html

many of them aimed at social scientists.

You might check out the work of Robert Reynolds and his
anthropology colleagues (at Wayne State Univ and University of Michigan).
They have some models of various anthropological phenomena (eg state formation).
I dont' have his URL handy, but you can find his email and some
description of his research interests at
  http://www.pscs.umich.edu/people/associateFaculty.html#ReynoldsR

People doing models of land use, urban sprawl, etc (related to traffic of 
course)
have started to take up some of the questions about
how to get how much "realism" into ABMs.  For starters, check out
the CIPEC group, headed by Elinor Ostrom:

  http://www.psych.indiana.edu/people/homepages/ostrom.html
  http://www.indiana.edu/~cipec/

We at UM are just starting a project to model land use/cover (SLUCE).
We have just started collecting some references, at

    http://www-personal.umich.edu/~danbrown/research/biocomplexity/readings.html

So watch for our work in the future (off the CSCS web pages).

- r

-- 
Rick Riolo                           address@hidden
Center for Study of Complex Systems (CSCS)
4477 Randall Lab
University of Michigan         Ann Arbor MI 48109-1120
Phone: 734 763 3323                  Fax: 734 763 9267
http://www.pscs.umich.edu/PEOPLE/rlr-home.html





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